angrys0ul

This one is for the PC-to-Mac switcers. Incase you have made the transition or have to use the Mac ocassionally, you will see that the Mac is not as friendly as it is supposed to be. Its because you are not used to the way things are on the Mac.

One such nuance that can cause a bit of frustration is the arrows on the scrollbar. On a Windows computer, the corresponding arrows are at the ends of the scrollbar but on a Mac the arrows are together. Luckily there is a way to change this to the way it looks in Windows, open System Preferences (there should be an icon in the Dock) and click on Appearance. In the Appearance pane, you will see the option to change the arrow position

For good or bad, there are no Ok | Cancel | Apply buttons as in windows, so once you change it, the change will be applied.

Firefox 3, the latest version of the web browser Firefox is out today. The developers and the Firefox community is trying to set a world record for the highest number of downloads in a day. So go get your copy and help them make the record. And its free.

There is only one way for something to be better and still be free - Open Source. Want to participate in the Firefox revolution, one way you can help is by spreading awareness. Most users end up using the browser that comes with their OS (Internet Explorer / Safari). There are many reasons for this and one of them is that they are unaware of the fact that there are better and free things out there. Educate people about Firefox, explain the advantages and help them make the switch.

If you were already a Firefox user, then there are lots of improvements that make this a must try upgrade. Missed the download day? No problem, make up for it by spreading the word. Grab one of these Firefox buttons or buy some Firefox gear.

Netbeans, the open source and free Integrated Development Environment (IDE) from Sun is developing into a great piece of software with each release. They are also trying to be the new Eclipse and seem to have done a good job at that. One of the things that could send a developer away towards Eclipse is the rich set of plugins that Eclipse already has but Netbeans has the Java advantage. Its a complete platform for Java development. But every piece of software has some basic thing done wrong, could be because of neglecting it or because they didn’t feel it mattered or there was a conflict in how it should be implemented or anything else. One of such things in Netbeans in the option to disable the start page. I had to browse through all the tabs in the preferences window before I found it at the bottom of the start page itself, which is not such a good place for it to be. People with larger screens may easily notice it, but still they should have it integereated into the preferences page.

So in one line, to disable the start page in Netbeans 6 scroll to the bottom of the page and uncheck the option that says Show On Startup.

Netbeans

Why Update Rails

Mac OS X Leopard ships with Rails 1.2.6 which was the latest version when the OS released. But the rails team has updated Ruby on Rails to version 2.0 (2.0.2 now to be exact). Version 2 of rails brings many new features, updates and fixes. To get your Mac running the latest version of rails, open the terminal and run the following commands

Commands

$ sudo gem update --system
$ sudo gem install rails
$ sudo gem update rake
$ sudo gem update sqlite3-ruby

You have to run the commands with the sudo prefix to run them as the super user (equivalent of admin) or you will get a the following error

You don’t have write permissions into the /usr/bin directory.

Commands Explained

$ sudo gem update –system - this command updates the ruby gems package manager (this update is required by the latest version of rails)

$ sudo gem install rails - updates and installs the latest version of rails including the dependencies

$ sudo gem update rake - updates the rake tool which is used by rails

$ sudo gem update sqlite3-ruby - updates the ruby sqlite3 bindings, you can skip this command if you don’t use sqlite as your database

Testing

You will get visual updates as the update process goes on but if you still feel like testing the update once you are done, type this command in the terminal

$ rails -v

and to get a list of all the gems currently installed on your mac displayed with their version numbers use the following command

$ gem list

If you have any other suggestions or questions about the update, write a comment.

I had a really bad experience installing Firefox on my Mac so I decided to pen down the detailed instructions along with my experience installing it as a first time Mac user.

Installing Firefox on Mac OS X

Goto Firefox.com, click on the download link and the file should download to your Downloads folder

Open the Downloads folder using Finder and locate the Firefox.2.x.x.x file, double click on it ad you should see this screen

Click accept and in a few moments, the image will be mounted and you will see this window

Now open the Applications folder in another Finder window and drag the Firefox icon from the above screen into the Applications folder

You will see a progress screen for a few moments and you are done installing Firefox

Right click on the Firefox disc image icon on your desktop and Eject

To launch Firefox, double click on the Firefox icon in the Applications folder

For future use, you could drag the Firefox icon from the Applications window onto the dock to create a shortcut

My experience

Installing applications is supposedly a trivial task on a Mac but when I tried to install Firefox (my first non-Apple application) I was clue less about how to install it.

It was my Day 1 with the Mac and I already got the hang of Safari so I decided to try the mighty Firefox for a few reasons -

• First its a damn good browser
• Second I was used to it as a windows user
• Third and most important, Firefox maintains a consistent UI across all platforms

Just like everyone else I downloaded the DMG, double clicked on the DMG and it showed me this screen.

What the heck??? What am I supposed to do with this little window?? What does it mean? I was really frustrated, why can’t they include instructions to install the app? I initially thought it was actually a splash screen. Then after playing with the window for a while, I discovered that the Firefox logo is an icon and by the signs I thought I should drag this icon into the white Applications icon in the window. Didn’t work. Tried some googling with no luck then realized that I could drag the icon into a new Applications finder window. And finally there I had it, Firefox on my Mac.

This was in the past and when I was a Mac noob. Now that I know how to install applications (apps), when I think about my first install experience I feel embarrassed. And I wish Firefox developers designed it in such a way that the Firefox icon could be dragged into the Applications icon in the same disk image window rather than the user opening a new Applications window and then dragging the icon into it.

It was actually my mistake, they had install instructions on the download page which I did not notice and closed.