As promised IT is giving a review of the latest release of OS X, 10.5 aka Leopard. Here’s my (very) rough take on a couple of favorite features, in no order whatsoever.

First, the Look & Feel. Aesthetically Leopard is very pleasing, but not radically different from the previous version. There are some variations on the Aqua theme: new dock, translucent menu bar, new icons. Summed up, it’s all still glossy and gorgeous.

Spaces: I used VitrueDesktops with 10.4 to give me multiple desktops. Spaces is the built-in desktop manager that gives you as many desktops or “spaces” as you’d like. It’s a real improvement for the OS and a nod to it’s Debian heritage (multiple desktops/desktop management has been a feature of most Linux systems for years). You can assign an application to a specific desktop or to every desktop. For example, I’ve assigned Parallels to space 4, so when I first launch Parallels OS X automatically moves to 4 and then keeps the app there. I keep my web browsing on another desktop and NeoOffice on yet another.

One thing I had to tweak was the way Finder plays with Spaces. If I opened a Finder window on space 1, every time I cmd+tab’ed to Finder I’d be moved back to 1. I prefer to be able to open a Finder window on any and all spaces. In the Spaces pref pane you can assign applications to a desktop(s), so I added Finder to the list and assigned it to “every space,” which gave me the desired behavior. (You can finder Finder.app in the CoreServices folder.) IMO, I think this should be the default setting for Finder’s role in Spaces, but to each his own.

Preview: Preview, the all-purpose PDF and image viewer, has been dramatically revamped: Easier navigation between pages — you used to only be able to scroll one page, then click either ‘next page’ or click the next page in the drawer — now you can scroll an entire document; adjustable thumbnails; image cropping & capturing; and bookmarks. I don’t know if bookmarks were part of the old Preview, but now you can bookmark images and documents like you would a webpage so you quickly bring it up later.

There are lots of “cleaners” out there for Mac OS X. With 10.4 I used OnyX, a UNIX-based GUI that easily let me clear caches, purge downloaded files, and clean up other out-of-the-way places in OS X. After upgrading to 10.5 I found Hazel. Hazel cleans based on rules you write. So, if you’re looking to free up space by clearing out your Download folder of items more than 7 days old, all you have to do is write a rule in Hazel and it will automatically delete items in the specified folder that are older than 7 days. If you’re a fan of iTunes’ smart playlist you’ll quickly take to Hazel.

I often save documents to my desktop with the intention of moving them later, but then never do. I also have the habit of following strict naming conventions with my documents. These habits lend themselves wonderfully to Hazel. For example, I wrote a rule in Hazel that said ‘if there is a document that contains “safety” in the file name and has the extension .doc anywhere in my (jgalante) users folder, then move it to the “07-08 Safety Notes” folder in Documents’ (see screenshot). Now when I’m taking notes at the Safety committee meeting and I save to my desktop, Hazel autmotically moves the document to my Safety folder.

That’s a pretty simple example of what Hazel can do, but it gives you an idea. You can also use Hazel to automatically apply color labels, comments, and other metadata to files and folder. Noodlesoft, the makers of Hazel, have a great website and are actively creating a community where people can share their rule recipes and tips (the import/export feature of Hazel makes sharing very easy). Hazel is still young, but it’s robust and with an active community behind it I can see this becoming as popular and powerful as Quicksilver.

bad monster, bad

glop of green on broken cookie

rawr

“at the tone the time will be…”

the bad caulk job

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Last year’s Cookie Challenge here.