(apple)mac geek

I have a copy of Parallels Desktop running Windows XP so I can check how my sites look in Internet Explorer. Unfortunately I’ve only been able to view them in a single version of the browser, either 5 or 6 or 7. Until now, that is!

Multiple_IE will let you run IE 4, 5, 5.5 and 6. Once you’ve installed that, grab the standalone IE 7 installer and install that (longer instructions for IE 7 are here). I got them all up and running without too much trouble.

If you want the source for a single brower, browsers.evolt.org will help you.

If you have css specifically for IE 7 and don’t want other browsers to see it, create your stylesheet and then call it in your html using the code below:

<!--[if IE 7]><link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="IE7styles.css" /><![endif]-->

IE 7 is supposed to support standards more than IE 6…let’s hope so!

Technorati Tags: Internet Explorer

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Spotlight on Mac is great but often I’m mucking around on the command line and want to find something without having to switch to spotlight and back again. locate is a great (and fast) tool which indexes your entire hard drive into a database. When searching, instead of searching the hard drive directly, it just searches its database, meaning it is blisteringly fast (sure, if you’re looking for files which have changed in the last week it’ll point to a non-existent location, but for finding that annoyingly missing php.ini file it’s great).

The locate database is rebuilt each week by periodic (which runs system functions daily, weekly and monthly). periodic is called by cron, uh, periodically. *sigh* These posts are never going to make me interesting to non-geeks.

To manually update your locate database just call the weekly periodic script:

sudo periodic weekly

Take a look at everything periodic runs by opening Terminal and taking a look inside /etc/periodic
Geeks will love you for it. I hope. *sigh*

Technorati Tags: Terminal

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Finder doesn’t usually show hidden files: click on your hard drive in Finder and you’ll see only normal folders.

But if you open Terminal, run cd / then do a ls -l you’ll see all of the normal *nix folders.

To view one of them in Finder, click “Go to folder…” from the “Go” menu and put in “/private/etc”

Suddenly, some interesting files are viewable! Such as the configuration file for apache in /private/etc/httpd/httpd.conf
I usually use pico (a very simple editor which comes standard in Terminal) to change that file but you can also use a good editor (like TextWrangler) to edit it.

If you always would like to see hidden files in Finder, open Terminal and paste in these lines of code (hat tip: Wired):

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE

killall Finder

If you ever want to make the hidden folders disappear again, just run the code again, but change TRUE to FALSE.

Technorati Tags: Finder, hidden files, Terminal

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Sean is a singer/songwriter who lives in Cape Town. He has recorded a demo album using Garageband on his white Macbook (Garageband is a surprisingly full-featured program!). Like any good Mac user, he installs the latest updates from Apple – which is good maintenance procedure – until the 10.4.10 update “fixed” his firewire audio driver and promptly broke communication between his Behringer FCA202 external firewire sound card.

Apple say it’s not their fault because the manufacturer hasn’t stuck to its guidelines for writing drivers. Behringer say it’s not their fault because the sound card was working fine before Apple’s update. *sigh*

Luckily, there is a fix available (YMMV). It involves somehow rolling back to OS 10.4.9 – either through your backups (if you have a robust enough process), or by booting off your install cd’s and doing an “Archive and Install options” (then making sure you don’t upgrade past 10.4.9) or – the least painless option – roll back your Firewire audio driver to an earlier version. This involves installing the Firewire SDK 24 for Mac OS X.

Firstly, register at the Apple developer site and then download the Firewire SDK 24 (registration and downloading are free). Mount the dmg by double-clicking on it and then run the FireWireSDK23.pkg file. It’ll ask you for permission to install and will then create a /Developer folder on your hard drive (if it doesn’t already exist).

Then reboot, click on the Apple logo in the top left corner of the screen and click “About this Mac”. Then “More info” and System Profiler will open. Click “Extensions” under “Software” and select AppleFWAudio. The driver version should be 2.0.1 – good enough to run your Behringer FCA202 (or any other external audio device broken by the update).

For a slightly more in-depth talk through, download this pdf from mackie.com

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