Revert Safari 4 Tabs & Other Hidden Preferences

I don't know about you but I just can't get used to browser tabs being on the title bar, it just doesn't feel natural to me.

If you agree and you would like to move the tabs back to where they were enter the following command in Terminal...

defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4TabBarIsOnTop -bool FALSE

Quit and restart Safari and the tabs should be where they were in Safari 3. To move them back again just replace FALSE with TRUE in the command above.

For more Safari 4 hidden preferences see this article.

2 New Homes

After a short hiatus to WordPress I'm back using Blogger again as it (unsurprisingly) seems to be more visible to Google!

I still have 2 other new homes though, my work blog and Twitter, hope to see you there!

Open In Tab (again)

Since installing the beta of Safari 4 links started opening in new windows again.

It looks like the install resets any preferences you set via the command line, therefore to restore the behaviour just run the command again.

Syncing iPhone calendar colours

Since my move to Fruux the colours of my calendars have been different on my computers and my iPhone with no obvious way to make them stay in sync.

With a bit of research I found this article which highlights the fact that the colours used are actually assigned in a certain order, therefore, syncing your calendars one at a time in the right order provides the desired result.

Fruux

I mentioned I was going to try Fruux in my last post, well I have and I'm very impressed.

It is a free service so you can't argue with the price! There are warnings about backing up your data as it's still a beta service but, touch wood, I haven't had an issue yet and I have 3 machines and my iPhone all synced up.

It's very simple to setup too, you simply download a preference pane and install it, setup an account the first time you use it and click the 'Synchronize Now' button. Go to another machine and follow the same steps and you have both machines in sync, currently this is limited to the address book, calendars, tasks and bookmarks. However, their roadmap has some interesting ideas.

The only negative comment I have at the moment is that you can't choose what gets synced it's all or nothing, this could be a problem as more is synced.

Other than that I think this is a great product and I'm really looking forward to seeing it develop.

Update: I received an email from Fruux earlier this evening pointing out that "selective syncing" is the first feature to be completed in the next version (0.9) as mentioned on their roadmap, I should have read it more closely ;-)

Mobile Not For Me

When I got my iPhone in July I signed up for the MobileMe trial and like a lot others it was extended, in fact I'm still within my trial period!

However, during the trial I've encountered quite a few problems...

Although over-the-air syncing is extremely cool it's not without it's hitches, during my trial I've lost all the contacts on my phone once, had trouble updating contacts details and have been left with one machine that plainly refuses to sync it's calendar anymore, even after resetting all sync data.

iDisk has been really slow via the Finder and also tends to lock my out after a couple of days resulting in a Force Quit of Finder or a reboot. Once it is working it's not exactly fast either, in fact the web interface was quicker!

The only thing I found really useful was the syncing of bookmarks, that's the one thing I'm missing since I made the decision the MobileMe isn't For Me.

I'm currently seeking free alternatives to MobileMe, I'm now using delicious for bookmarks, box.net for online storage and I was going to use Google as the central sync point for calendars and contacts by using SpanningSync (which worked really well) but I've just discovered a free alternative, Fruux, which I'll be trying very soon.

Java Thread Dumps

Question: As most Java developers probably know a VM thread dump can be obtained on Windows by pressing CTRL + BREAK, so how can the same thing be accomplished on a Mac?

Answer: CTRL + \