Archive for the ‘aetherworld’ Category

Toggle the showing of hidden files in Mac OS X Finder

Thursday, July 17th, 2008

At work, I often have to deal with hidden files - or dot-files - in the OS X Finder. I usually have a TextMate project for every client website where I can open all files from the convenient project drawer but often I just have to quickly edit a line in a .htaccess or .htpasswd file and don’t feel like opening the whole TextMate project. On the other hand, I dont’t always want to see all hidden files in all folders. My home folder is littered with .ssh, .gpg, .DS_Store, .localized, .bashrc, .Trash etc. files which I don’t need to see most of the time.

Since it’s apparently impossible to modify the Finder so that it only shows hidden files in certain directories or it only shows hidden files matching certain criteria, I looked for another solution. Using defaults write in the Terminal, you can change the Finders settings and persuade it to display the hidden files on the filesystem, but I can also just use ls -al or mate ~/Projects/myproject/.htaccess to fire up TextMate directly with the .htaccess file opened, when I’m in the Terminal.

Screenshot of the OS X Finder with the 'Toggle Hidden Files' button in the menu bar

What I was looking for was a simple button in the Finder’s menu bar, that allowed me to toggle between hiding and showing those files. What I came up with is a small application that does just that. It doesn’t ask you whether you really want to toggle showing the hidden files, it doesn’t give you any options, you just click the button and can see all of your hidden files. And when you don’t need to see them anymore, they’re gone - at another click of the button. Convenient, isn’t it?

Here is how you use it:

  1. Download FinderToggleHiddenFiles.dmg and mount it
  2. Copy the ‘Toggle Hidden Files’ application to your Applications folder
  3. Go to your Applications folder and find the ‘Toggle Hidden Files’ application
  4. Drag the ‘Toggle Hidden Files’ application to the free space on your Finder’s menu bar

Note: When dragging, hold it for a while until you see the green + icon next to your cursor.

This works on Tiger (10.4) and Leopard (10.5) on both PPC and Intel.

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Typography for Children

Monday, June 23rd, 2008

For a project I’m currently working on, I needed to pick a good font. Now the target audience of this project is very different from the audience of the projects I was involved with so far: It’s going to a be a website for children.

Children are just in the process of learning to read and how written words relate to sounds and spoken words. The efforts of young readers need to be supported by making sure the texts are not only easy to understand but also are set in inviting, easy-to-read typefaces.

Ilene Strizver’s article on Typography for Children on fonts.com helped me a great deal in picking the right font. And in case you’re interested, I went with Gill Sans Schoolbook (the Open Type version is called Gill Sans Infant).

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Innovation in Wine Labels

Sunday, March 30th, 2008

I just stumbled across a really innovative design idea for wine labels via Noisy Decent Graphics.

Innovative Wine Labels

If you’re at a friends place for dinner and you have a really, really nice bottle of wine, how often do you remember its name when you’re shopping for wine again? Most of us have better things to remember, anyway. Or maybe you’re a bit tipsy and won’t even remember whether it was a bottle of red or a bottle of white. Anyway, this is one of the ideas that makes you smack your head and ask yourself why you didn’t think of this

Innovative Wine Labels

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Do websites need to look exactly the same in every browser?

Tuesday, December 11th, 2007

Finally, an answer to that almost biblical question.

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Design News - All in One

Saturday, February 3rd, 2007

aetherworld.org is now a proud member of Design-Feed. Design-Feed is an online aggregator site for the most interesting design related RSS feeds on the web. What sets apart Design-Feed from other aggregator sites are the hand picked feeds. This means you can get all the latest, and best, graphics and web design news in one place, rather than browsing through hundreds of sites every day. Every post aggregated is also searchable by keyword.

Design-Feed

“Basically, it’s a one-stop shop to get all the latest web-design buzz. If you are familiar with MXNA, you can think of this as MXNA for designers”, says Felix Turner, creator of Design-Feed.

Read up on Design-Feed here.

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Redefining and Redesigning

Wednesday, December 6th, 2006

Welcome, gentle reader, to the next iteration of the aetherworld. I’ve gone slack with my personal websites once contract based work started to eat away at my time and side projects fought over the remaining scraps. Well, here I go again. I’ve found out that for me there’s nothing better than drastic changes to get me back in line. This time, however, I’m not only relauncing but also redefining, redesigning and rebooting the aetherworld.

Redefine. Or: how things should be

First registered somewhere around 2000 (if my memory serves me right), the aetherworld has almost never had a consistant purpose. At one point it was a personal link collection, then a place to try out various CSS layouts, a listing for my music collection, a place where I blogged about design and tech stuff and for the past year, it was dead. Literally.

The first logical step for me is redefining, what the aetherworld should become. I decided to turn it into a blog again, forcing me to concentrate more on content than on presentation. I want it to be a place to share my web design and web development work as well as personal thoughts on various topics.

aetherworld
aetherworld

Old aetherworld layouts

Redesign. Or: how things should look

Whenever I have a blank paper in front of me, something inside of me wants to draw, to design, to make the paper become something beautiful, something with a purpose and something pleasant to look at. A blank paper and a pencil is my greatest incentive for starting to work on a project.

The same goes for a blank website. I could have chosen to design the site in private, work on the layout till it’s perfect, and only then make the finished version go live. I chose not to. A blank and unstyled website is as much incentive to get me working as a blank paper. Every time i see the naked aetherworld, I’ll want to style it, make it better, make it look beautiful. That will be my way to give myself a kick in the ass.

Bandwagon

I thought my live design was a unique idea. That’s why I was really shocked when I saw other people doing the same. Well, so there goes novelty.

Anyway, the design process will be completely live and will take place over a longish period of time. I’m planning to be finished before January 1st though. So bear with me as I’m adding content and layout and expect things to break from time to time.

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