With that version Apple focuses to the average user with functions like trimming and uploading videos to Youtube. This may look simple, but beware that cutting and converting has to be done before the upload can begin and now it runs totally by itself without your interactivity.

Trimming was possible in the former versions, too, but not as easy as it is right now. Apple kindly kept the older Quicktime 7 Player and moved it into the /Applications/Utilities/ folder. If it is not there for you, you may reinstall it from your Snow Leopard DVD.

I am lucky about that, because there are some mighty features I absolutely do not want to miss like exporting with tons of options and different playback speeds.

What do you think about the new Quicktime player and do you still use the “old” one?

Image sources: Integrated Application icons by Apple.

To verify it does not depend on my firewall configuration I have tried doing the same on Windows using Total Commander as FTP client. That has worked instantly without any issues and delays. From my former times on the glassy operating system I remembered on the free available cross platform FTP client FileZilla, so I decided to test it on my Mac. And the result is very positive.

FileZilla

FileZilla‘s user interface is very well designed and gives many quick information of all the data I need. The feel of speed is awesome. It supports all today neccessary transfer standards and the preferences provide tons of settings in a tree organized view.

The most important thing for me of course is, that it does the thing what the Cyberduck still does not do the job even with comparing all combination of settings.

One primary functionality I do expect from a FTP client is to be able to use a custom editor to directly edit a remote file. I am very lucky that FileZilla does me that favour using my prefered programming and text editor (currently Smultron).

But when saving a remote file you need to go back to FileZilla to get it uploaded. That is no big deal, but an annoying message box is coming up recognizing that a file has changed. Of course it changed, and I want it to be uploaded. On no account I do not want to confirm that box, so I searched through the preferences. There is nothing and the official FileZilla forum does confirm that!

It has been filed, that there should be option for beeing able to auto-confirm that. The only way until now to get rid off it is to compile the source code with modification. So I did! That was quite horrible, because lot of errors occured during the makefile, but I hit the ground running.

Download the modified FileZilla client 3.2.4 without that always nerving message box compiled on OSX 10.5.6. I would be pleased, when you leave a short comment when downloading to appreciate all the time on spending getting it work. Just unzip after download and move to your Application folder. Thank you!

A very good helper is the PathFinder application, because it can count all directory size contents even recursively and you can sort by size or any other properties. So you will find large files very quick. But this can take much time and needs a lot of attention not to remove files, which should not be removed.

When surfing I found a free application called GrandPerspective which scans a folder or drive you have specified for sizes and then displays a graphical block view.

Grand Perspective

You can point with the mouse over the blocks and you see details like file size, file name and which directory it is. Files and directories are grouped by colors, so that you see at the first glance what belongs together. With the context menu you even can reveal the directory in the finder, so that you can delete the files or directories from every level. A rescan function is also included, so that you can compare the before and after version. Scanning is really fast, so that you even could scan the root of any mass storage device.

Cyberduck FTP client

Cyberduck is one of the greatest and most powerful FTP (file transfer protocol) application I have ever seen.

It is full of features and supports all important and commonly used standards like SFTP, WebDav, MobileMe, S3 Amazon and Mosso Cloud.

This easy to use FTP client enables you to manage a huge amount of connections by a bookmark manager.

With drag and drop it is so easy to download and upload files or directories. If a large transfer broke down, you may resume and do need to shift all data, again. Of course, you are even able to overwrite the old files and directories.

For quick web-development I love to edit files instantly on the server. Cyberduck enables you to open any file with any installed editor and when you save it, it will automatically be uploaded, even if the editor has absolutely no FTP capability.

In former times I was used to take TextWrangler, which is really powerful, but anyhow I do not feel home with it and now I am now using Smultron.

Another cool feature is to make duplicates of selected files and folders. This creates a copy and renames the new ones with the current datestamp added. With that you can try changing files, but still keeps a copy of the original.

If you need doing backups, the syncronization feature will help you out. It compares the local data against the server side stored files and syncronizes them in the direction you prefer. That is useful if there is a large data amount and only some things changed. Only the changes are transfered and may save you tons of traffic and time.

Xcode installation

Directly with the OS X of your Mac you have a quite big bunch of nice and powerful tools delivered on your installation DVD.

They are not put on your Mac automatically, because they are designed to be developer tools.

To get them running, just insert your Tiger, Leopard (or in future Snow Leopard) installation DVD. Then go to “optional installs” and afterwards to “Xcode Tools”. Install the package or anything else you would need.

Here is a list of the most useful delivered utilities:

• Accessibility Inspector
• Accessibility Verifier
• Applet Launcher
• AU Lab
• AULabHelp
• BigTop
• Bluetooth Explorer
• Buildlet
• Clipboard Viewer
• Core Image Fun House
• CrashReporterPrefs
• Dashcode
• FileMerge
• HALLab
• Help Indexer
• Icon Composer
• Instruments
• Interface Builder
• IORegistryExplorer
• iSync Plug-in Maker
• Jar Bundler
• MallocDebug
• OpenGL Driver Monitor
• OpenGL Profiler
• OpenGL Shader Builder
• PackageMaker
• PacketLogger
• Pixie
• Property List Editor
• Quartz Composer
• Quartz Composer Visualizer
• Quartz Debug
• Quartz Debug
• Repeat After Me
• Shark
• SleepX
• Spin Control
• SRLanguageModeler
• Syncrospector
• Thread Viewer
• USB Prober
• Xcode
• ZoneMonitor

The tools are really tiny and do what their names say. It is really worth to have a glance at. So take a little time and install them. The complete thing including documentation and developer IDE will eat about 2,5 GB of disk space.

I will write some blog articles of my favourite tools from that list, soon.

Drop a comment of what application you like at most or what you are generally thinking about the Xcode tools.

Quick access Desktop in Finder

In any file dialog box of the OS X you have all your favourites in left pane. They are really useful to quick access favourite places on your computer.

The current things I am working on, are organized on my desktop. So inside a file dialog box, I just click the sidebar and click on desktop to go to there.

But, mostly I am using the keyboard, especially when I am working on the MacBook and using the trackpad. Also, keyboard strokes are still quicker for a fast typer than pushing the mouse around.

Just hit Command+D when a file dialog box is open and the desktop folder will become the active directory.

Dropbox in Finder

Sharing files is quite cool if it is easy. There are many ways to achive that, for example by a messenger, mail, FTP and so on.

But often the average user does simply not get along with these techniques, because the setup can be complicated and the use of them, too. The first complication often ends in getting the IP-Address.

On a Mac you have the iDisk, which is a good solution, but unfortunately Apple takes some money for the MobileMe service. Dropbox does the same as the iDisk, but without any costs. Additionally, you get versions for Mac and Windows.

A very good free alternative is the Dropbox freeware application. It is available for Mac and Windows. You just need to sign up an account on their homepage. With that account you always can access the web interface to manage your folders and access rules.

You have public and shared folders. Just invite the people with the web interface by email and share files or complete folders with them. You get a free storage space of 2 GB.

The sharing does either work with uploading them on web interface or by drag and drop in the finder. Your disk panel does then have an extra entry for the DropBox.

Because I am as lazy as most people, I do not want to type much. The console helps you out a lot with that. Just type the first letters and hit tab to autocomplete the name.

But what, if you did a download and want to run a included script from the extracted directory? Then you have to use the cd command (change directory) for every directory as long as you reached the target path. Use the magic and just type “cd ” (with a blank after cd). Next, drop the little folder icon from the finder’s window title bar to the console window to have the full path in the terminal session.

Terminal with drag and drop

It is seemlessly integrated into the finder. You also can activate it by clicking a single or multiple icons on the desktop or in finder and just click space. It will open a transparent Quicklook.

But did you ever tried that with an archive or a folder? That’s not good. You just see a big icon and it does not make much sense. You can easily extend Quicklook with plugins, then it looks like this showing the content:

Folder contents within Quicklook

Just download the Extension for Archives and for Folders. Then unzip them and copy the containing qlgenerator files into ~/Library/Quicklook (the MacintoshHD, not user directory!). To let Finder know about that you can “relaunch” it by holding Option and left click the finder icon.