Easily download files from URLs on your Mac

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Quickly download files from URLs | Mac OS X | Mac OS X Hints

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Source: macworld.com

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Using this tip, you will be able to create a service on OS X that will enable you to highlight a URL to download and use your new service to download it without opening any other application.

Let's say a friend sent you a link to an app or an MP3 file, and you just want to download the thing.
Normally, you'd copy the URL, open your browser, and paste the URL into the address bar. In some browsers, you'd even need to paste the URL into the address field, hit Enter, wait until the file loads, and then save it.
From the list of templates, select Service.
At the top right of the window, set the service to receive selected URLs in any application.
Then, in the Internet group of actions, double-click on Download URLs.
That will add it to the editing window on the right.
By default, it will download URLs to your Downloads folder; if you wish them to go somewhere else, select that other location from the Where drop-down.
Save the service and give it a name, such as Download Selected URL.
Now, in any app that supports services, find the URL of a downloadable file (or, for the purposes of testing, any URL at all) and select it with your cursor. Open the Services submenu from the application menu and select Download Selected URL from the list. (Or right-click on the selected URL and choose the service from the context menu’s Services section.)
The file connected to the selected URL should download to your selected folder.
If it's especially large, you'll see a spinning cogwheel on the right side of the menubar while the service is running; clicking on that will open a menu where you can cancel the download if you wish.
When the download is done, check the destination folder; your file should be there.
You can make this quicker by assigning a keyboard shortcut to your service: Open System Preferences and select the Keyboard preference pane.
In the Keyboard Shortcuts tab, select Services from the list to the left.
Find Download Selected URL in the list on the right and double-click to its right.
You can then enter a keyboard shortcut - Control-Command-D, perhaps - to assign it to your service.

Concepts:

Mac, download, app, Macworld, Prices, selected URL, accessories, keyboard, Customer Service, Publishing, Cameras, business, ipod, Leopard, Internet

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Source: macworld.com

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By Dan Frakes, Macworld.com - December 2, 2010

Quickly Create A New Document In The Current Folder With Neu 1.0.1

Windows has at least one feature I'd love to see OS X appropriate: the capability to quickly create a new document right in the current folder

A common feature request I get - often from Windows users switching to the Mac, but also from long-time Mac users - is for a way to more-quickly create a new file in the Finder.

This can be very convenient - after all, when you create a new document, chances are you already know where you're going to put it and, in fact, that folder is often already open.

This Windows feature is certainly a more-convenient process than the traditional Mac OS alternative: switching to the appropriate program; creating a new document; choosing the Save command; navigating in the Save dialog to the desired folder; and clicking the Save button.

Because of this convenience, two of my all-time favorite Mac Gems have been NuFile and Document Palette, which offer a contextual menu or an onscreen palette, respectively, for creating a new document in the active Finder window. Sadly, NuFile stopped working as of Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6), with no update in sight, and Document Palette seems to have gone the way of the dodo. (Document Palette actually works perfectly under Snow Leopard; it's just no longer available for downloading.)

So I was more than a little excited to discover Neu, a Snow Leopard-compatible - nay, Snow Leopard-only - utility that combines the best features of NuFile and Document Palette, as well as a few new ones, in one program.

Neu's menu-bar document chooser With Neu running, whenever you're working in a Finder window, you can use Neu in one of five ways to create a new document:

• Neu's systemwide menu-bar menu,
• Neu's Dock menu,
• the Finder's Services submenu (in the Finder menu),
• the Finder's contextual menus, or
• either of two configurable keyboard shortcuts.

Whichever approach you use, Neu offers two commands: Create Document and Create And Open Document. The former simply creates a new document in the active Finder window; the latter creates the document and then automatically opens it in the appropriate program.

When you use one of Neu's menus to create a new document, the command's submenu displays a list of available templates - choose one to create a document based on that template.

When using Neu's keyboard shortcuts, Neu displays, depending on your settings, either a text list or an icon grid of template options.

Neu's list-view document chooser Neu offers a number of useful options. For example, you can choose to hide Neu's Dock menu or systemwide menu-bar menu, and you can opt to have Neu prompt you to name each new document, using a traditional Save dialog, on the fly.
For advanced users, Neu offers an interesting feature for automatically substituting template text with dynamic data.

For example, by using the correct syntax in your templates, you can have Neu automatically replace variables with, for example, your username, the path to the new file, the date and time the new file was created, and which template was used to create it.

Because of a the way Finder Services work, Neu's Services options appear in the Finder menu only if you first select a file in the active Finder window. Similarly, the contextual-menu commands appear only if you right-click (control-click) on an existing file or folder in the window.

For example, I wish you could customize the order in which templates appear in Neu's grid and list views and its menus.

(Note that if Neu's options don't appear in the Services submenu of the Finder menu or within contextual menus, you may need to manually enable those services in the Keyboard pane of System Preferences.)

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Ten quick Calculator tricks on a Mac

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Ten quick Calculator tricks

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by Sharon Zardetto, Macworld.com

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Here's how to get the most out of Apple's built-in tool

The lowly Calculator sits there in your Applications folder. It’s so unassuming you barely notice that it has menus and little interface details that make it not quite so lowly after all. These tips work for the Basic calculator. Many also work for the Scientific and Programmer versions available through the Calculator’s View menu.

1. Copy and paste numbers

Need to include a quick calculation in an e-mail message? Because you can’t select anything in the Calculator display, it’s easy to forget you can still use Copy and Paste commands with it. The Copy command (Command-C or Edit -> Copy) always grabs the currently displayed number and places it on the Clipboard so you can use it elsewhere. And, if you’ve copied a number from someplace else, just use Paste (Command-V or Edit -> Paste) when the Calculator’s open to insert the number in the Calculator field. (Many OS versions ago, you could paste in a calculation like 17*34, and it would appear in Calculator as if you had clicked those keys; now that calculation pastes in as the number 1734.)

2. Pick your precision

If kiwis are selling 3 for $5, does one of them cost $1.66667? When you don’t need 15-decimal place precision, use the View menu’s Decimal Places submenu to specify how many digits you want displayed. The displayed number is rounded, not truncated, so 1.66667 becomes 1.67. The actual number is stored internally, however, so you can continue with a calculation that uses the true number instead of the rounded one.

3. Convert units of measure

You may never have to convert hectares to acres, or inches of mercury to pounds per square inch, but the Convert menu provides more mundane changes, too. For example, use it to convert metric units to any of the stubbornly held standard measurements the U.S. uses. Enter a number (or work with the one already there from a calculation) and then choose a category from the menu—Length, for example. Use the pop-up menus in the sheet that appears to specify what you’re converting to and from. The Calculator displays the answer in the chosen units.

4. Repeat the last calculation

With the Calculator’s hidden “repeat the last operation” function, it’s a cinch to compute something like short-term compound interest. Start with 1200 dollars times 1.06 for the first year’s 6 percent return and you get 1272. Just hit Return again, and the number is multiplied by 1.06 again; another press of Return gives you the third-year total of 1429.22.

Alternatively, you can enter numbers in between the repeated operation. So, after the first calculation is done, you can enter 1500 and press Return to get that number multiplied by 1.06.

5. Use the paper tape

The paper tape window not only serves as a quick reference, it can also be printed or saved. This shows the result of the special “repeat last” function, which uses repeated clicks of the equal sign (=) key to perform the same operation—*1.06 was entered only once.

The Window -> Show Paper Tape command opens a small window that shows each of your calculations as soon as you press Return or click on the equal sign (=) key. This lets you check for incorrectly entered numbers. If you realize you want to see your history only after the fact, no problem: Any time you open the paper tape, you’ll see everything you’ve done since you opened the Calculator for the current number-crunching session. If you need a copy of the paper tape, choose File -> Save Tape As or File -> Print Tape. You can also select any part of its display and copy out the information.

6. Store a number

You’re figuring out the cost of tiling the kitchen, with and without the pantry closet, and maybe the back hallway, too. You don’t have to re-enter the $6.47-per-square-foot cost of the tile for the three different calculations.

Enter 6.47 and press M+ to put it into memory. Then, calculate the cost of each area’s tile by multiplying the square footage by the stored tile price, retrieved with a press of the Memory Recall (MR) button. Enter 14*16*MR for one cost, 6*7*MR for the next, and 2.5*3.5*MR for the last.

7. Delete a digit

If you type or click the wrong number, there’s no need to clear everything by clicking on Calculator’s C (for “clear”) key or pressing C on your keyboard. (If you have a full Apple keyboard, you can also use the key labeled Clear.) Press Delete on your keyboard to erase the last digit you entered; press it multiple times to continue erasing digits. (The Forward Delete key doesn’t work for this.)

8. Quickly switch calculators

Click on the Calculator’s Zoom button (the green one of the three buttons in the upper left of its window) to cycle through the three kinds of calculators—Basic, Scientific, and Programmer—instead of using the commands in the View menu.

Normal Calculator

9. Easily change a mistake

If you enter the wrong operator by mistake—pressing the plus sign (+), say, instead of the minus sign (-)—just press the correct one next. Calculator will ignore the first operator.

10. Specify a negative number

Normally, you can’t calculate 4 multiplied by negative 5, because 4*-5 is assumed to be a typo and is treated as 4-5. But you can reverse the “negativity” of a number you just entered by clicking on the Calculator’s plus-or-minus key. (It’s the key with a plus sign on top of a minus sign. You'll find it to the right of the C key.) So, press 4*5 and then, while the 5 is displayed, click on the plus-or-minus key to make it negative. Press Return to see the answer: -20.

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Sharon Zardetto is a long-time Mac author who remembers keeping a calculator in her desk drawer until the Mac introduced the software-based version in 1984. She posted an interesting, though admittedly not very useful, Calculator tip on her MacTipster blog.

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