Chapter 17. Hacking Mac OS X

Chapter 17. Hacking Mac OS X Section 4.5.1 shows you how to customize your desktop picture, error beep, and screen saver. But if youre sneaky, creative, or just different, you can perform more dramatic visual and behavioral surgery on your copy of Mac OS X
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Chapter 17. Hacking Mac OS XChapter 17. Hacking Mac OS XSection 4.5.1 shows you how to customize your desktop picture, error beep, and screensaver. But if youre sneaky, creative, or just different, you can perform more dramaticvisual and behavioral surgery on your copy of Mac OS X—from changing the start upscreen image to replacing the poof that appears when you drag something off the Dockwith a new animation of your own. All you need is a few of Mac OS Xs less obvioustools, or some free downloadable customizing software, and a few recipes like the ones inthis chapter.Some of these tricks are frivolous. Some are functional and useful. And although Applesanctions not a one, all are perfectly safe.17.1. TinkerTool: Customization 101If you poke around the Mac OS X Web sites and news groups long enough, youll findlittle bits of Unix code being passed around. One of them purports to let you change thegenie animation that you see when you minimize a window to the Dock. Anothereliminates the drop shadow behind icon names on your desktop. Yet another lets youchange the transparency of the Terminal window (Chapter 16)—a cool, although notespecially practical, effect.If you really want to fool around with these bits of Unix code, go for it. You can findmost of these tidbits at Web sites like www.macosxhints.com.But the truth is, theres no good reason for you to subject yourself to the painstakingeffort of typing out Unix commands when easy-to-use, push-button programs areavailable to do the same thing.TinkerTool, for example, is a free utility that offers an amazing degree of control over thefonts, desktop, Dock, scroll bar arrows, and other aspects of the Mac OS X environment.Here are some of the highlights: • Kill the animations. When you open any icon, expand a Get Info panel, and so on, you see little animated expansion effects. Its nice, but it takes time. TinkerTool can turn them off (see Figure 17-1). Figure 17-1. TinkerTool is a doubleclickable program that makes changes only to your account settings. (Mercifully, its free. You can get it from this books Missing CD page at www.missingmanuals.com.) • Dock. TinkerTool lets you give hidden programs transparent icons on the Dock and specify the Docks position on the screen—left, right, bottom, or top—and even whether its centered or flush against one corner. TinkerTool also unlocks a third option for the animation of windows collapsing onto the Dock. In addition to the standard Mac OS X choices (Genie and Scale), you also get something called Suck In (no comment). Tip: TinkerTool can even turn off the glassy, 3-D look of the Leopard Dock, which isnt universally adored. • Scroll bars. TinkerTool gives you greater control over the placement of Mac OS Xs scroll bar arrows—together at one end of the scroll bar, duplicated at both ends of the scroll bar, and so on. • Visibility. TinkerTool can make the thousands of invisible Unix files appear as full-blooded icons. (Power users, you know who you are.) • Fonts. Tinker Tool lets you change the fonts for dialog boxes, menus, title bars, help balloons, and so on.Whats terrific about TinkerTool is that its completely safe. Its nothing more than a frontend for a number of perfectly legitimate Unix settings that Apple simply opted to makeunavailable in the regular Finder. Furthermore, the changes you make using TinkerToolare stored in your own Home Library folder—that is, they affect only your account.Whatever changes you make dont affect the Mac experience for anyone else using yourmachine. And TinkerTools Reset pane makes it easy to restore everything back to theway it was before you started fooling around.