LittleSnapper

LittleSnapper is a new screen/web capture app with a built in browser that lets you take smart snaps of embedded web elements. Just hover over different areas in a loaded web page and page elements will highlight for you to capture. LittleSnapper will also manage your web snaps so they’re easy to find in the future.

Download LittleSnapper. It’s 39 USD. The demo limits you to 15 images.

Songbird

Songbird is an iTunes-like music jukebox app without Apple’s music store. In its place is a built in browser which lets you load up music blogs and play all the embedded mp3s without clicking on any links in the page. It probably won’t replace iTunes as your primary media management app, but it’s an excellent way to discover new music.

Download Songbird. It’s freeware.

Fluid

Fluid is an SSB or Site Specific Browser. Have some Web 2.0 sites that you visit everyday? Configure fluid to handle your browsing of these sites and your experience will feel much more like you are using a desktop application. Fluid also has a Cover Flow mode so you can preview all the links on sites like Digg or Reddit.

Download Fluid. It’s freeware.

CSSEdit

CSSEdit’s built in browser was a game changer for me. Open up any web page in CSSEdit and you can not only view its CSS – you can edit it. The browser supports live updating of all the changes you make in the style sheet so you’re never editing blindly.

Download CSSEdit. It’s 30 Euros (about 40 USD). There’s an unlimited trial with the ability to save removed.

TubeTV

TubeTV lets you search YouTube and download videos in an iTunes friendly format. It’s not the most beautiful app, but it’s probably the simplest way to get your favorite vids ready for watching on the go.

Download TubeTV. It’s freeware.

Know another application with a unique web browser implementation? Share it with us in the comments. And don’t forget to subscribe to the RSS feed to keep up the the latest and greatest on MacMembrane.

Now, whenever you hit the Edit button in iPhoto, your pic will open up in your preferred photo editing application. Want to edit multiple photos? Highlight them by dragging your cursor over them before hitting the Edit button. Lastly, once your default editor is set, you can open photos up in it by Option + double clicking. For me, that’s the fastest way to go.

Unfortunately, the talented Mr. Rask has not provided a direct download page for the icons. Instead, head over to the general download page and scroll the little preview panel at the bottom of the page until you see the speaker icon. Click on it and you’ll be able to download the icons. All of Rask’s icons are free for personal use.

Img2icns takes regular image files and converts them to .icns files, the format used by OS X for file, folder and application icons system wide. Previously, Img2icns was a one trick pony, albeit a useful one. Aside from Img2icns killer image-to-icon conversion feature, it can now set file icons, extract images from icons and even manage your conversion history. Here’s a detailed look at what Shiny Frog’s new release can do.

Set the Icon For a File, Folder or App from Any Image

Img2icns’ killer feature has always been its ability to instantly convert an image or picture into an icon. Icons in OS X have a unique .icns extension and are formatted such that they contain samples of various sizes. If you want to use one of your pics as a icon for an often used file, you’ll first need to convert it to .icns format to do so. Search the web and you’ll find a few somewhat complicated Photoshop tutorials on how to create .icns files for OS X, but with Img2icns you need only drag your pic onto the drop zone and Boom, as they say, you’ve got your icon. If you’ve got a bunch of pics to convert, drag them all onto the app to convert the lot of them in a single click. As an added bonus, Img2icns now supports raw Photoshop files as well, so there’s no need to save out your work in a different format before creating an icon.

But why make an icon if not to customize a file, folder or app? Just drag your chosen file onto Img2icns and the app will do the work for you. No messing around with the Get Info window or other complicated steps to follow. Before the update, Img2icns was the easiest way to create icons for your Mac. With version 1.0, it’s now the easiest way to set them as well.

Batch Extract Images from Application and File Icons

Completely new in Img2icns 1.0 is the ability to create images from icons, which is a real seller for Mac bloggers like myself. Previously I published a little AppleScript to dig into the Resources package of an application and open its icon up in Preview. It’s a convoluted process, to say the least. With the new Img2icns that process again becomes a simple drag and drop affair. Open up your Applications folder and drop an app onto Img2icns or its dock icon. Img2icns will extract your icon and give you the option of exporting it to PNG, TIFF or GIF format, all of which will preserve any transparency in the icon.

Sometimes for MacMembrane I write up a number of applications for a single post and thus I need app icons for multiple apps. This laborious process makes me quite excited about one of the new features of Img2icns: batch conversion of icons to images. Select a bunch of apps in Finder and drop them onto Img2icns. With one click you can export the entire batch as PNG, TIFF or GIF files. After playing with the app for only a few minutes I realized the amazing time saving potential of this feature.

Manage Your Icons with the Built in History Browser

Currently I have a single folder where I store all of the icons that I make or extract for easy access should I need them down the line. The new Img2icns now has a convenient history feature that might make my primitive filing system a thing of the past. All of your icons are stored in a folder in ~/Library/Application Support/Img2icns (where ~ is your home folder), but a pop-up HUD history browser built into the app will make ever visiting it unnecessary. You can export any or all of your icons directly from the history panel or drag them back on to the app to use them as file or folder icons again. Double clicking on any icon in your history will open it up in Preview, or you can drag it out of the pane and onto your desktop if you prefer. The history panel is very convenient and will keep you from losing track of your work.

Some Bonuses and Caveats: Favicons, iPhone Icons and Interface Elegance

Img2icns will also export images at the size and format necessary for use as favicons on websites or for use as bookmarked iPhone icons. For both exports you will need to rename your resulting files favicon.ico and apple-touch-icon.png respectively before they can be dropped in the root directory of your website, but other than that your exports are ready for use. It would be nice if a future update automated this small process as well.

Unfortunately, Img2icns does not have any AppleScript support, which is a shame given the app’s in built potential to both convert and manage icons. Hopefully the developer will add scripting support in a future update.

On a final note I’d like to mention just how far the app has come in terms of aesthetics. Previously, it would be hard to claim that Img2icns was a beautiful application. The app did have a cool icon, but it was by no means a professional offering, and the app’s UI was little more than a drop target on a grey background. With the new release Shiny Frog has really invested in the design of the app and it’s paid off – the whole experience is quite beautiful. From the contemporary grunge of the main UI to the smooth animations that accompany your actions and even the app’s download page, Img2icns has graduated from a simple but useful side-project into a serious contender.

Download Img2icns from Shiny Frog software. A basic version, which lets you convert and set icons, is available for free. A full license is 12.90 USD and unlocks all of the new features of the app.

* Press Return to take a photo

For the longest time I didn’t know this…

* Hold down Shift to surpress the flash

Is it just me, or is Photo Booth’s flash excessively powerful?

* Hold Option to dispense with the count down

Sometimes you just cant wait…

* Flip photos horizontally with Command + F

Photo Booth is like a mirror. Sometimes I hold up a hand written ‘Happy Birthday’ sign in a photo and the text is backward. Command + F flips it right side ’round.

If you know any other Photo Booth shortcuts let me know in the comments. Hopefully you’re having as much fun snapping pics as I am.

Use CompFight to Search Flickr

CompFight does away with Flickr’s stingy 10 search results page and replaces it with browser wide thumbnail results based on your keywords. It also let’s you add Creative Commons/Commercial paramarers to your search. I leave these on so that my results are narrowed to only images that I can use on my blog without violating copyright.

Search CompFight from MarsEdit using AppleScript

As I said, I use CompFight to search images for my blog, and when I’m writing for my blog I’m in MarsEdit. Here is an AppleScript to take the selected text from a MarsEdit and search CompFight for CC images.

tell application "MarsEdit"
	activate
	try
		set needImg to selected text in document 1
	end try
end tell

try
	if needImg is equal to "" then
		activate me
		try
			set needImg to text returned of ¬
				(display dialog "Enter keywords to search CompFight:" with title ¬
					"Nothing Selected" default answer "" buttons ¬
					{"No Thanks", "Search"} default button 2)
		end try

		my addSyntax(needImg)

	else

		my addSyntax(needImg)

	end if
end try

on addSyntax(needImg)
	if needImg is not "" then
		set AppleScript's text item delimiters to " "
		set theTextItems to text items of needImg
		set AppleScript's text item delimiters to "%20"
		set needImg to theTextItems as string
		set AppleScript's text item delimiters to {""}
		open location "http://www.compfight.com/#search_type=tags&query=" & ¬
			needImg & ¬
			"&commit=Search&license=1%2C2%2C3%2C4%2C5%2C6&original=1&safe_search=3"
	end if
end addSyntax

How to Use the Script

Copy and paste the above code into Script Editor (in Applications >> AppleScript) and save it to your scripts folder. Select some text in MarsEdit and run the script. A new browser window will open with your search terms pre-populated. Because the script adds the CC parameters to your search, any image you see should be usable on your blog.

It isn’t the most complicated script in the world, but it does eliminate a few steps when searching for blog images, and eliminating simple but repetitive tasks is what AppleScript is all about.

Need some more MarsEdit AppleScripts and tricks? Try 2 AppleScripts to Simplify Your MarsEdit Workflow and MarsEdit Breaks it’s Silence with Sent to Weblog Sound. And don’t forget to Subscribe to MacMembrane.

Download Missing Album Artwork from the iTunes

Cover Flow may not be the most useful iTunes view, but it certainly looks awesome. Every track or album that you buy on the iTunes store includes album artwork to make sure it looks great when you flip to it in Cover Flow. But if you’re like most people and a good portion of your music has been imported from CDs or some other source, you may suffer from significant visual gaps in your library when scrolling through Cover Flow. When this happens Cover Flow’s effect is ruined.

Happily, Apple has added to iTunes the ability to automatically download artwork for music in your library even if of wasn’t purchased from the iTunes store. To add the missing covers, first make sure that you’re signed in to your iTunes account. Go to the Advanced menu and select Get Album Artwork. iTunes will scan your library for tracks with missing artwork and add it for you automatically. After it’s finished (it can take a bit of time if your library is large) you’ll see a big improvement when using Cover Flow view.

iTunes’ Get Album Artwork feature is great, but if you’ve modified any of your track or album names in your library, iTunes likely won’t find the correct artwork. To finish the job, you’ll have to roll up your sleeves and add the missing artwork by hand.

Gather Artless Songs into a Playlist

But before you begin, it may be a good idea to size up the magnitude of the task. The best way to do this is to gather all of the songs and albums without cover art into a playlist. And the easiest way to to that is with the help of one of Doug’s AppleScript’s for iTunes.

Doug’s Tracks without Artwork to Playlist script combs your library for faceless albums and creates a playlist with the results. If your library is large, this will take some time, and unfortunately the script doesn’t give you much in the way of status updates, but be assured that it is doing its job and in a few minutes (or 10) you’ll have all your blank albums in one spot.

Once you’ve rounded up all your coverless albums, you can use a few more scripts to search the net for your covers. Try some more of Doug’s scripts for this:

• Search CD Universe for Album Art
• Sloth Radio for Artwork
• MusicOutfitter for Artwork
• Find Album Artwork with Google Image Search

For each of the above scripts, simply select a song in iTunes with no art and run the scrip and a new Safari window will open with your missing art. Adding the art to iTunes is easy: select the correct artless songs and then drag the artwork from Safari onto the aptly named ‘Drag Album Artwork Here’ drop panel in the bottom left corner of iTunes.

Amazon Album Art Widget

Adding album art by hand is certainly no picnic whatever way you look at it. An alternative route to AppleScripts is with the excellent Amazon Album Art widget. In my experience, this is the most convenient way to get the job done quickly.

Download the widget and install it in the daahboard by double clicking the file. Select an album in iTunes with no cover art, open Dashboard and click the little iTunes icon in the Amazon Album Art widget. Your album’s information will automatically populate the search field and send a request up to Amazon for the artwork. To add the art to iTunes, simply click the Set As Album Art in iTunes button and the widget will add it for you to the selected tracks. It’s quick and satisfying.

Fix Unsightly Track Titles with Automator

By now your music library should be looking great. Here’s a final trick to make it look its best.

Occasionally when importing tracks into iTunes, track names will inexplicably show up in ALL CAPITAL LETTERS. If this bothers you as much as it does me (i.e., a lot) use this simple Automator action to rewrite them in a more sane fashion.

Open up Automator (in Applications >> Automator) and drag the two actions from the source list (you can filter the list by typing a few characters into the search box). Select the deviantly named tracks in iTunes and run the action from within Automator. Automator will capitalize the first letter of each word and set the rest to lower case.

Adding artwork to your iTunes library can be a daunting task. Nevertheless, as Apple continues to focus on the visual elements of your media library, the steps described above will have your iTunes library looking beautiful when its time to show it off to friends.

A quick solution I’ve found to greatly reduce this occurrence is to set the background color of Preview to that of my blog. This way, if some unremoved piece of background doesn’t appear against the grey background of Preview but will when seen against the background of MacMembrane, I’ll know it and save myself some hassle. Setting it up is easy.

First open up your blog in Safari. Open Preview and open its preferences by hitting Cmd + , (comma) or select Preferences from the application menu. Under the General tab click on the Window Background sample and OS X’s ubiquitous color picker will pop up. Click on the magnifying glass and then on the background of your blog in Safari. Now Preview will give you an accurate representation of alpha images as they will appear once posted.

Preview is one of those smallish apps included with OS X that packs much more power than it initially lets on. For simple tasks, the speed of Preview can’t be beat. I hope this small tweak helps you out.

In a previous post, I wrote up 10 shareware apps that I think most Mac users would benefit from knowing about. To dress up the post, I wanted to display each application’s icon beside its write up. I’ve written about how to create and change your own application icons, and the process of extracting icons for publishing on the web isn’t much different. Here’s how I do it.

Step one is to open up your Applications folder and select the app whose icon you want to extract. Open the information window for the app (press Command + I or choose “Get Info” from the File menu). Click once on the app’s icon in the upper left corner of the info pane and a light blue glow will surround it (signifying that it has been selected – see right). Copy the icon to the clipboard.

Once your icon is in the clipboard, open up Preview. Now press Command + N (or select ‘New From Clipboard’ from the File menu) and your icon will open up in a new window.

Icons in OS X are a special .icn format. Each .icn file is made up of several .tiff files scaled to various sizes (this is so that no matter how big you view an application’s icon – up to 512 pixels – it will remain crisp). Since .tiff files are spottily supported by web browsers, it’s best to convert the image to png format. In the right panel, select the icon which is closest in size to the image you would like to use for the web and select ‘Save as…’ from the File menu (alternatively, press Command + Shift + S). Rename the image and select PNG from the drop down save menu. Simple as that you have your icon on a transparent background ready for use on your site.

Automating the Process with AppleScript

If you need to grab a number of app icons, then above method can quickly become tedious. Select app, get info, highlight icon, copy icon, close info window, launch preview, create new document… I’ve written a small script that automates this process in the majority of cases:

tell application "Finder"
	activate
	try
		set theApp to selection as alias
		set theIcons to name of every item of folder ¬
			((theApp as string) & "Contents:Resources:") ¬
				whose name ends with ".icns"
		set iconNum to number of items in theIcons
		if iconNum is less than 5 then
			repeat with eachIcon in theIcons
				open ((theApp as string) & ¬
					"Contents:Resources:" & eachIcon)
			end repeat
		else
			open information window of theApp
		end if
	on error
		activate me
		display dialog "Something went wrong.¬
		 Make sure an application is selected in¬
		  Finder." with icon 2
	end try
end tell

This script queries the hidden Resources package buried in AppName/Contents/Resources (if you want to have a look around in here, right click on an app icon and select “Show Package Contents” from the contextual menu). This is where the application’s icon is stored. The script returns all the files that end in “.icns.” If the number of .icns files is less than 4, the script will open them up in Preview. From here, just select the one you want and save it as a PNG. On the other hand, if the script finds more than 4 icons, it will open the Information Window for the application and you can extract the icon manually using method outlined above.

4 is an arbitrary number – you can set it to whatever you want. But setting some number is necessary to stop applications which have 100+ icons from flooding your screen with Preview windows (I learned this the hard way). Apps that will do this are the ones that can open a large number of file types and include a distinct icon for each of them. Setting a limit number, whatever it is, will save you from a headache if you run the script on an application with too many .icns files.

Make the Script Even More Useful

I run the majority of my scripts from the script launcher FastScripts, but I decided that the most useful place for this one would be imbedded in Finder’s toolbar. To accomplish this, select “Application” from the Format menu when saving your script. Once you have it saved, open a finder window, right click on the toolbar and select “Customize Toolbar…” Now drag your AppleScript application to the toolbar and click “Done.” From now on, any application’s icon is just a click away.

As you’ll notice in the screenshot above, I added an icon I made to the script itself so that it looks good in the toolbar (and I can tell what it is). It’s pictured to the left – nice, soothing Helvetica! You can download the .icns file and use it for your Open Icon application if you like. (To change an app’s icon, paste your new icon onto its Information Window icon. If you’re not sure how to set application or file icons, this post goes into the process in some detail.)

That’s all for now. I hope this little script helps you out.