Many writers prefer a simple text editor sans the frills. Something like a Notepad or writing tools which are generically called ‘minimalist text editors’. I relate them to a horse’s blinker. They serve their utility in that they cut off all distraction between the writer’s eye and his words on the screen.

I wrote my first sentences on MS Word and have always liked its power. Even with all its options, maybe one could make it ape a ‘minimalist text editor’.

The idea…

The idea then, is to simulate a minimalist text editor like Darkroom with a black background, a contrasting font color and an ‘easy on the eyes’ font face. To get the complete real estate for writing and to do away with the distractions, its full-screen view minus MS Word 2007’s ribbon and the Windows Taskbar. But, with the spellchecker and the mini-formatting toolbar remaining in action.

The hack…

1. Start up MS Word 2007. Create a blank document from Office button – New – Blank Document.
2. Change the layout of the page to Web Layout. This can be done from View – Web Layout. Alternatively, from the layout buttons located on the bottom right of Word’s status bar.
3. Set the page color to black for one part of the high contrast effect. Click on Page Layout – Page Color.
4. The other part involves setting up a high contrast font. On the Home tab select the Normal style. Right click and choose Modify…
5. In the Modify Style box, change the font face to Lucida Console and the font color to green (or any other cool color you are comfortable with). You can also set other options like spacing and indents.
6. Save as a Word Template from the Office button – Save As – Word Template.

To view our template in full screen now, we have to follow two steps:

1. Click the Office Button – Word Options – Customize. Select Commands Not in the Ribbon from the drop-down on the left. Scroll down the alphabetical list to select Toggle Full Screen View, and click the Add button to include it in the Customize Quick Access Toolbar column on the right.

   The Quick Access Toolbar is the small set of icons you see just above the Office ribbon next to the Office Button.

   

2. The Windows taskbar is now the only leftover against a full screen view. Right click on the Windows taskbar – click Properties – select Auto-hide the taskbar. The Windows taskbar remains offscreen unless we move the mouse near the bottom edge of the screen.

That’s it! When you want to write in your own ‘darkroom’, just click on the template, switch on the full screen view from the Quick Access toolbar and tap into your creativity. [To exit full screen view, press the Esc key on your keyboard.]

There are simple ways to do some things for which we often rely on additional downloads. I hope this is one of them. Put on your writer’s cap and try out your new writing canvas. And of course, type in your comments or suggestions.

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1. Organize your Mac

Having a cluttered workspace takes up precious time when you’re trying to find certain documents which you might have misplaced. The first step in using your time wisely to do work is organization – knowing where everything goes. There are several ways to accomplish this.

I’ve seen some desktops with over a hundred files on it. Some people like to show how busy they are by leaving all their documents right where others can see them. A messy desktop can only be more time consuming when you’re trying to figure out which was the last file you were working on, a hassle to look for a certain file and will only increase the tendency to accidentally move things about (especially into Trash). Also, clearing your desktop will indirectly clear your mind psychologically, so you’ll probably think better. For instance, check out the screenshot below.

2. Organizing files into folders and labeling

Most of my important document files are in my Documents folder and within that folder, there are about twenty sub folders. Each one has got a very clear title to describe their content. And since I have so many folders, I add color labels to the ones which I frequently open, so that my eyes zone into them before I know it.

But the thing is, you may have folders within those sub folders. And sometimes it may even be several folders deep before you reach the file you want, making it more of a hassle to get to. Another problem is, not all files can be distributed to only one folder. For instance, if I have a PDF file about Multiple Sclerosis (i am a med-student), it could go into my PDFs folder and also my Medicine folder. In order to tackle this problem, I use tags.

3. Tagging made easy with Punakae

The idea of tagging is to add one or several keywords to a file, making it easier to find files relating to those keywords. It may sound like a hassle to tag every file you have, but trust me it’s easier than it sounds, and more rewarding. Tags can essentially eliminate having multiple folders since files can be found much easier this way. This idea of tagging is not new, even iPhoto uses it and allows you to add keywords to each of your photos.

To find out more about Punakae and how it works, check out this video screencast. But be warned, the guy narrating might not be a native English speaker and it may sound a little funny.

4. Doing more with Safari

Tabbed browsing is extremely useful. Nobody denies this. But if you’re like me and have 15 tabs opened at the same time every morning when I browse through all my favorite sites, it gets a little tedious clicking the X on each tab to close them. Mastering the Safari shortcut keys are very helpful in making your browsing experience a pleasure.

• Command-T: Open new tab
• Command-N: Open new window
• Command-click link: Opens link in new tab
• Command-W: Close tab
• Command-Alt-W: Close all other tabs
• Command-Shift-W: Close window
• Command-R: Refresh current tab
• Command-Shift- { or }: Switch tabs
• Backspace: Back
• Spacebar: Page down
• Command-D: Add bookmark

By default, Google is Safari’s search engine. However I recommend installing Inquisitor. It is a search engine plug-in which extends the capability of searching by giving you suggestions and showing you some possible results even before you hit Return. Clicking on those results will take you directly to that site bypassing Google’s results page.

5. Use To-do lists

Reminding yourself constantly that you have a list of work to be done could be stressful so you might as well forget them! I’m not saying that you needn’t remember anything at all. I’m only emphasizing that thinking about the task at hand will make life easier. Jotting down your list of things to be done somewhere, organizing your thoughts and assigning due dates to each of them is the easiest way to accomplish this.

Getting-things-done applications (GTD) are widely popular so I won’t cover them again. A few good ones have already been elaborated on this site, which are Things for Mac, Remember The Milk, Simple GTD, Task Toy and a few others covered by Daniel.

6. Integrating Apple Mail, iCal and Address Book

There are several new features in Apple Mail 3.0 and a very prominent one is the addition of Data Detectors. Place your cursor over an email address and you have the option of adding that person as a contact into Address Book. It will also highlight dates, times, and certain keywords like ‘tomorrow’, ‘later today’, ‘15th of March’ which can be added into iCal as appointments. Addresses will also be detected and mapped into directions. Since Apple provided us with these features, we might as well make use of them.

7. Use Automator for repetitive tasks

I basically use Automator to save time on little tasks such as batch renaming, automatically sending birthday emails to friends, properly re-capitalizing song titles in iTunes, watermarking my PDF files and batch-resizing images. If you would like to know how I do all this, shout out in the comments and I will consider writing a tutorial solely on Automator.

8. Enlarge your screen estate

The easiest way to do this is to get a larger screen, of course. Or have 3 of them like Al Gore. Another way is to use Spaces. By default, Spaces extends your desktop up to 4 times (4 desktops). However, if you notice its preferences more carefully, you will see that you’re actually able to have up to 16 desktops! That’s a whole lot of estate to play with, and pretty troublesome to maneuver too.

Warp is a preference pane that will allow you to use your mouse to switch between Spaces, rather than using the keyboard shortcut. By moving your mouse cursor to an edge of the screen, you will see a small preview of the neighboring desktop, and clicking on it will ‘warp’ you there. It’s a pretty cool application to help you navigate if you can’t remember what’s running on each desktop.

If you would like to see how Warp works, check it the screencast at the bottom of this page.

That concludes my two-part article on increasing productivity on your Mac. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I have writing it.

(By) Jackson Chung is a full-time med student attempting to perform a juggling act with relationship, studies and his future.

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For the same setup you need addons 1, 2, and 5. Then go to customize and move everything (i.e. navigation and SU toolbar) to the top.

Here are a few tweaks and extensions to help gaining more space for viewing websites in Firefox:

1. Smaller Icons

Do you really need icons in their biggest size? Right-click on those navigation buttons, click ‘Customize’ and check ‘Use Small Icons’ at the bottom. Smaller Icons. Space gained.

2. TinyMenu

Install this addon from here. It shrinks the entire menu bar to a small rectangular box or image. It doesn’t work in Mac, though.

3. Hide Menu Bar

This hides the Menu bar completely. You end up gaining a good amount of screen space. To access the menus just hold down the ALT key. Download here.

4. Hide Tab Bar

This addon hides the tab bar. You can toggle the tab bar display via selected keyboard shortcut. Extremely useful if you work with lot of tabs. Download it here.

5. Vertigo

We already mentioned Vertigo in ‘Firefox Addons to Manage a Tab Jam‘. Vertigo will gain you additional only if you have a 20″ or bigger widescreen monitor. Basically it makes the tab bar vertical. Checkit out below.

6. FullerScreen

The standard Full Screen mode in Firefox (press F11) could be better – even when you’re in full screen mode, most of the buttons and the tab bar are still there. Get the ‘real’ full screen experience with FullerScreen – download IT here. Upon operation, you can view the site in your entire screen – the tab bar and other buttons are auto-hidden.

7. MiniFirefox

Claims to hide all the toolbars and keep only 3 basic navigation buttons visible. Download here. Hoever, the extension didn’t hide a few elements like it said when I tried it (for instance – it didn’t hide the StumbleUpon toolbar in my Firefox window)

8. Firefox UI Tweaker

This brilliant extension for Firefox lets you do a myriad of little things. Some things it’s capable of include :

• Combine a few buttons on the toolbar
• Auto-hide the search bar
• Remove a few icons in Full Screen Mode

More listed in this addon page from where you can download it.

9. Little Fox

If you have too many things on your Firefox then this addon is for you. It revamps the Firefox theme and makes the elements smaller. Download it from here, install it, activate the Little Fox theme, restart and see the amount of screen space gained. It makes everything on your Firefox smaller. May not be pleasing to the eyes, but definitely does its job well.

10. Toolbar Tweaks

In MUO, we’ve already discussed merging buttons on your Firefox toolbar. Check out the article here. I’m sure you can implement this easily and eliminate unwanted buttons that clutter the toolbar area.

(By) Shankar Ganesh, a 16 year old Blogger and Freelance Writer from India. Check out his blog Killer Tech Tips where he writes about computers and software.

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• Too Many Tabs? Firefox Add-ons to manage a TAB JAM (78)
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If you agree, if you’re using Windows XP, and if you need some ideas on how to change the bad habits, you will find the following tips very helpful. You’re welcome to follow step by step or create your own flavor and just pick what you like.

STEP 1: Clean Up

After completing this step you will have nothing but a maximum of two things sitting on your desktop: the recycle bin and a new folder.



Go ahead and create a folder on your desktop. Right-click onto an open space and select >New >Folder from the menu. Then move everything that clutters up your desktop into that folder. Don’t worry, we will attend to the contents in the next step.

If you would like to get rid of the Recycle Bin Icon, check out the instructions for Windows XP Pro and Home at TweakXP.

STEP 2: Get Organized

This step will help you to always have the shortcuts you need at your fingertips. Before downloading and customizing cool applications, we will work with what Windows has to offer.

Right-click onto the Taskbar and choose >Properties. A little window will pop up where “Show Quick Launch” needs to be checked. The new bar will appear right next to the START button in your Taskbar. If you’re already using Quick Launch and/or if there are icons in there, go through them and remove everything you don’t need. Now open the folder we created in Step 1 and decide which of the things in there you really, really need and use often. Remove whatever you can do without. Of what’s left drag and drop all program and folder shortcuts into the Quick Launch bar. Files that are not shortcuts, first need to be moved to another location altogether. Cut and paste them into My Documents for example, and drag and drop them into the Quick Launch bar from there.

At this point you will likely notice two things:

1) I can’t see all of the stuff I dropped in there, and
2) those yellow folders look kinda dull, how can I tell them apart!?

So let’s fix that!

First of all unlock the Taskbar. Right-click onto an open spot in your Taskbar and remove the checkmark in front of >Lock the Taskbar. Now you can increase the space for the Quick Launch by dragging the dotted border to the right until you see all important icons. If there are too many icons in there, make your Taskbar bigger by clicking it at its upper border and dragging it upwards. You could even drag the whole Taskbar to the top or the side of your screen. But whatever you do, don’t forget to lock it again when you’re done. For more killer tips and tricks check out this tutorial on CoolNerds.

The yellow folder icons in the Quick Launch bar aren’t helpful, thus they need to go. Right-click on a folder and select >Properties from the menu. You’re in the >Shortcut tab and at the bottom there is a button called >Change Icon… Click it, browse through the available icons and select one that best resembles what your folder is about. If you do this for all of your folder icons you will end up with a very original Quick Launch bar.

Since you have removed everything from your desktop you may miss some of the system shortcuts like My Computer or My Documents. Maybe you added those to the Quick Launch bar, but there is another way to quickly access them. Again the Taskbar offers a quick and easy solution: Toolbars. Right-click on your Taskbar, from the menu select >Toolbars and put a checkmark in front of >Desktop.



Now even though your desktop is almost empty, you will meet old friends in this Toolbar and you will never again have to minimize a window to access them.

Is there anything left in the folder you created? Do you need what is in there? If there is and if you do, rename the folder, cut and paste it into My Documents or any other location, just not the desktop, then either drag and drop it into your Quick Launch bar and give the shortcut a nice icon, or create a new Toolbar pointing to that folder. Otherwise just delete the folder.

Congratulations, you just transformed an unorganized mess into a productivity boosting, clean platform.

STEP 3: Ask Yourself!

My laptop, the only computer I own, is fully “pimped” and thus others find it hard to use. Actually that’s a good thing. They complain about the small font size (WUXGA rules!), the lack of icons on the desktop, or they ask me “Is this a MAC?” because I installed a transformation pack FlyakiteOSX. Still they manage to find Internet Explorer (grrr). Ok, so what puzzles me the most is that they maximize all windows to full screen. Why, oh why!?

If you do that, ask yourself what more do you see in a maximized compared to a smaller window. Naturally, this depends on your screen resolution. If you’re on 800 x 600 pixel go ahead and max, you have to do it! But if you enjoy the luxury of a much higher resolution, maybe some windows only require two thirds of your screen while the rest could be dedicated to open folders or a small program like a messenger or RSS reader. The idea is to use the available space in a smart way and not to waste it. Just a thought.

There are a hundreds of cool tools out there to make your desktop even more pretty and functional. Docks, gadgets, widgets, wallpaper resources and changers etc. Stay tuned for my next posts to learn all about these!

In the meantime I would like to see what your desktop looks like. What tools and strategies do you use to keep it clean and organized? Post a comment or mail me a screenshot. The coolest desktops will be featured on MUO. Below you see my Desktop.

Click on the image for the full size image (1920 x 1200 pixel, 2.38 MB).

(By) This post was written by one of our regular authors, Tina from Recommended.

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(1) Vertigo – This awesome extension moves your tab bar to the left side of the browser window and stacks tabs vertically. Highly recommended for people with 20 and above inch screens. You can add a splitter to resize the tab bar to any width you want.

(2) ColorfulTabs – Colors tabs into different colors and makes it easier to distinguish and navigate between multiple tabs. Simple yet very useful. Alternatively you may consider numbering the tabs.

(3) Tab Scope – Quickly preview tab contents by hoovering your mouse cursor over tab. Preview window shows a mini version of the page and a bunch of navigation buttons (Back/Forward/Reload/Stop). Extremely convenient. Although, I wouldn’t recommend using together with Vertigo. Both of them are great addons, but they just don’t go well together. (Note: Tab Scope doesn’t work on Mac OS X.)

Highlights include:

• Real-time preview of tab contents.
• Scroll pages using a mouse wheel.
• Click links or buttons directly in preview.

(4) Tab Mix Plus – Extremely useful extension that adds lots new features to Firefox’s tab browsing capabilities. Some of the better features include undo closed tabs/windows, line tabs in multiple rows, show tabs at the bottom and crash recovery. (Needs some settings adjustments when used together with above mentioned Vertigo.)

(5) Faviconize Tab – This extension adds a “FaviconizeTab” option to the tab context menu. When it is clicked, the width of the tab becomes small up to the size of the favicon (tiny logo icon). When clicked again, the tab window is back to normal.

(6) PermaTabs – This can turn tabs of your choice into permanent tabs. Permanent tabs don’t have close option so can’t be closed accidentaly. Even if you close you tabs accidentally they will reapper in the next Firefox startup. Tabs can be set to (and removed from) permanent mode via right click menu. (Again, may not work on Mac OS X.)

(7) FishEyeTabs – As the number of open tabs increases tabs get smaller and harder to distinguish. Enter Fisheye. It allows user to zoom tab labels by moving the mouse cursor over them.

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Normally in a Make Use Of review, we focus on the unique features of each app. But in this case, the best features are that there are basically NO unique features. JDarkRoom is a word processing program which consists solely of a black screen with a green writing font. Using it makes you feel like Nero in the Matrix.

How is this good you ask? Precisely that if you’re looking for a way to get a document typed out in record time without being distracted, this is the thing to use. There’s no fancy toolbars to arrange, no irritating paperclips in the corner asking you if you need help, no flashy graphics. Just a black screen to type away on. In fact I typed this article using JDarkRoom and I was able to type faster than I have ever typed before.

This type of program would be useful for say students trying to get a thesis typed out or a business-person assigned to make a presentation with a short deadline.

As well as the plain screen, JDarkRoom also banishes all distractions by filling up the entire screen. So you don’t even see your Windows task bar at the bottom. Other programs are relegated to the background. If you need to view another screen for any reason, you can toggle between JDarkRoom and the other screen by using the ALT + TAB key.

The program has quite a few useful options to make this a worthwhile contender in the word processing field.

* If you don’t like the way it currently looks, you can change the font and the background color.

* You can copy text to the Windows clipboard, auto-save your work and get a word count.

* When the file is finished, you can press F3 to save the file to your computer. You will then be asked to choose your file format such as a text file or a MS Word file (if you choose MS Word, you will need your MS Office disk to download and install a converter tool).

*Once you have the text exported to a file format, you can then print it out.

Sometimes the best programs are the simplest ones – and JDarkRoom is as simple as they come.

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• How To Turn MS Word 2007 Into A Minimalist Text Editor (15)
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I used to be a total toolbar nutcase. I would have three or four installed then wonder why it took forever for my browser to load.

These days I only have two toolbars (Google and Stumbleupon) and after a bit of tweaking, they are now both sharing the same bar on my Firefox browser. I only have what I need and the newly modified toolbar takes up very little space.

It’s very easy to combine your toolbars but I will say right off that this won’t work for the Yahoo toolbar (Grrr Yahoo!). Their toolbar buttons are totally immovable which is partly why I hate Yahoo. If everyone else can play ball with their products, why not Yahoo? But if you have toolbars such as Google or Stumbleupon then it works perfectly.

You have two options – you can either move your toolbars onto one existing toolbar or you can move your toolbar buttons onto the Firefox browser bar itself. I chose the latter.

First of all, remove from the toolbars the features you don’t need as space will be at a premium. You can do this by going into the toolbar options. Only keep what you actually use and need. Hack away the rest. Be honest, do you really need the “I feel lucky!” Google button?

When you have got the toolbars down to the features you need, right-click on the top Firefox bar and a little menu should then come up showing your toolbars and the word “customize”. I am translating all this from the German Firefox so the wording may vary depending on what version of Firefox you have.

Click on “customize”. A box will then pop up with Firefox features that you are not using and your toolbars will start moving about a bit. Don’t worry about that.

What to do now is decide where you want your new toolbar to be. Do you want your toolbar buttons sitting on the top Firefox bar (next to the navigation arrows and homepage button)? Or do you want to put the Google buttons on the Stumble bar? Or vice-versa?

When you have decided which buttons are being moved, click once on each button and then drag it to wherever you want it to go. When the button moves to wherever you want it, release the click and let it go. Repeat until you get the buttons moved to where you want them to go.

You can now use the click and drag method to re-arrange the buttons in whatever order you like. So you can have the most-used buttons on the left hand side for example and perhaps move the search box to a different place.

Using this method, you can have several toolbars in your Firefox browser without them taking up an inordinate amount of space. Oh and if anyone at Yahoo happens to be reading this – get your toolbar fixed!

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