Jamie Huskisson » mac

Brilliant PHP manual Mac app

Jamie Huskisson — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 21:57:33 +0000

I found this app just a minute ago and think it’s brilliant. The PHP Function Index (PHPfi) is a PHP documentation viewer to look up any PHP function on your mac. It requires you download the PHP manual and unzip it onto a random folder on your Mac. Once that’s done you have a instantly searchable and readable offline version of the PHP manual.

But wait it gets better, the most valuable part of the PHP manual – the user comments, are downloadable too. You can set it to update one at a time or download every set of comments for every page in the manual in only one click.

Great for offline browsing and generally brilliant if you don’t want to have wait long periods of time to find those functions your looking for. Combine this with the classic polished and clean Mac interface – and you’ve got a better alternative to the real site.

My only critism of the software is the extremely poor dock icon. It looks like a XP icon in a Mac OSX dock.

http://www.artissoftware.com/phpfi/

Tags: mac, php functions

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Locking and password protecting your Mac whilst you are away

Jamie Huskisson — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 12:29:53 +0000

I recently found a small annoyance with my iMac in that I wanted to lock my Mac whilst I was away from it and/or not using it whilst keeping all my programs running in the background. This is of course great for keeping things like Mail downloading whilst your away, which keeps things running smoothly during the day.

Let’s start by pulling up the system preferences:

We should have course have this:

Select ‘Security’ from the Personal row, which is the sixth icon. You should now be in the ‘Security’ preference panel. Continue forth to make sure the checkboxes to the left of ‘Require password to wake this computer from sleep or screen saver’ and ‘Disable automatic login’ are checked. It should look a little something like this:

Hit the ‘view all’ button in the top left of the panel to go back to the system preferences panel and continue into the ‘Desktop & Screen Saver’ preferences panel which is also located on the Personal row of preferences, this time being the third icon in. Once it’s open click ‘Screen saver’ at the top to make sure your in the right area.

Click ‘Hot Corners’ in the bottom left, this will bring up a nice drop down sub-preferences panel. Continue forth to select a corner and select ‘Start Screen Saver’ (I’ve selected the bottom left for mine).

Once this is activated if you move your mouse into the furthest point of your selected corner the screen saver should start up. Wait a few seconds (sometimes up to ten or so) and then move your mouse to bring your Mac out of it’s screen saver mode. You should then see a password prompt for your username and password – this would mean it’s worked.

No-one can now get onto your computer unless they know your username and password to get into your account.

If you would like to expand upon this and remove the screen saver from the screen after a certain amount of minutes. Go back into your system preferences panel and select ‘Energy Saver’ which is on the Hardware row – the fourth icon.

Change your slider to whatever amount of minutes you want your display to turn off on. This will remove the screen saver from your display but keep your computer running.

Make sure ‘put computer to sleep when it is inactive for’ is set to ‘Never’ and ‘Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible’ is unchecked. This makes sure your computer won’t stop processing applications and activity in the background whilst you are away from the computer.

Tags: articles, mac