The Mind of Dr. Mac

Press and hold the Command + Control + D keys and move your cursor over any word (”Mother” below)
in almost any cocoa application including Mail, Safari (shown below), iChat, and many more, and
the handy little Dictionary/Thesaurus pop-up, (it’s built into Mac OS X) appears:

(Note: Don’t do it over the word “mother” if you’re easily offended or have kids nearby.
As you can see, I had to blur the second definition for your protection. Just trust me
on this and don’t even think about trying it.)

Here’s a tip I saw in the December issue of one of my favorite newsletters, Jay Nelson’s excellent Design Tools Monthly.

Speaking of which, this post has now officially turned into two tips for the price of one…

The first tip is that if you’re not familiar with Design Tools Monthly (A.K.A. The Executive Summary of Graphic Design News), you should be. In a nutshell, each issue of DTM is filled to the brim with tips, bug fixes, industry news, software & hardware updates, font news, and much more, all delivered in a concise bite-sized chunks with no filler or fluff. Every issue is brimming with useful, helpful, and just plain wonderful tips, hints, news, and products. Click here to visit the DTM Web site, then download the free sample issue and see for yourself.

Now, here’s the actual tip about auto-deleting ZIP files after extracting the contents:

You probably know that when you double-click a ZIP file its contents are extracted. Once I’ve extracted the goods, I usually don’t need the ZIP file any more, so I drag it to the Trash.

I’ve always wondered why ZIP files weren’t smart enough to drag themselves to the Trash after revealing their treasures. In a second I’ll show you how to make ZIP files do just that.

But wait, there’s more: With the advent of Mac OS X Leopard and its Downloads folder, most of the ZIP file action ends up taking place there. Well, I like the idea of downloaded files going into the Downloads folder but I prefer the extracted files to appear on the Desktop until I figure out what I want to do with them.

This tip lets me do that too…

Here’s how:

1. Open the CoreServices folder (Hard Disk/System/Library/CoreServices).

   

2. Launch the Archive Utility application.

   

3. Choose Archive Utility–>Preferences.

   

It turns out this “hidden” Archive Utility application is responsible for what happens when you expand a ZIP archive. So, as you can see in the top half of the Archive Utility Preferences window above, I’ve configured mine so expanded files are saved to my Desktop and the ZIP archive file then moved to the Trash. I’ve also made it so when I create a ZIP archive (by right-clicking and choosing “Compress”), the ZIP file appears on the Desktop automatically, making it easier for me to drag it into a Mail message (which is almost always what I do after creating an ZIP archive file.

It bugged me that when I typed a URL in Safari and pressed and held the .com key, I got this great little pop-up domain chooser:

But in Mail (and most other iPhone apps), that useful .com key was replaced by a less-useful period (dot) key: 

Then one day I was typing an email address and I happened to press the period (dot) key a little longer than usual and was surprised and pleased to discover this: 

To recap: If you press and hold the period (dot) key in iPhone’s Mail app you’ll get a cool pop-up domain chooser that not only types the dot, but also types your choice of four domains: .net, .edu, .org, or .com. Cool beans!

While we’re on the subject, notice that if you press and hold certain other characters — such as any vowel, the N key, the C key, and a few others — you can choose alternative characters like this: