Mac OS X Power Hound, Second Edition

Expanding Your Mac OS X Experience

Another set of popular Mac OS X add-on utilities is designed to turn on hidden preferences, change aspects of the Dock’s behavior, help you take full advantage of Apple-provided hardware and software, and provide additional information on running programs. Here are a few tools to get you started on the path of happy tweaking.

Figure 14-7. When you mouse over a tab, its drawer slides out from the edge of the screen, revealing the contents. If you don’t want the drawer to slide shut again, click its tab to keep it open. You can position drawers on any side of the screen, and they don’t have to be right next to one another.

Hidden System Preferences

Want to move your Dock to a corner of the screen instead of having it centered? Want to remove the zooming rectangle effect when a file opens? Want double scroll arrows at both ends of all your scroll bars? Sure, Mac OS X can accommodate these wishes, but that usually entails typing cryptic commands in the Terminal.

TinkerTool, a free program from http://www.bresink.de/osx/TinkerTool.html, lets you employ a more Mac-like way of doing things. This program runs right from the Finder, giving you direct access to a multitude of settings without ever visiting the Terminal (Figure 14-8).

Display System Information in the Menu Bar

Sometimes, like an industrious co-worker who makes everyone else look like a bunch ...