Mount a remote disk Sleep remote machine Control Click on icon Wait a minute while Finder spins looking for disk. Sigh. Can’t they figure this out sooner?

The Sherlock in Panther has this neat feature (was this in Jag?) When searching for a movie, in the “near” field, you cannot only enter a zip code or city/state/zip, but you can enter a name from your address book and Sherlock will use their address for the search!

MacOS X has always had the option to create encrypted disk images, but it has not always kept the passwords on the keychain properly.

I am not sure when this was fixed (Jaguar) but it works now - If you do not want to encrypt your entire home directory into a disk image (which is essentially what FileVault does) then just use Disk Utility (On panther, disc copy on Jaguar) to create a new encrypted disk image. Then when you set the password, add it to the keychain.

Any files you alias to on the disk will cause it to mount, just like a network disk (though LaunchBar does not do this) I use Quicken so when I log in, it opens the file to ask me for my quicken password - that makes the image mount, and now all of my files on that image are available.

I would imagine that if you want to copy the image to another disk, you would want to eject it off the desktop first.

Ever been writing an email and wanted to attach a file on the desktop? Sure you could use the Attach dialog and choose desktop and find the file, but man, it’s right there on the desktop, just under some windows!

Well it is a snap in Panther!

With the window you want to receive the file on top, simply press F11 to Exposé the desktop. Then click and drag the file you want to drop into the (now hidden) window. While dragging, press F11 again to show the previously Exposéd windows, and drop into the target window!

How slick!

Over the course of several Panther upgrades, I’ve noticed some files tend to not get updated. In one case, the java internet plugins did not get updated because their modification dates were set to the year 2010.

My suggestion is this: If you have DiskWarrior (you do, right?) run DiskWarrior on your disk first and repair any date and other disk issues.

Then do an archive and install (which is really a backup and install) of Panther. If you notice things not working properly, see your local consultant/dealer for a clean install of the OS.

Mail now remembers when you turn on the BCC field and leaves it available for subsequent messages you create.

When you turn on message threading, Mail will collect messages with like subjects into groups. Mail sometimes gets this wrong, but the feature is still worth very useful. You’ll get a bunch of new UI, such as coloring, indenting and faux messages once you turn this on. The Faux message will be one that is a summary of the entire thread. You can click on one of messages in the thread to jump to it.

However, the coolest part of message threading (to me) is keyboard navigation. When a thread header faux message is selected you can:

• Press Delete to delete the entire thread
• Press down arrow to skip over the thread
• Press right arrow to expand the thread and select the first unread message (or last message in the thread if all have been read)
• Press down arrow to read the next message
• Press left arrow to collapse the thread

Viewing HTML email is a nasty way to get tracked by spammers. The spammers put images in with names coded to your email address and as soon as you view the image, the spammer knows you read the email and now your email is more valuable to other spammers!

Go to Preferences, choose Viewing and turn off the showing of HTML messages. However, with Panther’s Mail application, if you do get an HTML message that is legitimate (say an Apple newsletter) a nice “Load Images” button will appear for you to click. And now, mail will actually render the HTML text, just won’t load the images!

Where did the Internet System Preference go? How do I set my default Mail client, Web Browser, etc? Believe it or not, Apple moved these into the preferences of the respective Apple applications. You can find the default mail viewer application preference in yep, Apple’s Mail.app preferences panel.

You can likewise find the Default Browser and Save Location for files in the preferences of Safari. Why did they do this? I hope it is just an oversight to leave out the Internet system preference panel. I DO like having the information in the default application’s preferences panel, but I don’t like that being the only place it is settable.

If you have a mouse with a scroll wheel that is also a button, pressing and holding down on the mouse wheel will bring up the Application switcher bar and you can then scroll through to another app (while holding the wheel down) and then release over the application you want to switch to.

If Stuffit Expander insists on opening the zips you make with the Finder’s new Archive command, select said Zip file and choose Get Info. Then turn down the “Open With” panel and click the popup menu and choose “Other” Now, click your hard disk in the left sidebar, then select System, then Library, then CoreServices and finally “BOMArchiveHelper” Press OK. Then in the Get Info dialog, press “Change All” and ok that.

You can quickly resize all finder columns to the same width by double clicking on the column resize widget while holding down the Option key. The column resize widget is located in each column below the scroll arrows.

The Finder’s search field, located in the toolbar, is hot searchable now. This means that the Finder starts finding as you type. It also defaults to all local disks, so this can get pretty slow if you have a ton of files.

In a Finder browser window, click the magnifying class icon to the left of the search field and hold the mouse, it is a menu. Choose “Selection” This will cause the Finder to only search your current folder and below. If you want to search an entire drive, just open the top folder Of course you can always switch it back, but I like this as the default.

I use an external Linksys 802.11g wireless card. Apple added support for these cards in June of 2003 in 10.2 (Jaguar) which was great, but less than pefect. You could experience kernel panics if you removed the card while the Mac was asleep, or inserted one after waking up the Mac.

I am happy to say that these issues appear to be solved with Panther. I have pulled the card with active network connections, plugged it back in and all was well. I have booted the machine without the card, plugged it in once the Finder finished loading and all worked flawlessly.

I have also tried several combinations of sleep/yank card/wake machine/insert card and have had everything work just peachy!

I took some time to test compiling an app of mine on several configurations with CodeWarrior Pro 8.3:

In Preview, you can use the handy scroll wheel on your mouse (you do have a scroll wheel mouse, right?) to scroll horizontally by holding down the shift key when scrolling the wheel.

Wouldn’t it be cool if holding down option caused Preview to zoom in and out with the wheel?

If you are a Snapz Pro X user like myself, you know that it is an invaluable tool for taking screeshots. Couple that with OS X using PDF as the default format and you end up with using Snapz Pro X a lot, and using funky shortcuts that don’t conflict with the built in shortcuts.

Well now, using the Keyboard/Mouse system preference, you can disable the built in screenshot mechanism and set SnapzPro X to use cmd-shift-3! Just uncheck the built in options you don’t want to use.

Here’s how:

If you would like to see the Exposé screen effects in slow motion, hold down the shift key while activating Exposé! Cool!

Here is a list of applications I have run successfully on Panther:

Apple Developed:

• Mail.app
• Safari
• iPhoto
• Address Book
• iCal
• iChat A/V
• iSync (with Palm conduit)
• iTunes w/ iTunes music store
• Backup Beta 2
• Scheduled back ups do not work

Third Party:

• TK3 (Pre-release)
• Quicken 2004
• NetNewsWire 1.0.5
• LaunchBar 3.2.12
• Fire 0.32f
• Snak 4.9.6
• ICQ 3.4
• Yahoo Messenger 2.5.3
• Text descenders left mouse droppings in the text input box
• BBEdit 6.5
• Palm Hotsync 4.1
• Keyspan USB to Serial drivers 1.4
• Microsoft Intellimouse 5.0
• Microsoft Excel X Service Release 1
• Proteus 3.0.3
• Synchronize! Pro X 3.1

Hardware:

• Epson Color Stylus 740 (Install drivers from Epson Printer Pack #2 on disk #3
• Microsoft Optical Mouse Blue
• MacAlly MediaPro Keyboard (no use of extra keys, did not attempt to install software)
• Kyocera 6035 Smartphone serial cradle with Keyspan PDA19 serial to USB adaptor

Update Joar has posted a very nice page on this at: Getting a certificate for Mail

Panther’s Mail.app supports certificate based signing and encryption of email. Mail’s help mentions this and the fact that you need a certificate on your keychain, but no instructions on how to get a certificate.

So after some research and help from friends, we have some (partial) instructions on how to get your own certificate. There are several ways, this is a free method.

First off, you must use Mozilla. Not Internet Explorer, not Safari, not Omniweb, but Mozilla.

Go to: http://www.thawte.com/

Click on the “Secure your email link”

Give them the info they need including the EMAIL YOU WANT TO SIGN AND ENCRYPT FROM. Has to be one you use with Panther Mail. I used geek@geeksrus.com. Tell them you are not interested in any other products, uncheck the spam boxes and click Submit.

On the next page, Click Join. In the popup window , click Next

Enter your last name, first name, and date of birth. Click Next.

On the next page, for your USA National ID, use your drivers license, and click the Driver’s license button. Then enter your email address again and press next.

I forget the next step (sorry) but uou’ll be asked at some point for a password and five questions for security purposes. The site will email you a ping code. Take that url and use Mozilla to load it, and enter your ping data. Then you’ll be on a page to request a certificate.

Once you do that, follow the instructions. Then it will take 5 mins or so. Keep refreshing the View Certificate Status page and when it says it is oked, then click the link to show your certificates. There will be a fetch button. Once you click Fetch, your certificate is stored inside Mozilla.

Now open Mozilla Preferences. Turn down Private and Security. Click Certificates. Click Manage Certificates. Select the Certificate (it is the indented one) and click backup. Now enter a password for this file (like 12345) and save to your desktop as somethihng like geek@geeksrus.com.p12

Now double click that file on the desktop. Keychain Assistant will ask for the backup password. When you get it right, your certificate will now be in keychain.

Now when you open mail and make a new messagae, you’ll see a little star icon to the right of the address selection popup. If that is checked, your email will be signed. People will get an attachment. If EVERYONE (not just some) of the people in your to/cc/bcc fifleds has sent you their certificate, then you will also see a lock icon, allowing you to encrypt the email! Sweet.