Most Firefox 3 testers agree that the preview release of the new browser promises faster and all-around better surfing—but one of the most noticeable interface changes, the big Back button, has gotten mixed reviews. If you’re not a fan of Firefox 3’s large back button, you don’t have to wrangle with CSS or themes to adjust its size. Simply right-click on Firefox’s toolbar, and choose Customize. In the dialog box, select “Use small icons”—and voila! Your back button will be the same size as reload.

written by Jose Castillo

Mac OS X only: Dashquit is an elegant response to an niggling issue many Mac users have known for years—that the Dashboard widget screen, while awfully convenient sometimes, can also be a memory-sucker. When activated, the Dashquit widget shows you how much memory the Dashboard feature is using at the moment, and offers a big, bold “Stop” button to shut it down (after confirmation). It’s basically a graphical way to perform the terminal commands that shut down Dashboard, which is going to be a lot more convenient for many folks with less memory. Dashquit 3.0 is a free Leopard-only download and uses 50% less memory than it predecessors, but a 10.4-friendly version can also be found at the link.

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written by Jose Castillo

I love that OS X automatically fires up iPhoto when I plug in my digital camera. It’s one of the Mac’s many little touches that make it such a pleasure to use.

But ever since I got an iPhone, I’ve been frustrated that plugging it in opens up iPhoto, too. The combination of iPhoto and iTunes opening and syncing slows my computer to a crawl. And it’s particularly painful when most of the time I just want to sync my address book or music.

Fortunately it’s pretty easy to work around this annoyance. Keep reading to see how you can teach your Mac to open iPhoto when you plug in your camera but not your phone.

I recently stumbled across an option in Image Capture’s preferences that lets you select any application to open when a camera is connected. That gave me an idea: what if I could tell it to open a special application that would check to see which camera I’d plugged in? Then that application could in turn open iPhoto only if I’d plugged in my Digital Rebel.

It turns out you can do all of this using the command line and a little bit of AppleScript. Here’s how:

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written by Jose Castillo

Here’s a great tip that creates a nice hover effect when your mouse goes over an application (or folder) within a Leopard stack. Why this isn’t enabled by default in Leopard is beyond me, because it makes navigating within stacks a whole lot easier. Don’t miss out, here’s how to activate it:

Launch the Terminal and type the following command:

defaults write com.apple.dock mouse-over-hilte-stack -boolean yes

then, you’ll have to restart the Dock by issuing the following command:

killall Dock

To disable the hover highlights, type:

defaults write com.apple.dock mouse-over-hilte-stack -boolean no

written by Jose Castillo

Friday I found myself doing what anyone who was soon to be flying across the country to cover Macworld would be doing : replacing the hard drive in my MacBook Pro. A smart idea? Well, considering that my old drive was making some not so good noises I thought it better to replace the darned thing before it failed during the Expo.

I headed over to Other World Computing and ordered this drive. OWC is great because they offer up many of the same parts that Apple uses in their machines (in fact the drive I bought turned out to be the exact model drive that was already in my MacBook Pro, though the new one has twice as much space). And no, I am not getting paid by OWC in any way, shape, or form. I just have had several excellent experiences with them.

One thing to keep in mind is that the hard drive isn’t classified as ‘user replaceable’ in the MacBook Pro, unlike the MacBook (replacing a hard drive in a MacBook is very, very easy). That didn’t stop me because I’ve swapped out countless drives. I followed iFixIt’s great guide to disassembling my MacBook Pro, but one word of caution: be sure you have a T6 Torx Screwdriver before you start. I have access a large number of computer tools, so I didn’t think that would be a problem. However, after sifting through 4 different toolkits with no success (most tool kits have a T8 Torx as the smallest screwdriver), I thought I was in trouble. I finally found one in a very large, very expensive set of tools, but the screwdriver itself isn’t pricey. Make sure you know that you have one before starting this process because there are 6 Torx screws that need to be removed (2 holding the keyboard to the base of the machine, and 4 holder the hard disk in place), and it is much much easier with the right tool.

Overall, this is something I would recommend that only people who are comfortable cracking open a laptop should do. There are lots of little screws and wires one has to move out of the way to replace the drive and a certain level of comfort with a computer’s innards is required.

written by Jose Castillo