Basic questions from a newbie

[Dusky]

About my OS version, isn't like 10.2.3 out now or something? What does it take to make this type of an upgrade?

Go to System Prefs. Click on Software Update. In the new window, click on CHECK NOW. Take it from there...

As to FTP clients. Did you try searching for "transmit" in the MacOSX section of versiontracker.com? It's not free, but good things have been said of it. From what I gather, it's better than Fetch and RBrowser (or whatever it's called). Check out all three.

[mindbend]

3. Looking for a freeware sftp client.
DOES FETCH OR TRANSMIT COVER YOUR NEEDS? (VERSIONTRACKER.COM)

7. Keyboard shortcut to minimize all apps on the desktop? (like 'windows + D' in Win)
IF YOU'RE IN AN APP, HOLD DOWN THE OPTION KEY WHEN CLICKING ON THE DESKTOP, THIS WILL HIDE THE APP YOU JUST CAME FROM.
IF YOU'R E IN THE FINDER (DESKTOP), CHOOSE HIDE OTHERS (COMMAND+OPTION+H).

Any other 'must have apps' that you would recommend?
YOU SOUND LIKE A PROGRAMMER-TYPE, SO I HAVE NO ADVICE THERE.
I COULD RATTLE OFF A MILLION OTHER APPS THAT "I' MUST HAVE, THO!
THAT SAID, HERE'S A FEW TREASURES THAT I CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT.

YOUPI KEYS—Allows you to launch apps and do other Macros with keyboard shortcuts.
LABELS X— One of the very best underused features of OS 9 back in OS X thanks to shareware developers. (versiontracker.com) Allows you to add a color tint to any file or folder. Great for organizational stuff like "the red ones have all been edited".
ADDRESSIX—One click envelope printing with barcodes. Now if it just tie in to Apple's address DB, we'd be set.
BATCHMOD—GUI for mass-edits of permissions of files. Bailed me out of many a jam.
CAPTURE ME—One of few apps that allows you to take screen captures of DVD sources. Apple's built-in screen cap blocks that ability.
FONT RESERVE/SUITCASE/FONT AGENT PRO—Pick one. I have them all. You need a good font manager in X if you do layout stuff. Otherwise, forget I said anything. They all have their problems. I have settled on FAP for now as it is Cocoa native and has the best overall font previewer. All they need now is auto-activation plugins for my main apps.
iCal—Nice little scheduler.

[symphonix]

Hi Harvey. I expect you will be very happy with the iBook, I have one of the first ones in the new format, a first-batch 500, and I've found it immensely useful and powerful, though rather slow. The newer ones would be very nice.

1. Generally, you can't put windows off the top of the screen. They don't do that.

2. There are other free mail clients but none compares well to Apple's Mail.app (though Eudora has a following).

4. Netscape Communicator is nice for a freebie. BBEdit is a shareware one that has some nice features. I use Dreamweaver myself, but that's commercial.

5. You can set colours in Terminal preferences, but as for actually colour ls and so on, I haven't tried.

[twister]

Fugu for sftp

Twister

[Peter King]

tinkertool.com has a great app that lets you change a lot of prefs that aren't available in the normal system prefs. It may have something for the terminal. It also has an additional minimizing/maximizing thingy called "suck" or something...

[Harvey]

Thanks for all the tips guys!

Fugu looks interesting. Seems to be a gui for sftp from the shell. That would work.

As for the windows off the top thing, I'm serious, it has happened to me twice now. If I had decent bandwidth I would take a screenshot and upload it somewhere to show you guys It must just be a specific application problem I guess. It happened to Mozilla btw.

Have you guys tried Chimera? I don't think I will ever go back to IE with Mozilla and Chimera around. Great stuff.

[gizmorpheus]

1. If you ever have a window go above
the top of the screen, all you have to do
is increase your screen resolution and wa-la!
You can adjust the window size, then go back
to your previous screen resolution (ex:
From 800 x 600 to 1600 x 1200, then back).

3. sftp? Try opening up a terminal and
type "man sftp" It's free and built in.

4. BBEdit

Must have? OmniDictionary, OmniWeb, Chimera,
Mozilla, and last but not least Pacifist
(package installer - A must of you want to
re-install iCal, Sherlock, Terminal, etc..).

[gizmorpheus]

You might want to consider using ssh too
(from the terminal).