TIP: Extract Embedded Fonts from iDVD

Apple’s iDVD program (part of iLife) comes with embedded fonts that are available only to iDVD, an inexplicably parsimonious approach by Apple. Some of them overlap the short list that comes with iLife, which are installed in your User Fonts folder. Most overlap with those that come with iWork. But maybe you don’t have iWork, and maybe you’d like the few that are exclusive to iDVD. You can un-embed them and put them in a Fonts folder.

TIP: New Finder Commands #2: Add to Dock

[One of a series regarding Snow Leopard’s new Finder menu commands.]

The new kid on the File menu block is Add to Dock, which shows up when you press Shift. Select an icon in the Finder, choose the command, and, voila—you’ve saved yourself from dragging something a mile across a large screen.

The Command-Shift-T shortcut for this menu choice that used to be assigned to Add to Favorites now works for this new command.

TIP: Fractional keyboard volume control

Okay, so you don’t know what the heck this title means – let me know if you come up with a better one! Controlling the volume from the keyboard means using a function key with the volume icon on it (usually F11/F12, but F4/F5 on older MacBooks). This raises or lowers the volume a full step at a time, but you can exercise finer control.

TIP: Option-click in the Finder sidebar

Option-clicking on a folder in the sidebar shouldn’t, theoretically, do anything useful: an Option-double-click inside a Finder window closes the window as the new item (another folder, or an application) opens. A plain click on a folder in the sidebar displays it in the current window, so why would you want to close it? Glad you asked!

TIP: Force-Add a Site to Top Sites in Safari 4

Safari 4’s choice for Top Sites may miss ones that you’d like included (maybe one you haven’t been to in awhile got bumped out of the lineup because you hadn’t pinned it). You don’t have to wait for it to show up on its own:

TIP: Get Mac’s Serial Number

Check your Mac’s serial number without turning the laptop upside down or contorting yourself to see behind an iMac screen or… well, you get the idea (also, no squinting at tiny numbers).

COMMENTARY: No Steve? No APPLE at Macworld?

No Steve this January. No Apple next January. Come on! Many thoughts come to mind, such as… well, iPhones and iPods are running the company, so is the Mac going to be a retroactive bastard child, unloved and forgotten in the near future, and, yes, I hope Steve Jobs’s health is okay. But for further thoughts, check my friend/colleague Tonya Engst’s couldn’t-have-said-it-better-myself commentary at the TidBITs site.

DISCUSS: What’s the worst Mac dialog/alert box?

When it come to dialog boxes asking for information, or alerts that tell you something but brook no discussion, there are many candidates for the best… that is, the worst, one around.

What’s your candidate?

TIP: Include Library folders in searches

A Find operation in the Finder ignores all Library folders and their subfolders. Usually, that’s a good thing-there’s a ton of files in those folders that you don’t need to look through – except sometimes, such as when you want a Fonts folder, or your Desktop picture files, included in the search. Spotlight indexes Library folder contents, however, and you can make it include the contents in a search.

TIP: Get a map from an Address Book address

You have someone’s address in Address Book – but do you know how to get there? You can get a Google map instantly