Blogger recently launched gadgets support for dynamic views. This is really cool and was a missing piece to go with dynamic views.

One of the things that I really didn’t like about the gadget bar is that it’s hidden (docked) in the right side of the window. It’s difficult to see and so I Googled about an undocked version but couldn’t find it.

Figure 1 - Blogger docked gadgets sidebar (barely visible) or could we say hidden?

Here I show you how to get an undocked version so that your visitors can enjoy the gadgets bar in its full glory. Follow these simple steps:

1 - Select the Template option at draft.blogger.com

2 - Click the Customize button

3 - In the Window that opens select Advanced

4 - Select Add CSS

5 - Copy & paste the following piece of code in the Add custom CSS field

#gadget-dock
{
    right: 0;
}

6 - Click Apply to blog button in the window top right corner

You won’t see the change applied immediately.

Now go and open your blog and you should see an undocked gadgets bar!

Figure 2 - Blogger undocked gadgets sidebar (now visible)

I hope blogger gives the option to customize this without the need for CSS code. It’ll be easier for its users and will provide a better experience for blog’s visitors…

EDIT

To answer Hannah’s question: if you also want to customize the background colors of the gadgets bar, you can apply these styles following the same procedure described above:

.gadget-icons
{
    background-color: red;
}

.gadget-title
{
    background-color: red;
}

.gadget-selected .gadget-icons
{
    background-color: yellow;
}

One thing to remember here is that as the gadgets’ icons are white you must choose a background color that’s not too much whitish.

Play with the colors and enjoy!

I'd like to know any app that shows a list of the files that lie within a compressed file .zip or .rar. If the list could be ordered by file size it'd be great! It could be any software that runs on Windows or Mac OS since I use both OS using Parallels.

Why this is important to me?
The answer is that sometimes I need to send a compressed file to someone and this file generally contains lots of coding files that are part of a Visual Studio Solution/Project for example. I just want to send a subset of those files. There are some big files like DLLs and database files scattered everywhere in a lot of folders that don’t need to go with the compressed file.

So how can I avoid spending time going through all those folders/files, looking their size and deleting one by one to make the final compressed file to be uploaded smaller?

I thought about asking this question at SuperUser. To tell the truth I already had the question typed there but before I could post it and after a few tries by myself I got what I wanted using WinRAR with an easy play of menu commands. So how can you do this? Follow me…

1 - If you don’t know or don’t have WinRAR or use another file archiver, you can get it at:
http://www.rarlab.com/download.htm

I use WinRAR in its evaluation copy incarnation that once in while pops up a dialog asking you to purchase it. It works great even if you don’t want to purchase it… take it easy.

2 - At first compress the folders and files you want without getting bothered about the size of the resulting compressed file. After installing WinRAR it’s available in the context menu of any file or folder in Windows Explorer.

3 - Open the compressed file in WinRAR and play with the menu just a little bit. Go to the Options | File list and select Flat folders view and Details menu options.

Figure 1 - WinRAR listing the files of a compressed file (trunk.rar) by file size

Taking the above screenshot into consideration (it lists the content of a trunk project folder compressed), we can see that it has 1554 folders and 1624 files. This compressed file alone has 87 MB in disk when the actual uncompressed content has 193 MB in size but it’s still pretty big to send it over the wire… I have a lot of folders and files to go through if I want to delete the big and unnecessary files to try to decrease the final size! As you see, it also contains many duplicate files in different paths… it’s pretty daunting just to think about a manual scan. A visual scan in a single screen is much better. How do you get a big picture of this compressed file?

4 - Order all the files by size by clicking the size column header.

5 - Select all the files you want to remove/delete from the compressed file in just one go. One can do this in two different ways: clicking a file and holding the ctrl key and clicking another file to select not contiguous files OR selecting one file and pressing the shift key and clicking another file to select contiguous files. After this it’s just a matter of right clicking the file selection and executing the Delete files command.

Hope this useful tip helps you someday!

This post is where I’ll maintain useful things that I usually do in my day to day while using the computer and that I find nice to know about. They can save you some mouse clicks and most important: save you time.

As time passes by, this page will grow. :)

Adobe Acrobat

How to select only the text of a column of a table in a PDF file?

shift+option and select the text with the mouse.

iTunes

How to go to Current Song playing in iTunes?

command+L

or

You can right click the time bar and select Go to Current Song context menu option.

How to Delete duplicate songs from iTunes?

option+delete and select Keep File

How to delete Album’s embedded artwork from all tracks at once?

Select all tracks from the album. Right click over anyone of them and select the Get Info menu option. Now check the checkbox on the left side of the Artwork field (see screenshot below). Click OK and voila, iTunes will delete the artwork embedded in each file so that you can add a new/bigger/better artwork. This way you avoid having duplicate artwork making iTunes show the only one you want.

How to create a playlist using a Finder folder?

Select the folder in Finder and drag it to iTunes icon in the dock. iTunes icon will blink. Wait a second or two. iTunes will be the active window (I consider iTunes is already open in the background before you perform this operation). Keep holding the mouse button. Now drag the folder to the Playlist section in iTunes left bar and release the mouse. As you see in the picture, I’m dragging and dropping a folder called My MP3 folder to iTunes PLAYLISTS section. When iTunes recognizes that you want to create a playlist from a folder it’ll highlight its left bar. This let’s you know that it’s time to release the mouse button and drop the folder there.

Mac OS

How to open a docked application at startup time/login?

Right click the app icon in the dock and select Options –> Open at Login.

How to search anything in your Mac from anywhere?

command+space This will bring Spotlight.

How to put Mac to sleep?

option+command+eject

How to go to any folder in Finder by its address/path (like Windows Explorer address bar)?

Right click Finder icon in the dock and select Go to Folder. Type or paste the folder path and click Go.

Added on 5/14/2011

How to copy the full path of a file or folder in Finder (really useful in software development)?

Use this fantastic Copy Full Path automator service workflow by Marcus Barnes. Read his post for more info.

Learn more about Automator in this post: Automate tasks in Mac OS with Automator

How to show hidden files in Finder?

In Terminal type:

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE

killall Finder

Added on 5/24/2011

How to open a terminal command window starting from the current folder you have open in Finder?

Use cdto. Download it here.

cdto is a small app that opens a Terminal.app window cd'd to the front most finder window. It’s designed (including it's icon) to be placed in the Finder window's toolbar as shown below (mouse cursor is over it):