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CreativeTechs QuickTips #51 Week of July 25, 2005

Tip One: Add an Eject menu to your menu bar.

The standard way to eject a CD or DVD is to press the eject key on your Apple keyboard (alternatively, press and hold F12 for a couple seconds). However sometimes this method won't work if you use a non-Apple keyboard. Fortunately, there's a secret way to do the same thing: install the Eject menulet.

The installer is hidden in some folders we usually recommend staying out of. On your main hard drive, dig down into System > Library > CoreServices > Menu Extras. Inside that window, double-click on the icon called Eject.menu.

Now look at your menu bar, and you'll find the new Eject icon. Use it as a menu and choose the drive you'd like to eject. As a bonus, in some Macs with multiple CD drives installed the individual drives are listed in this menu.

Tip: To re-order the icons for these menulets, hold down the Apple key and drag them left or right (to remove one, drag it off the menu bar with the Apple key held down).

[Source: This tip inspired during a long weekend of troubleshooting server problems at a CreativeTechs Priority Response client. The write-up on the Eject menulet comes from a Mac OS X Hints article in MacWorld by Rob Griffiths.]

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Tip Two: Stop adding .DS_Store files to servers.

[This tip may be of interest for some system administrators of mixed Mac/PC departments It will be of little value or interest to anyone else.]

Tired of seeing dozens of ".DS_Store" files appearing in folders on your server shares? These files contain custom folder view settings in Mac OS X (for example whether a folder is set to list view or icon view).

Here is simple terminal command that prevents Mac OS X v10.4 from creating these little files on a shared network server. Type the following command in the Terminal application and restart the computer.

defaults write com.apple.desktopservices DSDontWriteNetworkStores true

Turning this feature off prevents Mac users from customizing how individual server folders look when they are first opened. (This tip is the complete opposite of Tip #43 "Change all folders to display in list view.")

Note: To prevent ".DS_Store" files from accumulating on the server this terminal command must be entered into each Mac OS X client. (Also, since this is a Mac OS X Tiger tip, your team will have to be upgraded to Tiger before this can be fully implemented.)

[Source: Article 301711 at Apple's support website.]

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QuickTips is a free weekly e-newsletter from CreativeTechs, Inc. Each week we publish a fresh mix of left-brain and right-brain tips based on our real world experience supporting hundreds of creative teams in the greater Seattle area. For a complete archive of previous tips, visit www.creativetechs.com/tips

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