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snapHappy is a shareware application offered not as a complete replacement for iPhoto, but as a companion application to it and an alternate way of doing some cool things with your photos. Rather than using one program exclusively users may find that using the two programs in conjunction with one another offers the best of both worlds. For example, you may decide to use snapHappy to create your photo albums but use iPhoto for making web pages from these albums.

I downloaded the snapHappy demo to try it out, and was favorably impressed with its feature set, which includes:
- browse and work with any folder of photos
- create, browse, and work with flexible, editable custom albums
- add pictures to albums from desktop, browser window list, or gallery window
- delete and reorder album pictures
- manage albums (create, delete, rename)
- export pictures in different formats
- scale pictures dynamically and visually by resizing browser window
- view dynamic picture size dimensions in browser window
- save scaled pictures individually or in groups
- drag scaled pictures directly from snapHappy to email or other applications without saving

snapHappy Preference Settings:
- select optional default folder (opened when snapHappy is launched)
- set hide menu and hide cursor  for  full screen mode
- set default graphic editor application
- select from 71 slide show transition effects
- set slide show transition speed
- set slide show interval
- select slide show background color
- set slide show looping
- choose to print pictures at full size or displayed size
- set "auto landscape" printing
- set default email recipient address for sending pictures

http://www.ttpsoftware.com/snapHappy/snapHappy.html

snapHappy is free to try out for 15 days.

Some things that snapHappy does that iPhoto does not:
- work with any folder containing photos (no importing or creating albums needed)
- export pictures in a variety of graphic formats (eg. tiff to jpeg)

Some things that snapHappy does differently from iPhoto:
- wysiwyg scaling of images (resize the browser window)
- faster photo loading (after the initial loading of a folder)
- optional default photo folder (opens automatically when snapHappy is launched)
- open pictures with their creator application
- open pictures with a default graphic editor application
- better slide show options (71 transition effects, set interval, set speed, set background color)
- choose to print picture at their currently scaled size or at their original size
- "auto landscape" printing (pictures that are wider than they are tall are automatically rotated to landscape orientation for printing)

With iPhoto you get only one way to access your photos. All photos must be imported into iPhoto's library before you can do anything with them. However, with snapHappy you have total flexibility with how you access and organize your photos. Any folder with photos in it can be browsed and worked with directly. With snapHappy's Folder Manager you can move, copy, or make aliases to photos from any folder into any other folder. You can, however, still create custom albums at any time and populate them with photos from anywhere on any mounted disk. snapHappy lets you take full advantage of OS X's organizational power while iPhoto removes you from having direct access to it.

In iPhoto resizing photos is done through a dialog box where you specify some parameters for how you want the photos resized. However, you have to imagine what the output will look like. In snapHappy the process of resizing photos is completely visual. Just resize the main window to achieve the desired photo size. Then, if desired, save photos individually, in a group, or save the whole folder of pictures at the scaled size.

New in version 1.1:
• Make web pages from picture folders or albums
• Create ePics email slide shows and picture collections
• Drag and drop folders on browser or gallery window to open then
• Launch Image Capture to download pictures from a digital camera
• Apply shapes to pictures
• Open and work with individual picture files
• Trial period increased to 30 days
 
System requirements:
• Mac OS X 10.0 or higher
 
snapHappy is $14.00 shareware  
   
For more information, visit:
http://www.ttpsoftware.com/snapHappy.html

Mail.app to Eudora

From Jeffrey S. Eisenberg

I saw your comments on applelinks.com...do you know of a way to convert mail.app mailboxes to Eudora?

Thanks for your time and any info you can provide!!

-Jeff Eisenberg

Hi Jeff;

Readers Michael D. Allen and Michael King supplied us with the information on how to do this in OS X Odyssey 98 and 102 respectively, reprinted below:

From Michael D. Allen

mboxes created by OS X Mail application are packages (hidden folders) not files. That's why your ResEdit trick didn't work. If you control-click on any .mbox icon the popup menu will display "Show Package Contents". If you chose this option, the package will open to reveal four files: Info.plist, table_of_contents, mbox, mbox.SKinde. If you drop the file mbox onto TextEdit it will open. This file looks exactly like a standard mailbox file used by Unix mail readers. This format is almost exactly what Eudora wants to read. All you have to do is convert the Unix newline (lf) characters to carriage return (cr) characters. In Tex-Edit, I did this from the Special menu by choosing Quick Modify, LFs->CRs (UNIX->Mac) and saved the file as the original mailbox name minus the ".mbox". You can just drop it into or save it directly to ~/Documents/Eudora Folder/Mail Folder/ and Eudora will be able to use it. You don't even have to change the Creator code unless you want a Eudora specific icon. This is a pain in the butt, if you've got a lot of mailboxes to convert. If I was going to return to Eudora, I'd write a application to convert all my files or put together a shell script to do the job from a terminal window. Hopefully, Qualcomm will add Mail to its Import Mail menu in a future release.

From Michael King:

I have discovered a successful and easy method to do so without creating my own applications or sweating any scripting.

1. Extract the mbox file from the mailbox to be converted.
2. Rename it (if converting more than one, so that you do not get confused with more than one file named "mbox").
3. Open up the utility MailConverter. This is available from http://www.fogcity.com/em_utilities.html Fog City's website and runs fine under OS X Classic mode.
4. From the File menu, select Convert File.
5. Follow the prompts and open the mailboxes created with Eudora. They open up perfectly, though I should note that I did not have success transferring over attachments -- the messages are fine, but the attachments themselves become converted into texts.

I hope that this is of help to people.

Michael King

OS X: Preventing IE from becoming the default browser

From James Huston

Hello, I'm sending this to try and get it to as many sites as I can.

I'm sure during your OS X Odyssey and various browser tests you've had your chosen default browser changed to something else, namely Internet Explorer, at seemingly random times. I use SlashDock to get news headlines and one launch will open Navigator and the next URL I launch will open Internet Explorer.

I was browsing the IE 5.2.1 package last night and made an interesting discovery.

> Right-click/Control-Click the Internet Explorer application and > choose Show Package Contents. Open Contents and then open Info- > macos.plist in your editor of choice.
>
> near the bottom you'll see this key.
> <key>CFBundleURLTypes</key>
> In that key is an array of values in the following form >
> <key>CFBundleURLName</key>
> <string>http URL</string>
> <key>CFBundleURLSchemes</key>
> <array>
> <string>http</string>
> </array>
> <key>LSIsAppleDefaultForScheme</key>
> <true/>
>
> The final association is what we are worried about, LS is OS X's > Launch Services which handles all the file typing and associations > for the OS. Deleting these lines should prevent IE from hijacking > your browser setting.

I have a script set up to install a new Navigator nightly every day, this usually would result in IE becoming my default browser again, well it didn't happen last night, so I guess it works.

Hard Drive Partitioning In OS X

From Phreesoal

Hello Charles,

I was reading your site about HD partitioning in Mac OS X. I just bought a new iBook 700MHz with a 20GB HD and I want to partition it.

I thought your site was going to be the complete answer of sites that discuss partitioning under OS X. However, I'm needing more advice on this. :-\

Specifically, I'm seeking info on partition size and name suggestions, why they are suggested and how to move forth after partitioning to insure that I am consistent in where things are stored, apps are installed, etc.. In other words, I'm needing something thorough.

Do you know of such a site where I can obtain this info? I've searched a few Mac-based forums and web sites in the last 24 hours, but still can't find a top-notch, all information source on partitioning with OS X. Nevertheless, your site was helpful!

Thanks and I await your reply.

Na

Hi Na;

Actually, partitioning is a pretty free-form thing. You can make whatever number of partitions you want up to I think eight, and name them anything you want.

The operative metaphor is to simply think of the separate partitions as virtual separate hard drives and treat them accordingly.

I generally use four partitions:

1. OS X and X-native applications, support files, etc. 2. OS 9 and Classic applications
3. Document and picture archives
4. Installers and other less frequently accessed storage.

However, that's just my organization mode. You really can do anything you want. Make sure you make the OS X partition large enough to accommodate future expansion (I would suggest at least 5 MB).

Hope this helps.

Charles

Re: Hard Drive Partitioning In OS X

Hi,

Thanks for your quick reply! Since I'm new to Unix, there's alot of hesitation with going through with partitioning, "where" apps need to be placed and how to keep consistent with the file structure after I partition and install more apps to insure that things are not scattered all over the HD. I'm a neat freak and would want to keep things organized as much as I can. :-)

Last night, I found another site similar to yours about partitioning, which pointed this info below. Again, me being new to Unix, I don't know how this would impact me. Here's the site I got it from: http://www.kung-foo.tv/xtips.php

"I store all my applications (both Classic and OSX) in a different partition. I just find it neat. There is a bug in Apple's Installer, though. It assumes all applications are kept in the original location. For example, if you move Mail.app to a folder named "Internet", update 10.1 fails to search for the moved file and create a Mail.app folder in the original location with the modified components. It's up to you to copy over the changed files into the old Mail.app. Annoying, indeed."

So, I'm back at square one in asking, do you know of any thorough online help and suggestions with partitioning?

Na

Hi again Na,

I just either install all my OS X apps. to the desktop and then manually drag them to the Applications folder, or occasionally they will auto-install to the Applications folder.

Here are some links to pages with tutorials on partitioning:

http://www.sciencequest.org/support/computers/mac/topics/partitioning.html

http://help.acusd.edu/Articles/partition.shtml

http://www.bombich.com/mactips/partition.html

http://www.macoptions.com/links/trouble.html

http://hardwarehell.com/harddriv.htm

Charles

Re: Hard Drive Partitioning In OS X

From Phreesoal

Great, thanks Charles! I'm already reading the first link, as it seems to be pretty thorough. It's great to get so much support and assistance from people like yourself of the Mac community.

Na

The OS X Odyssey archives may be accessed here:
http://www.applelinks.com/news/odyssey/

CM

Charles W. Moore

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