My primary method of collecting research information while browsing the Internet on my Mac is to clip them as rich text or save links and URLs to Evernote.

There are times however, when I just want a quick way to copy and paste whatever information I select as pure text into a simple text file. In this instance, the text file acts as one big, giant clipboard (let’s call it “Clipboard.txt”) that gets a constant stream of new text incrementally added to the top, a collection point for my rapid-fire copy and paste activity in the browser.

I’d also want to perform this copy-and-paste activity without having to constantly switch between the browser (say, Safari) and the text editor. My text editor of choice for this kind of work is nvALT (a brilliant, Markdown-enhanced fork of Notational Velocity), which is able to instantaneously display the updated contents of Clipboard.txt, and syncs with Simplenote to boot.

It turns out that a free solution exists on the Mac, in the form of Automator, for exactly this kind of requirement.

Please note that if you want to view the generated Clipboard.txt text file in nvALT, the nvALT note storage option `Store and read notes on disk as:` must be set as `Plain Text Files`.

The following are the 7 steps required to construct such a solution, which we’ll name “Send text to nvALT“.

Steps to construct the “Send text to nvALT” Automator service

Step 1 – Launch the Automator app. I prefer to just invoke Spotlight with command+spacebar, type the first few characters of the app’s name, and hit return after the app is selected from the list.

Step 2 – Choose the Service document type. We’re building a workflow that can be called in any application with a keyboard shortcut or selected in a contextual menu brought up with a right mouse click, so select the Service icon and click the Choose button.

Step 3 – Add the Run Shell Script action. Make sure Actions is selected (this is the default), then search for “shell”. Alternatively, click on “Utilities” in the Library column, then click on the “Run Shell Script” action and drag it to the workflow area.

Step 4 – Paste the following code in the Run Shell Script action. I’ll explain in a bit about the script and file choices. Please replace with your own preferred folder and files.

cat > ~/My\ Stuff/@NV/dlc_temp.txt
printf "\n" >> ~/My\ Stuff/@NV/dlc_temp.txt
cat ~/My\ Stuff/@NV/Clipboard.txt >> ~/My\ Stuff/@NV/dlc_temp.txt
mv ~/My\ Stuff/@NV/dlc_temp.txt ~/My\ Stuff/@NV/Clipboard.txt

More details:

1. Folder: (User Home)/My Stuff/@NV. Notice in the code that “My Stuff” is entered as “My\ Stuff“. The script that runs in the shell expects literal spaces to be escaped with the backslash (“\”) character.
2. Temporary file: dlc_temp.txt. This file is required because I want the most recently-pasted item to appear at the top of my clipboard file. The UNIX shell command cat that’s used in the code is only able to append (or add) information to the end of an existing file. So I’ll be using “dlc_temp.txt” to paste in the most recent item, followed by a line feed, then the entire contents of the existing “Clipboard.txt”. The script will then rename “dlc_temp.txt” to “Clipboard.txt” and replace the old “Clipboard.txt”.
3. Clipboard file: Clipboard.txt. This will be the name of the main file that stores all my clipped textual information. Although not necessary, I’ll keep this file open in nvALT so that I can take random peeks at the information that’s been copied so far.

Step 5. Save the service and give it a name. Use command+s or File > Save…. I’m going to call it “Send text to nvALT”.

Step 6. Assign a keyboard shortcut. With a keyboard shortcut, all I’d need to do to add new information is to select some text in the browser (or in any other application for that matter – could also be a PDF in Preview) and hit the shortcut. Go to System Preferences > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts (I usually just search for “keyboard” in Spotlight).

Click on “Services” in the left column, then scroll the list on the right until you see the service you’ve just created. Double-click the empty space just to the right of the service name, and press the keys for the desired keyboard shortcut. In my case, it’s control+command+v.

There are two issues to look out for in this step:

1. Ensure that the assigned keyboard shortcut does not clash with any existing combination that’s in use by other applications. In my case, control+command+v clashes with the “Paste to Evernote” shortcut, so I disabled its use in Evernote.
2. It might be a bug, but I noticed that whenever I assign a keyboard shortcut in this window, the check mark on the left hand side of the service would disappear, effectively disabling the service. Make sure you check the box, if required, after you assign the shortcut.

Step 7. Use the new service. Open up a web page in your favorite browser or a PDF document in Preview.

Select some text. Clip the text to the text file using one of the following:

1. Right mouse click > Services (this step is sometimes unnecessary, depending on the application) > Send text to nvALT, or…
2. Name of app in the menu bar > Services > Send text to nvALT, or…
3. Simply hit control+command+v. Repeat this as many times as desired.

Open your Clipboard.txt text file in nvALT, a text editor such as TextMate, or in Quick Look (accessed by pressing Spacebar once Clipboard.txt is selected, this window remains open in Mac OS X Lion even after you’ve switched to another app). If you’re on Lion, do not view Clipboard.txt in TextEdit as the displayed content doesn’t get automatically refreshed with the addition of new content.

Summary

It’s pretty easy to build a custom Automator service to incrementally copy new information to the top of a text file. With a keyboard shortcut assigned to perform the copy, paste and file update in one stroke, you’ll save yourself from having to perform lots of tedious and repetitive keystrokes in clipping large amounts of textual information into a text file.

The new, default Safari 5.1 behavior for finding text on a webpage (keyboard shortcut command+f) is “Starts With”, and not “Contains” like it was in older versions.

This means that if you’re looking for the word “Expression”, you’d have to begin by typing “Exp”.

Entering a portion of the word by starting somewhere in the middle, for instance “xp” or “ess”, would simply give you a “Not found” result.

To revert to the old Safari behavior, simply start a Find operation, then click on the magnifying glass and select the “Contains” option. Safari remembers your choice until the next time you manually change it again.

If you feel like using a more technical method to force “Contains” to be the default behavior, follow this plist hacking tutorial by brunerd.

In Mac OS X Lion, when you open a single PDF document in Preview, you won’t see the sidebar.

This is the default behavior in Lion, unlike in older versions of Mac OS X where the sidebar is visible, showing the table of contents or thumbnail images representing the individual pages of the document.

To change this default behavior so that you’re always able to see the sidebar whenever you open a PDF, you’ll need to change a preference option.

Call up Preferences by clicking on Preview > Preferences… in the menu or pressing the keyboard shortcut command+,.

In the Preferences window, click on PDF, and check the option On opening documents: Show sidebar when opening single file.

Your PDF documents should now open with the sidebar displayed by default.

You can also control the display of the sidebar with the view control buttons located in the toolbar.

From left to right, the view control buttons are:

1. Content Only – no sidebar will be shown.
2. Thumbnails – sidebar is visible, showing thumbnail representations of the pages in the PDF.
3. Table of Contents – sidebar shows a list of topics which, when clicked on, takes you directly to the relevant page.
4. Contact Sheet – no sidebar or content is shown in this mode, but a grid of thumbnails of the document pages is displayed.

Since switching from Windows to the Mac in late 2007, I’d always wanted a way to cut and paste files from one folder (or directory, in Windows parlance) using keyboard shortcuts.

In Windows:

1. You first select one or more files.
2. Press Ctrl+X to “cut” those files.
3. Navigate to the destination directory.
4. Press Ctrl+V to “paste” the files there.

Prior to Mac OS X Lion, to perform the same on the Mac, I’ve had to open and arrange two Finder windows, one is the source folder where I want to copy the files from, and the other is the destination folder where I want to move the files to. Having selected the files, I’d then drag them from one folder across to the other.

With the just-released Mac Lion 10.7, you can now use keyboard shortcuts to “move the files” from one folder location to the other.

No, we don’t use the term “cut and paste files” over here in the Mac world.

Here’s how you move files on the Mac:

1. Select the file or files you want to move. I’ve selected two files in the example below.

   

2. Press command+c to copy the files.
3. Navigate to the destination folder.
4. Press option+command+v to move the files there. The screen capture below shows the two files already moved to the destination folder.

   

Windows habits die hard, and I personally find the system-wide “cut and paste” concept more consistent and easier to work with. On the Mac, you have command+x –> command+v for cutting and pasting document data, while having to remember to use a different set of key combinations – command+c –> option+command+v – to copy and move files.

I’m confident though, that it’s just a matter of time before muscle memory sets in and I should be able to deftly move files with my keyboard without having to think too hard about the whole process.

Launch Activity Monitor, show All Processes, filter on “saf”, and you’ll notice that Safari 5.1 now has a new running process named Safari Web Content.

[Click for a larger image]

The reason for this is described well in this article titled “Major overhaul makes OS X Lion king of security“:

With virtually all browser exploits targeting the way the program parses web content, Apple engineers have tightly locked down the new process, called Safari Web Content. The design is intended to limit the damage that can be done in the event an attacker is able to exploit a buffer overflow or other bug in the browser.

“Now, you end up inside this restricted process that only does the web parsing, and you can’t do other things you might want to do as an attacker, such as write files or read a person’s documents,” Miller explained. “Even when you get code execution, you no longer have free rein to do whatever you want. You can do only what the sandbox allows you to do.”

The current version of Mac OS X is 10.6.7.

If you wish to reinstall Snow Leopard on your machine and your installation DVDs contain the older version of Snow Leopard, you’ll need to download Mac OS X v10.6.5 Update (Combo) to bring your clean installation up to the latest version of Mac OS X.

A special version of the 10.6.7 update is available for early 2011 MacBook Pro machines.

Here are two links to forum posts that explain why you’d want to download the Combo Update rather than letting Software Update on your Mac download the smaller file:

1. “nuvolino” writes:
   

   … what it does it ensures that all parts of the update will be installed not just the parts that are perceived as “extra and changed” what this means is that its almost like a fresh install it completely over write all files so you have a nice default update … what this also means is if there was any left over corrupted files or any part of the OS that may have been previously installed that may be out of whack it gets replaced too so you know nothing has been left out

2. “Graeme” writes:
   

   if you have a few macs to update e.g a MacPro, Macbook Pro, iMac, Mini Mac and a Macbook Air or a few different generations of the same type of mac then you only need to download one update (the Combo) and it does the job for all of them.

See more Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard downloads.

The current version of Mac OS X is 10.6.5.

If you wish to reinstall Snow Leopard on your machine and your installation DVDs contain the older version of Snow Leopard, you’ll need to download Mac OS X v10.6.5 Update (Combo) to bring your clean installation up to the latest version of Mac OS X.

See more Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard downloads.

The current version of Mac OS X is 10.6.4.

If you wish to reinstall Snow Leopard on your machine and your installation DVDs contain the older version of Snow Leopard, you’ll need to download Mac OS X v10.6.4 Update (Combo) to bring your clean installation up to the latest version of Mac OS X.

“noexpectations” made the following comment on AppleInsider:

MAC OS X is a pain for concurrent, multiple monitors. I move my app to the secondary screen but the command menu is stuck on top of the first screen. Is there a fix for this?

“DocNo42″ proposed the two solutions, as well as a vs. comparison to the experience on the Windows platform:

If you want to experience real pain, try two monitors on Windows. And if your really frisky, try three. Then try to mirror two displays on one while having a separate third. Trivial on the Mac (option drag one screen on top of another to mirror those two while leaving the third alone). Stuff I have taken for granted for *decades* on the Mac that Windows, even Windows 7, struggles to do well. I still run across video cards that won’t play video embedded in PowerPoint on the second display. Freaking 2010 and some video cards/drivers choke on this under Windows. Yeah “diversity”!

BTW – here is an excellent solution for you: http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/33264/secondbar.

Although personally I prefer this solution, pioneered by early Mac accessory maker E Machines when people complained about having to go to the top of the screen for the menu bar on the first of the large 21″ high resolution monitors back in the day – convert the menubar to a contextual menu: http://mac.brothersoft.com/dejamenu.html.

Works even better than the menubar in every menu that Windows does, and ironically is how the NeXT OS that OSX is based on worked. Middle mouse button FTW.

The keyboard shortcut to access the Help menu on the Mac is shift+command+/.