Leopard 10.5.2 update adds functionality to Stacks.
Stacks is probably the most criticized feature in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. Why? Because while Apple added functionality to the Dock with Stacks, it also removed functionality that many Tiger users liked and depended upon.
Fortunately, Apple was listening to users’ complaints. In the recent Leopard 10.5.2 upgrade, it changed the way Stacks works, adding back features that were available in Tiger. Here’s an overview of the new features in Stacks and how you can set stacks options.
Seeing — and Setting — Options
As with the original iteration of Stacks, you can set the options for a specific Stack by Control-clicking or right-clicking it. This displays a menu of options like the one shown here.
I’m pleased to see that Apple has done away with the submenus it used in the original version of Stacks in favor of a stacked (no pun intended) set of options that is organized by category. This will make it easier to see and choose the option you want.
New Sort Options
There are now five sort options:
Name
Date Added
Date Modified
Date Created
Kind
This should make a lot of people happy, since not everyone likes to view lists by name or date.
New Display Options
There are now two options for the Stacks icon display in the Dock:
Folder displays the stack as a folder. If you’ve assigned a custom icon to the Stacks folder, that’s the folder icon that appears.
Stack display the stacked icons for folder contents. This means the first icon in the folder is what appears in the Dock, with other icons mostly hidden “beneath” it. This was the only display option in the original release of Mac OS X 10.5.
The new Folder display option was added to satisfy users who complained that the icon was not intuitive or consistent. For example, if the Downloads stack folder was sorted in date order, each time you downloaded a file, the icon would change. Now you can elect to show each Stack icon as a folder that doesn’t change.
Although I’d come up with a good workaround for this — which I presented at my Peachpit Press presentation at Macworld Expo — I’m glad I don’t need a workaround anymore.
New View Option
There’s now an additional view option: List. This displays the contents of a stack the same way Tiger displayed the contents of folders on the Dock — complete with hierarchical menus, which I covered as a useful tip in my Tiger book. In fact, this is the feature I personally missed most when I upgraded to Leopard — I used hierarchical menus in the Dock extensively on all of my Macs.
One of the things I’ve been following from arm’s length is the audio and video blogging phenomena. I’m talking about sites like Utterz, Seesmic, and Viddler.
I’ve tried all three and until I tried Viddler, I couldn’t get excited about any of them. But Viddler has a few features that make video blogging easy and fun — primarily because it works so well with WordPress.
In this series of articles, I’ll explain how you can use Viddler to create video content with any compatible camera attached to your computer and get that content on your blog. And, if you’re a WordPress user, I’ll tell you about two Viddler plugins you can use to make it easy for your blog readers to find your video content on Viddler — even if you didn’t post it on your blog — and even leave video comments for you.
What is Viddler?
Viddler is an online service that enables you to upload or record videos that can then be shared with others. It’s a bit like YouTube, only classier and used by people who want to communicate rather than show off entertainment-based content.
At least that’s my take on it.
Viddler uses Flash to capture video from a camera attached to your computer. It works great with my iMac’s built-in iSight camera and microphone, as well as the iMage camera I bought for traveling with my old PowerBook.
But you don’t have to capture video directly to Viddler. You can take an existing video file and upload it. Viddler supports .mov, .mpg, .wmv, .avi, and .m4v formats. You can’t, however, upload television shows or other material that’s likely to be copyrighted. Viddler doesn’t have the same deep pockets as YouTube and probably doesn’t want to be sued. Besides, you shouldn’t be sharing that stuff anyway.
Once content is on Viddler’s server, it can be set as private, public, or available to just your friends. (Like most social networking sites, you can create a network of friends to share videos you don’t want the general public to see.) You can also share your videos with others on other social networking sites or by embedding them in your blog or e-mail messages.
Getting Started
Of course, to use Viddler, you need an account. Go to http://www.viddler.com/ and click the big green Sign Me Up button. Then follow the prompts to create a user ID and password. You’ll have to provide a real e-mail address, since Viddler will be sending you a confirmation e-mail. Once you get that e-mail, click the link in it to finish setting up your account.
You can now create or upload videos. I’ll discuss both of those tasks in future installments of this series.
Meanwhile, if you have a Viddler account, why not take a moment to share the info about it with us? Use the Comments link or form for this post to provide your Viddler username so we can check out some of your videos.
This update supports system software components shared by all iLife ’08 applications to improve their stability and performance. This update also supports important bug fixes for Aperture 2.0.
I use ecto to compose and post entries on my various WordPress blog-based sites, including this one. One of the things I like about ecto is that is stores all of my posts on my computer, so I don’t need to be online to read something I wrote. This is especially useful when I’m using a laptop out on the road. I can write a blog entry offline and even include links to other existing entries on any of my sites and then post it when I have an Internet connection.
I recently upgraded from ecto 2 to ecto 3, which is still in beta (but looking good). Because of some problems with the updater trying to update the old version of ecto, I decided to delete it and its database of entries and stick to ecto 3. I did that one day last week — I think it was Wednesday.
This morning, I woke remembering that the old version of ecto had, in its post database, a post I’d written but never published. It was a lengthy post with images that I really wanted to save for future publication or other use. But with ecto and its database deleted, the post was gone.
Or was it?
I’d bought a 500GB external hard disk and had set it up for use with Time Machine when I installed Leopard on my iMac last fall. Time Machine is designed precisely for situations like this — when you realize that you’ve deleted something you shouldn’t have.
In my situation, I needed to recover the ecto 2 application file and the folder containing the blog post database. I started with the application. I opened the Applications folder on my computer and clicked the Time Machine icon in the Dock. The cool (but rather silly) interface kicked in. I used the timeline on the right side of the screen to scroll back a few days. The ecto file did not appear. I scrolled back a few more days to the middle of last week. When the screen refreshed, the file was there. I selected it and clicked the Restore button. Time Machine closed and the file was copied to my current Applications folder.
I repeated this process for the ecto folder in the Application Support folder.
Then I double-clicked the ecto application, re-entered my registration information, and recovered the “lost” blog post.
Based on this experience, I’m thrilled with Time Machine.
Got any stories about how Time Machine saved your files? Use the Comments link or form for this post. I’m sure others would like to read about them.
The 10.5.2 Update is recommended for all users running Mac OS X Leopard and includes general operating system fixes that enhance the stability, compatibility and security of your Mac.
Seeing — and Setting — Options
New View Option
You can learn more about Stacks as it was originally released in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard on pages 172-174 of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard: Visual QuickStart Guide.
Of course, to use Viddler, you need an account. Go to 
In my situation, I needed to recover the ecto 2 application file and the folder containing the blog post database. I started with the application. I opened the Applications folder on my computer and clicked the Time Machine icon in the Dock. The cool (but rather silly) interface kicked in. I used the timeline on the right side of the screen to scroll back a few days. The ecto file did not appear. I scrolled back a few more days to the middle of last week. When the screen refreshed, the file was there. I selected it and clicked the Restore button. Time Machine closed and the file was copied to my current Applications folder. 
On November 18, 2008 at 3:11 pm, 
On November 18, 2008 at 2:59 pm, 
On November 14, 2008 at 10:17 am, 
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