Archive for November, 2007

I like most of the new features in Leopard (yes, I even like the translucent menu bar!), but there are as always small annoyances.

One of those annoyances is that the printer application stays open and in the dock after printing.

Fortunately there is an easy solution:
Next time you print something just right-click and select “Auto Quit” from the menu:

Auto-Quit the Printer

Voila - now the printer application will quit after the job is done.

Quicksilver’s iTunes plugin comes with several excellent scripts, one of them is to mute iTunes.

The only problem is, that you can still hear all the system sounds. Pretty annoying if you are in a meeting or sitting in a class.

My workaround was to write an Apple Script to control the system volume:

set curVol to (get (output volume of (get volume settings)))
if curVol > 0 then
  set volume output volume 0
else
  set volume output volume 50
end if

This script will mute the system volume, or set it back to 50% if it’s already muted (the value for “set volume” is a percentage value from 0 to 100).

That’s it, I created a keyboard trigger to execute this script (I used Shift-Ctrl-Command + M) and I can mute my system without having to use the mouse or trackpad.