I recently wrote about a nifty little application/contextual menu item for OSX that makes attaching files to a new email easy as pie. Ego-systems also offers a System Preference Pane which takes an often asked-for hack, changing the screenshot file format, and puts it right where it should have been to begin with.

There are plenty of 3rd party applications and utilities which can change your screenshot file format. You could also do it manually with the terminal. But Ego-systems' Screenshots Preferance Pane makes it easy to select from nearly a dozen different graphic file formats. The preference pane also allows you to select a specific folder to which all screenshots will be stored in.

As I stated earlier, there are plenty of ways to adjust your screenshot file format, but this preference pane makes it simple - and free!

If you're reading a Web page and want to go back to the last site you visited without leaving the current site you're on, there's a simple trick to allow you to do so.

Hold down the Command (Apple) key and click the Back button in Firefox or Safari. The site you're currently visiting remains open and the previous site you visited will open in a new tab.

Tip courtesy of The Graphic Mac.

In honor of Father's Day, XtraLean Software is offering a special deal for Mac enthusiasts. Buy Shutterbug at the discounted rate of $29.95 (normally $39.95) and receive ImageWell (normally $19.95) absolutely FREE!

Just use the coupon code MACDAD08 when you make your purchase before June 15th through the XtraLean Father's Day store.

ImageWell allows you to Edit and Send your pictures, screenshots and other files to anyone, anywhere with one simple click of a button! Batch process your images, layer multiple images, label your screenshots, add drop shadows, shapes and borders, save your favorite styles, and much more. Download a demo here.

Shutterbug allows you to get a site up in a hurry. Satisfy the hunger and do more with your website - photo albums, movies, journals, image rollovers, contact forms and a selection of more than 80 fully customizable free themes. Create a simple online gallery or go all the way with a full featured website. Try ShutterBug and experience the control and freedom everyone is talking about. Shutterbug is a template-based Web editor that also allows you FULL WYSIWYG control. Download a demo here.

I can personally vouch for both products. I know the developers quite well and they're very responsive to questions & suggestions. I have used both of these great products for years and they couldn't be easier.

Since before OS X we've been using Stickies to hold small pieces of important information that we need at hand.

There is a really powerful small feature of the Stickies.app in OS X that let's any sticky note float over all other windows making it visible at all times. To make a sticky float above all windows select it and press: Apple-Alt-F (Command-Option-F)

This is really useful when you have to consider and copy info from several sources for the job you're working on. Remember you can have all kinds of info on your Stickies, not just text.

You probably know that there is an application called Keychain Access on your Mac OSX system. But did you know that you can reveal all the passwords stored in it? Keychain Access stores all kinds of passwords, such as Wi-Fi networks, ftp access, websites, mail, etc.

For example if you have a bookmark in Transmit with a password stored in it and you want to retrieve it you can go to Keychain Access search for the name of the server you are interested in. Select the right key and get info with Apple(Cmd)-I. Now you will need to click the Show password switch which will prompt you for your admin password. Once you typed it in, the password for that specific key will now be visible.

I personally like to open a new folder for each project and within that another folder for every version of the project. This way I can easily follow the progression, do not overwrite old files accidentally and can dump old versions easily once the project is complete.

Every time I create a new version of the project in Finder I simply press and hold the Alt (Option) button and drag the folder. OS X will create a duplicate of the folder and renames it with a successive version number automatically. Quite convenient.

A small drawback is that I duplicate all files every time, which is not really an issue in this day and age with 200GB+ hard disk space. It's only a problem if the image files are hundreds of megabytes large and do not change from version to version. In this case I usually create a separate folder for items that do not change, such as images or fonts.

I know the Adobe package contains Version Cue, but I never really managed to grasp how it works. Every time I try to learn about it, all I find is marketing mumbo-jumbo instead of a simple tutorial on how to use it, and I get discouraged. If you know a place to learn about it, please share!

Also, I would be interested to learn about your versioning strategy!

For those of us whose work revolves within the realm of browser compatibility, we always want to make sure that our CSS styling works perfectly as planned out. However, different browsers have different ways of implementing CSS properties and worse case, some of them are not supported by some of the most widely and commonly used browsers. CSS3.info provides a useful tool that will quickly test your browser which CSS selectors are supported or not by your browser(s).

http://www.css3.info/selectors-test/test.html

Have you ever wondered if a client received your important email already? Don't you wish you had a way to tell?

It can be done, although it's a bit more complicated than just clicking a switch. Visit Spypig and follow the instructions for a one off tracking image that will be used to check the delivery of your email.

You could do this with your own web host, by checking when that particular unique image has been accessed by your recipients email application, but it would be complicated to set-up a new image every time and then keep checking when the stats show access.

The good thing Spypig works with most email systems, whether you use Apple Mail.app or Gmail.

Here is a handy little application that improves efficiency if you work a lot with html, css and graphics under Mac OS X.

Color Picker Pro as the name suggests is a beefed up color picker with a magnifying glass and a container for picked colors. Here are the steps on how you are supposed to make use of it:

1. Hover over the graphics on your screen with your cursor and locate the pixel with the color you want to pick.
2. Press Apple-X to copy the color to the picker.
3. If you're happy with the picked color drop it into one of the containers below.
4. Once all the colors required have been collected you can start working on your code.
5. Whenever you need the hexadecimal code of a specific color, instead of remembering and typing it, just drag and drop the small colored square from Color Picker Pro's containers to the text editor.
6. Color Picker Pro will insert the hex code including the # sign right into the document.

Keep CPP open when you code and use it whenever you need it. It's quick and visual. I find it much easier to use than goofing around with Photoshop for this simple purpose.

You can make CPP float above all other application if you don't want to keep switching to it, while you click around in windows.

Also, it's important to note that you can customize the textual output the way the colors are described. This can be useful when you're developing an identity guideline book and you don't want to use the technical HEX colors to describe the RGB values.

CPP has one additional small feature that you may find useful. With the key combination Apple-D you can set the Desktop color to the active color being picked.

You can arrange to a grid all your document icons in a Finder window by selecting the menu View / Arrange by.

But, what if you want the snap to grid option to be applied to a few items only. Simply press the Apple (Command) key while dragging the icons in position. The icon will snap to place with a smooth transition. You can even do this to several icons at once.