Moom is a great utility from Many Tricks for managing your windows. It adds a popover to the green “best fit” button in most windows, containing quick-access options for doing things like setting a window to take up the entire left or right half of your display.

It gets much more powerful, though, allowing you to quickly lay out windows to fit your workflow, save a bunch of windows as a “Snapshot” to use over and over, and even specify pixel dimensions and a display edge for a window. As you might expect, Moom also has healthy support for shortcuts. You can specify multiple actions like “Center” and “Move & Zoom,” then set a keyboard shortcut for quickly using that action on every window you want. Snapshots are also invited to the shortcut party.

I’ve used Moom for a couple months, and it quickly became one of the apps I have to install when setting up a fresh Mac. Moom is some of the best $5 you can spend on a utility.

Customizing a Group in Alfred Alfred's handy extensions

Alfred, the incredibly useful productivity utility from Running with Crayons, lets you create “Groups” for launching a bunch of apps and files all at once (the Powerpack add-on is required). Add everything you want to a list, give it a keyword, and call it up whenever you want your Mac to do more of your work for you.

Right-click a group in Alfred’s preferences and you can export it as a .alfredextension file to share with others. Running with Crayons now has an Extensions site for finding more extensions and sharing your creations.

Taking this idea one step further in version 1.0 which just went beta, Alfred’s upcoming Global Hotkeys feature allows you to assign keyboard shortcuts to open Groups, collections of URLs, specific apps, toggling iTunes features, and more.

Alfred is free to use. Its Powerpack option, required for features mentioned here and many others, costs about $20.

why do files open that I previously closed when I open applications from the launchpad

Asked by Anonymous

Restoring your open windows and documents is a new feature of Lion called Resume. Apple wanted to make it easier for you to get right back to what you were doing the last time you quit an app or shut down your Mac. But if you don’t like the feature, you have a couple options for getting around it or taking more control of how apps resume:

  1. You can disable the Resume feature system-wide in the System Preferences > General pane, pictured below:

  1. You can get in the habit of proactively closing documents and apps before you quit them or restart your Mac. In most apps, including browsers, Command-Option-W will close all open documents, windows, and tabs, but not quit the app (in Safari, it will close all tabs except the one you’re currently viewing). It’s a great way to quickly clear the slate and stop all that stuff from reopening next time. After that you can Command-Q to quit the app or leave it alone to reopen the next time you restart.

  2. You can install a utility, such as RestoreMeNot, that gives you more control over how your Mac and apps behave with Lion’s Resume feature.

My imac is currently using OS X 10.4.11 as I did not get around to upgrading the operating system. I would like to upgrade it now is this still possible? The next software update seems to be no longer available and it appears I would have to go straight to snow leopard. It is has a 2.16 GHZ intel core 2 duo processor.

Asked by Anonymous

I think your best bet is to head down to an Apple Store with your iMac. I’ve heard that if you tell them you want to upgrade to Lion, they’ll install Snow Leopard for you, then walk you through buying Lion in the Mac App Store.

Alternatively, you might be able to find a Snow Leopard disc on eBay or Amazon.

Pre-order the "Steve Jobs" biography on iBooks and support Finer Things in Tech

The only biography Steve Jobs ever authorized arrives on Monday. Jobs gave Walter Isaacson unprecedented access to his life, and judging from the teaser snippets they’ve released over the last couple of weeks, it sounds like this will be an incredible look into the life of a famously private genius.

If you feel like supporting the Finer Things in Tech, you can pre-order through this iBookstore link to send some good vibes my way. Of course, you can also order the hardcover and Kindle edition through Amazon, though the company unfortunately does not run its affiliate program in the state of Illinois.

Either way, thanks for reading and supporting The Finer Things in Tech.

High-res iCloud.com displays a custom thumbnail icon in Safari’s Top Sites [Updated] Does anyone know if this is powered by some kind of markup that any site can use to supply browsers with a custom thumbnail or icon for Top Sites-like views? Update: Nik Fletcher describes how this works, as it involves an apparently undocumented snippet of JavaScript for serving up this preview image.

iCloud.com displays a custom thumbnail icon in Safari’s Top Sites [Updated]

Does anyone know if this is powered by some kind of markup that any site can use to supply browsers with a custom thumbnail or icon for Top Sites-like views?

Update: Nik Fletcher describes how this works, as it involves an apparently undocumented snippet of JavaScript for serving up this preview image.

High-res If you use Screen Sharing to control or observe one Mac from a second Mac that has a smaller display, the first Mac’s desktop can look quite small (for example: Screen Sharing my 27-inch iMac from my 11-inch MacBook Air is an exercise in a lot of squinting). But Screen Sharing’s View > Turn Scaling Off/On option will let you get a 1:1 view of the target Mac no matter the size of your Screen Sharing window. This makes it much easier to see what you’re doing and navigate the target Mac. Move your mouse near any border of the window to scroll around the target Mac’s display.

If you use Screen Sharing to control or observe one Mac from a second Mac that has a smaller display, the first Mac’s desktop can look quite small (for example: Screen Sharing my 27-inch iMac from my 11-inch MacBook Air is an exercise in a lot of squinting). But Screen Sharing’s View > Turn Scaling Off/On option will let you get a 1:1 view of the target Mac no matter the size of your Screen Sharing window.

This makes it much easier to see what you’re doing and navigate the target Mac. Move your mouse near any border of the window to scroll around the target Mac’s display.