WithoutInk

Product Reviews : EDC, Flashlights, Tech, Coffee, Pens, Etc...

How To Fix Firefox Fonts That Turned Bold in Mac OSX

By 7 Comments

An odd thing happened to me today at work. Firefox crashed, and when I restarted it the font that Firefox uses in the interface turned BOLD. The address bar text turned bold, the buttons and menus turned bold, the task bar turned bold… it drove me bonkers for a little while. Thankfully, all the website text was untouched and remained normal.

This anomaly was all a mystery to me, I never have seen it happen before. Very strange and very annoying. For reference: I am using the newest version of Firefox and the most up to date version of Mac OSX Snow Leopard. After some investigation, I found that the font “Lucida Grande” had become corrupt. So, I figure I would do this quick writeup on how I fixed it, hopefully it helps someone else out there…

How To Fix Firefox Fonts That Turned Bold in Mac OSX

1. Quit Firefox
2. Open your Applications Folder
3. Open Font Book
4. Find “Lucida Grande”
5. Right Click on “Lucida Grande”
6. Select “Reveal in Finder” from the menu
7. A new window will pop open, and “Lucida Grande” should be selected
8. Delete “Lucida Grande” (please note you will have to enter your password to delete it)
9. OSX will then restore the font like new (no worries, you do not have to back it up first)
10. Open Firefox & you should be good to go!

How to Install CUPS-PDF Virtual PDF Printer in Snow Leopard

By 14 Comments

CUPS-PDF is a really cool virtual PDF printer. Macs have been able to print to PDF for awhile now, but the process takes more clicks that it should. Enter CUPS-PDF, this is a little backend app, that installs a virtual PDF Printer on your Mac. Why would you want to do this? Well, if you are like me and you print to PDF more than you print to paper – you can save a number of clicks. Another nice thing, is that all the PDFs are saved in a common location.

How to Install CUPS-PDF in Snow Leopard
1. Download CUPS-PDF here [http://www.codepoetry.net/projects/cups-pdf-for-mosx]
2. Install CUPS-PDF
3. Open Terminal run the following command:
sudo chmod 0700 /usr/libexec/cups/backend/cups-pdf

Next we have to setup the Virtual PDF Printer
1. Open up Print & Fax Pref.pane
2. Add a new Printer by clicking the + button
3. Select: Default (The printers should start to propagate)
4. Select: CUPS-PDF
5. Select: Print Using – Generic Postscript Driver
6. Click: Add

Since Snow Leopard arrived there were some enhancements to security, so we have to run some commands to get everything to work…
1. In The finder select: GO > GO TO FOLDER
2. Enter: /etc/cups/
3. Click: GO
4. Open the file: cups-pdf.conf
5. Find: a line that starts with OUT and place a # before it (thus commenting the line out)
6. Find: a line that starts with AnonDirName and place an # before that as well.
7. Save the file, rewriting the original. Your Mac will require you to enter your password to commit the changes.
8. Open Terminal
9. Run the following command:
sudo ln -s /var/spool/cups-pdf/username /Users/username/cups-pdf
(replacing “username” with your username)

Now anytime you print to PDF via the CUPS-PDF Virtual printer, all the PDFs that are generated will be in your Home folder inside a folder called: CUPS-PDF. You can also, set the printed as default so you can just type: ?+P then hit Return to generate a PDF 😉

How To Fix Apple AddressBook Freezing In Snow Leopard

By 1 Comment

Are you having issues with Apple AddressBook after upgrading to Snow Leopard? Are you seeing the Beach Ball of doom show up each time you launch AddressBook?

If so this may be the solution you require….

1. Navigate to ~/Library/Application Support/Address Book
2. Delete this file: AddressBook-V22.abcddb
3. Then open the MetaData subfolder
4. Search inside MetaData for the term “smart”

I then deleted any smart group that I knew contained a negative statement. The group I deleted was “No Group” as its looking for cards that have no group. Once you are done with this Apple Mail & AddressBook should work perfectly. My recommendation is NOT to add the smartgroup back in, until there is a fix.

How To Fix Apple Mail Freezing in Snow Leopard

By Leave a Comment

After I upgraded to Snow Leopard, I found an issue with Apple Mail and Apple AddressBook. Basically, after the upgrade I noticed these two apps took awhile to open. As soon as I would open Apple Mail I would get the beach ball of doom for awhile. Once it cleared I was fine but it did take about 45 seconds to recover from it.

It also appears that Apple AddressBook shows the same symptoms. The dreaded beach ball of doom kicks in when I would open AddressBook as well.

Believe it or not there is a simple fix if this is happening to you as well.

The culprit… SmartGroups that contain a negative.

Solution:

1. Navigate to ~/Library/Application Support/Address Book
2. Delete this file: AddressBook-V22.abcddb
3. Then open the MetaData subfolder
4. Search inside MetaData for the term “smart”

I then deleted any smart group that I knew contained a negative statement. The group I deleted was “No Group” as its looking for cards that have no group. Once you are done with this Apple Mail & AddressBook should work perfectly. My recommendation is NOT to add the smartgroup back in, until there is a fix.

Apple Updates Snow Leopard to 10.6.1

By Leave a Comment

Apple certainly didn’t take long to push out the first update to Snow Leopard. They just updated Snow Leopardto 10.6.1 This update is really just a slew of patches and security fixes. One of the more important patches is for Flash. Snow Leopard shipped with an old version of Flash, which was a security risk. It has been recommended that all users of Snow Leopard update their Flash player to the current version. I installed the update yesterday and all is well so far. This update takes care of that risk, plus many other items…

Apple Updates Snow Leopard to 10.6.1
1. Improves compatibility with some Sierra Wireless 3G modems
2. Addresses an issue in which some printer compatibility drivers might not appear properly in the Add Printer browser
3, Addresses an issue that might cause DVD playback to stop unexpectedly
4. Addresses an issue that might make it difficult to remove an item from the Dock
5. Resolves an issue in which the Command-Option-T keyboard shortcut would sometimes bring up the special characters menu in applications such as Mail and TextEdit
6. Addresses instances in which auto account setup in Mail might not work
7. Resolves issues when sending mail with certain SMTP servers
8. Addresses an issue in which Motion 4 could become unresponsive
9. Includes an update to Adobe Flash Player plug-in version 10.0.32.18

For information on this update, please visit: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3810
For information on the security content, please visit: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1222

Hosting Provided by WP Engine

Hosted by WP Engine

Recent Posts

Elsewhere

Sign up for my Newsletter

Tags & Mental Pabulum

aftershaves apple apple mail apps badger black blue buy clean email follow fountain pens gillette google green how to image ink reviews inks install installer internet iphone list mac mail mail call os osx password reviews shaving show soap sotd ssh sync terminal update users video vintage wetshaving world youtube