#lion tips

Here's how to bring Notification Center in Mountain Lion to front, using a simple Keyboard Shortcut. You can do this in just 3 steps.

Apple's Mountain Lion bought in 200 new user features. One of the most important feature is the new Notification Center. Currently, the Notification Center can be accessed only by clicking the icon that's present at the top right corner of the screen, or by doing a two finger edge swipe on the MacBook's trackpad.

But there are some times where you would want the Notification Center to popup using just a keyboard shortcut. Thanks to the Mac OS X's default Keyboard Shortcut feature under System Preferences. You can set a new Keyboard Shortcut to bring this notification center up in just three steps.

Let's get started then!

How to bring up Notification Center using simple Keyboard Shortcut:

Open System Preferences

Search for Keyboard Shortcuts (Shown below)

The window will take you to the Keyboard Shortcut screen, with Mission Control selected by default.

Just click on the Notification Center in the right pane, and key in the shortcut you'd want.

Now, try the shortcut for yourself!

Hope this helps! :-)

Mac Users: So your shiny new Lion has been released into the wild and with it came a shiny new LaunchPad. But a lot of users don't like how it puts every application in there. So, here's how to make it only show what you want it to show, but prevent it from corrupting.

Use LaunchPad-Control to hide apps you don't need in LaunchPad and follow these instructions:

Arrange the apps the way you want them. Get them exactly how they should be.

Navigate to ~/Library/Application Support/Dock/ and make an archive of the Database file there. (Right-click and choose Compress) This is is in your personal Library. You can use the Go menu to go to this folder easily. Rename the archive "Before".

Use LaunchPad-Control to hide the apps and folders you want to not see. Like ones that run at startup or other miscellaneous apps. Click Apply to relaunch the Dock.

Check LaunchPad to make sure it worked. If a blank page appears because all items were removed from it, simply move an app to the page and back to get it to disappear.

Make an archive of the new Database file and name it "After". This one will be a just-in-case backup.

Next time you add an app to your Applications folder(s) do this BEFORE you arrange the new apps where you want them:

Navigate to the App Support folder above again and DELETE the database. Unzip the "Before" archive and delete both the "Before" and "After" since they are now outdated.

Kill the Dock to relaunch it using the Terminal command killall Dock or other utility.

Open LaunchPad and wait a second for it to add the new applications to its pages.

Move the new icons where they belong. Once you have it set up again, go back to steps 2 through 5.

Automator is a very handy program that never gets much attention from the general public even though Mac owners will find the program preinstalled in their Applications folder.

Automator's pretty easy to use and this example shows you how to use it to quickly and easily make your own Mac OS app out of any webpage you like:

Here’s the procedure for building an app that keeps a webpage open in a floating window: 1) Launch Automator. 2) Create a new App. (Or a Workflow. But an App will be cooler because you can have it in the Launchpad and start it up with a single click.) 3) Find and drag the “Get Specified URLs” action into your workflow. Just type the name into the search box until Automator finds it for you. 4) Paste in the URL of the site you want to view. 5) Find and drag the “Website Popup” action into the workflow. Choose a size for the window. 6) Save. Done. Your workflow will look like this:

And when you run the app, it’ll put up a popup window that looks like this:

It’s a real app. It’ll stick around and float above your other windows until you dismiss it. You can move it into other Spaces and do pretty much whatever you want with it.