CoreyMS

Development, Design, DIY, and more

Using the New Split Screen Feature in OS X El Capitan

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I use split screen functionality a lot. As a programmer, I often have multiple windows open at the same time and need to see information from them simultaneously. For a long time I had to rely on third-party software to use split screen functionality on the Mac. With Mac’s latest release of OS X El Capitan, we now how native split screen functionality.

In this video, we will look at how to use the new split screen mode and compare it to the third-party application I’ve been using for some time now, HyperDock. Let’s get started:

Terminal Basics: Navigating your Filesystem

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The Terminal can be an intimidating place for people who are just beginning to learn how to use it. There is a fear that you will type the wrong command and somehow mess everything up.

In this video, we will begin learning how to use the Terminal by navigating through your filesystem. This is a great way to get comfortable within your terminal, because the commands we will be learning won’t have any side-effects on your system. You can’t accidentally delete files or modify important documents. Learning these basics will provide us with a great starting point for more advanced commands. Let’s get started:

Time-Saving Keyboard Shortcuts for the Mac Terminal

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A big hurdle a lot of people face when learning to use the terminal is the fact that it feels slow compared to navigating around in Finder or other GUIs. Using the terminal doesn’t have to feel slow. Once you learn a few keyboard shortcuts, it can greatly increase the speed at which you can navigate and run commands within the command line.

In this video we’ll be going over some of the keyboard shortcuts I use on a daily basis.

Shortcuts covered in this video:

  • Ctrl+a – Go to the beginning of the line
  • Ctrl+e – Go to the end of the line
  • Option+Arrows – Move one word at a time
  • Option+Click – Move to click location
  • Ctrl+u – Delete everything before cursor
  • Ctrl+k – Delete everything after cursor
  • Tab – Auto-complete
  • Drag and Drop – Auto-complete
  • Up/Down Arrow – Scroll through command history
  • !+text – Previous command starting with specified text
  • Ctrl+r – Reverse Search
  • Ctrl+l – Clear Screen
  • Cmd+k – Clear Scrollback

Sublime Text Quick Tip: Launch Sublime Text from the Terminal

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If you navigate from your terminal frequently, you have most likely run into the scenario where you are within a project directory and want to open a file or folder from that project. It is a pain to open up Finder, navigate to the project, and open the file or directory that way. Being able to open these projects and files from the terminal is much more convenient and saves a lot of time. In this video we’ll look at how we can do just that:

The line that links the “subl” command to /usr/local/bin/ is as follows:

ln -s /Applications/Sublime\ Text.app/Contents/SharedSupport/bin/subl /usr/local/bin/subl

Git: Change DiffMerge Font-Size on Mac OSX

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In a previous video, we learned how to use DiffMerge as a git difftool and git mergetool. As I was creating that video, I noticed a bug in the program that crashed DiffMerge when attempting to change the font-size. This bug has not yet been fixed by DiffMerge; however, there is a workaround.

All we need to do in open the preferences from the terminal and change the font-size manually.

Python: virtualenv and why you should use virtual environments

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In this video, we will be looking at virtualenv and why you should be using virtual environments in Python. Virtual Environments in Python allow us to keep project-specific dependencies in a separate place than our global site-packages. This is extremely useful when you have different versions of packages for different projects.

Here’s a brief walkthrough of some of the code from the video:

Install virtualenv

pip install virtualenv

Create a location for your environments (Optional)

mkdir ~/Environments
cd ~/Environments

Create a new virtual environment (called venv for this example)

virtualenv venv

Activate your new virtual environment

source venv/bin/activate

At this point you can work from inside of your new virtual environment and know that you are keeping your project-specific packages and dependencies separate.

When you are finished, you can deactivate your virtual environment

deactivate

If you no longer need your environment and would like to delete it, you can just remove the directory

rm -rf venv

Resize Multiple Images Using the Mac Terminal

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One problem I run into frequently is needing to resize multiple images at once. To do this manually would take way too much time, especially if you have a lot of images.

Luckily, there are several good tools out the to automate this process for us. In this video we will be resizing multiple images using the Mac Terminal and the built-in “sips” command.

If you are someone who is more comfortable using an application rather than the terminal, I also have a video on resizing multiple images using Google’s Picasa. You can find that video here. With that said, in this video we will be focusing on the Mac Terminal. Let’s get started:

Mac Tip: Screenshots

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I am frequently taking screenshots of what I am doing on screen. It’s useful to know all the options you have in order to make this quick and simple. In this video, I’ll go over the different ways in which you can take some basic screen shots on your Mac, and look a few advanced techniques as well.

Keyboard Shortcuts Used:

  • Cmd + Shift + 3: Capture Whole Screen
  • Cmd + Shift + 4: Capture a Selected Area
  • Cmd + Shift + 4, then Spacebar: Capture Window

Terminal Commands Used:

screencapture -C -T 5 ~/Desktop/ss.png
defaults write com.apple.screencapture location ~/Desktop/Screenshots/
killall SystemUIServer