This is a quick idea I came up with. We extend the Event native like this:

Event.implement({

   hasCapsLock: function(){
      return ((this.code > 64 && this.code < 91 && !this.shift)
           || (this.code > 96 && this.code < 123 && this.shift));
   }

});

And then access the method from a keypress event:

$('test').addEvent('keypress', function(event){
   if (event.hasCapsLock()){
      // do something
   }
});

The only drawback is that it relies on sniffing alphabet characters and whether the shift key was pressed. This means that if the user presses the caps lock key, you won't know it until another character is inserted.

The default shell for Leopard users is Bash. Although many GNU/Linux users are familiar with it, not all Mac users take full advantage of its power. Here are some very useful commands and tips I use routinely.

Users and login

Use the root superuser

sudo su -

Alter login variables (such as $PATH, $EDITOR)

nano ~/.profile

Other available shells

• /bin/ksh
• /bin/tcsh
• /bin/csh
• /bin/zsh

Files management

Output the contents of a file

cat /some/thing

Get 20 lines from the end of a file

tail -n 20 /some/thing

Get the first 20 lines of a file

head -n 20 /some/thing

Create an empty file

touch /some/thing

Redirect the output of a command to a file (overwrites)

command > /some/thing

Redirect the output of a command to a file (appends)

command >> /some/thing

Append the timestamp to a file

touch /backups/backup_`date +%s`.txt

Change to the last directory you were in

cd /var
cd /etc
cd - # will take you to /var

List file size in human-readable units

ls -lh /dir/or/file

Available editors

• /usr/bin/vi
• /usr/bin/vim
• /usr/bin/nano

Applications and processes

Run a process in the background

command &

List running processes

ps ax

The first column will be the PID

Kill a process by pid

kill -9

Kill a process or processes by name (e.g: the Dock)

killall Dock

Open an application (Mac-only)

open /Applications/iTunes.app/

IE7 supports a custom bicubic resampling mode for images. Before, resizing a 500×500 image like this:

would produce a horrible result in IE, with noticeably lower quality in the resized version.

This is easily fixed in IE7 by applying the following property to the img tag:

img.thumb { -ms-interpolation-mode: bicubic; }

Go to this demo page for a Flickr picture example.

PHP provides two very useful functions to create temporary files. Instead of creating unnecessary tmp directories in your applications, it’s better to rely on the global directory assigned for that matter.

To create a unique file with the right permissions use the tempnam function:

$filename = tempnam('/tmp_directory', 'filePrefix');

You can test this from the command line like this:

php -R 'tempnam("/tmp", "hello");'

The output file looks something like this:

guillermo-rauchs-macbook-pro-15:tmp willy$ ls -la hello*
-rw-------  1 willy  staff  0 Mar 11 03:26 helloyvEzzb

Couple this function with sys_get_temp_dir and you’ve solved the dilemma:

$filename = tempnam(sys_get_temp_dir(), 'filePrefix');