Author: Jeff Kelley

I make iOS apps for Detroit Labs.

Relaunch

I’ve moved this blog over to Dreamhost, which means a couple of things: first, I’m managing my own WordPress installation now, which is pretty cool.  Don’t get me wrong, WordPress.com is great—and I’m still technically using it to forward traffic to my old address here—but managing your own server is pretty cool.  I can install whatever themes I want and edit them as I see fit, without paying money to do so.  Sure, I’m paying money for hosting, the domain name, and the domain name forwarding from WordPress.com, but at least now the blog is here on my own terms.

Moving the blog here was a long and arduous process, one that required patience on my part and that gave me a crash course in DNS for web servers.  I was able to do it mostly off of a post at blog-well.com, and since the attached PDF has rights to edit it built in, I think I’ll work on some instructions for this process to help others along.  Keep your eyes peeled!

Updated: Resizer AppleScript

After looking at my AppleScript to resize windows, I’ve decided to make a few updates.  Instead of manually doing the math for each resolution, I’ve created a new variable, desired_width, which is exactly what it sounds like: how wide you want your windows to be.  I’ve also made the other variable names more human-friendly: _nl and _nr are now left_bound and right_bound, respectively, for example.  After adding iTunes to my script, I noticed that it was being resized behind the menubar, so instead of setting the upper bound for all windows at 0, I’ve defined the variable top_bound, which defaults to 22 to account for the height of the menu bar.  If you find that this setting is incorrect (e.g. if you’ve enabled some accessibility settings that change font sizes and therefore the size of the menu bar) you may need to change it; I haven’t found a way to get the height of the menu bar in AppleScript yet—so far I’ve only found it in Java—so if anyone knows feel free to leave a comment.  Finally, after seeing this post by Jamie Matthews, I added some functionality to automatically set bottom_bound to the height of the Dock.

After all of these updates, the script now takes a desired width and moves applications that support AppleScript such that they range horizontally to your desired width, centered on the screen, and stretching from the bottom of the menu bar to the top of the Dock.  In the future, I’d like to make a separate application, perhaps AppleScript-based, that will allow for user customization of how the windows are arranged, allow for custom application settings, and perhaps Spaces integration.

Resize Your Windows Automatically for Different Resolutions

I use my MacBook Pro in a few different scenarios: by itself, plugged in to a 21” Apple Cinema Display, or plugged in to a 24” Dell 2405FPW.  I’m also rather OCD; I prefer my Firefox/Safari, Mail.app, and Vienna windows to be centered, stretch from the menu bar to the top of my Dock, and be a certain width.  I created a small AppleScript to auto-detect my resolution and size the windows accordingly:



tell application "Finder"
	set screen_resolution to bounds of window of desktop
	set screen_width to item 3 of screen_resolution
	set screen_height to item 4 of screen_resolution
end tell

tell application "System Events" to tell process "Dock"
	set dock_dimensions to size in list 1
	set dock_height to item 2 of dock_dimensions
end tell

set desired_width to 1400

set side_space to screen_width - desired_width
set left_bound to (side_space / 2)
set right_bound to left_bound + desired_width
set bottom_bound to screen_height - dock_height
set top_bound to 22 (* for the menu bar *)

try
	tell application "iTunes"
		activate
		set the bounds of the first window to {left_bound, top_bound, right_bound, bottom_bound}
	end tell
end try

try
	tell application "Firefox"
		activate
		set the bounds of the first window to {left_bound, top_bound, right_bound, bottom_bound}
	end tell
end try

try
	tell application "Mail"
		activate
		set the bounds of the first window to {left_bound, top_bound, right_bound, bottom_bound}
	end tell
end try

try
	tell application "Vienna"
		activate
		set the bounds of the first window to {left_bound, top_bound, right_bound, bottom_bound}
	end tell
end try

With that in place, I saved it as an application in ~/Applications, and put it in my Dock. Now, whenever I change resolutions, I just click the button and everything is how I like it.

To change the script, you should be able to add any application with an AppleScript dictionary that supports moving and sizing the window.  The numbers I’ve used make the windows 1,400px wide, and the height that you want will depend on the size of your Dock. The script moves windows to the center, desired_width wide, and from the menubar to the Dock.

Note: I have had some trouble recently; sometimes when I change my resolution the AppleScript doesn’t pick it up.  To combat this, I told the Displays System Preferences pane to keep its icon in the menu bar; when my script uses the incorrect resolution, I change my screen resolution then change it back, which is enough for the script to detect the change.

Update 2008-05-28: Made some usability changes. Details here.