Thoughtful, detailed coverage of the Mac, iPhone, and iPad, plus the best-selling Take Control ebooks.

 

 

Pick an apple! 
Become a TidBITS member!
 

 

TidBITS Watchlist
 
Opening a Folder from the Dock

Sick of the dock on Mac OS X Leopard not being able to open folders with a simple click, like sanity demands and like it used to be in Tiger? You can, of course click it, and then click again on Open in Finder, but that's twice as many clicks as it used to be. (And while you're at it, Control-click the folder, and choose both Display as Folder and View Content as List from the contextual menu. Once you have the content displaying as a list, there's an Open command right there, but that requires Control-clicking and choosing a menu item.) The closest you can get to opening a docked folder with a single click is Command-click, which opens its enclosing folder. However, if you instead put a file from the docked folder in the Dock, and Command-click that file, you'll see the folder you want. Of course, if you forget to press Command when clicking, you'll open the file, which may be even more annoying.

Visit Eolake's Blog


Link to this tip

Submitted by
Eolake Stobblehouse

Share your own tip! | Search TipBITS

 

 

Related Articles

 

 

Published in TidBITS 961.
Subscribe to our weekly email edition.

 

 
Safe Computing | 14 Jan 2009 | Listen  | Print Printer-Friendly Version of This Article

Protect Yourself From the Safari RSS Vulnerability

by Rich Mogull Send Email to Author

Send Article to a Friend

Programmer Brian Mastenbrook revealed on 11-Jan-09 that he has discovered a security vulnerability that could allow a malicious Web site you visit using Safari to read any file on your system. The flaw affects the latest versions of Safari when used in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard or Windows, though not in earlier versions of Mac OS X. Mastenbrook wrote that he has reported the details to Apple.

The vulnerability apparently could reveal the contents of any file, which includes email messages, passwords stored in browser cookies, or other documents. We have strong indications that the problem is real and you should immediately protect yourself in case malicious attackers figure out the vulnerability's full details before Apple issues a patch.

The vulnerability lies in the Safari RSS reader, and according to Mastenbrook, you may be affected even if you don't use the reader, as long as Safari is set to be your default RSS reader, which it is unless you've changed the setting. This likely indicates that the problem relates to how Safari handles RSS subscription links or feeds, since browsing to those triggers Safari's RSS reader.

The good news is that it's relatively easy to protect yourself. If you are on Windows, just stop using Safari until a fix is released. If you are using Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, follow the updated instructions on Mastenbrook's Web site, linked above. Simply changing the default RSS reader application in Safari does not provide full protection, unfortunately.

It's always a relief when there is a reasonable workaround to a potentially serious security vulnerability, and we won't be surprised if Apple patches this vulnerability fairly quickly.

 

Fujitsu ScanSnap Scanners — Save your business time and money
with our easy-to-use small ScanSnap Scanner line. Eliminate
paper piles by scanning documents, business cards, and receipts.
Visit us at: <http://www.ez.com/sstb>