Downloading content from a website can be easy or slightly more tricky depending on the browser you are using. Macworld recently posted a how-to article on the finer nuances of using the activity window in Safari, including how to download embedded content easily.

The Activity pane opens by hitting ‘option-cmd-A’ or selecting ‘Activity’ from the Window menu. This then shows the individual components that make up the web page. If there is a certain item you want to download (an embedded movie clip for example) simply Option-double-click on that item and it will start downloading. Of course this should only be used on content that is legally available for downloading, not sites like Youtube that are streaming only. You may need to add a .mpg extension to the downloaded file if it downloads without one.

After a few months of using Apple’s Mail I recently decided to have another go at using IMAP for my email rather than POP. IMAP has several advantages not least of which is the ability to synchronise your messages between your local computer and the remote email server. This gives a full backup of your email and allows access to your email from any computer.

In my experience Apple Mail falls down quite badly in it’s imap intergration, particularly when using a slower connection as I am normally forced to do.

There are several alternatives available for OS X including Entourage, Thunderbird, Mailsmith, Eudora and many more. After trying most of these I narrowed my main requirements to four:

1. Full OS X Address book integration.
2. Multiple account and multiple SMTP servers support.
3. Plain text & HMTL.
4. Quick and efficent on and offline imap support.

In the end all of the email clients above fell short in one area or another. I had tried Gyaz Mail in the past but it had lacked imap support until version 1.5 was released.

After giving Gyaz 1.5 a go for the 40 day trial I was happy to cough up the US$18 for the full license and a month or so later I am still using it as my main email client.

There are a few annoyances. No unified inbox for one (all accounts have a seperate inbox). Secondly there is no built in spam filter, there is the option to integrate Spam Sieve, a third party filter but that costs an extra US$30. In my case my primary email host fastmail does an excellent job of reducing spam so I don’t miss it too much.

Overall Gyaz mail works well and most importantly the imap connection is fast and works flawlessly. No hanging up as Apple Mail used to, quick checking of all the imap folders and sub folders and full OS X Address book integration. Have a look and see what you think.

OS X comes with some very nice screen savers and I’ve been wanting to use some of the pictures in them for my desktop background?

Thanks to a hint from Macworld this is how to do it.

The following screensavers have images you can use - Beach, Cosmos, Forest, Nature Patterns, and Paper Shadow, and the images are stored in the ‘/System / Library / Screen Savers’ folder (the system folder is seen circled here).

Open the folder and ctrl-click on Beach.slideSaver (or whichever other you want to use), and choose ‘Show Package Contents’ from the drop down menu. When the new window opens, navigate to ‘Contents/Resources’ to see the pictures.

Now you can copy the images to a more convenient location. I have made a folder in the ‘Pictures’ area of my user account for all my Desktop backgrounds.

Finally to use these pictures as your desktop background go to ‘Desktop & Screen Saver’ in System Preferences (on the apple menu in the top left of your screen), click on the ‘Desktop’ tab, and select the folder with your images in from the source list. Click on the image you want, and it will appear as your desktop image. You can also select the images to rotate at a certain speed.