Monthly Archive for March, 2012

Disabling pinch-to-zoom in Google Chrome (or any other app) for Mac OS X

Published on March 25, 2012 in Tutorials. 6 Comments
Screenshot of Google Docs showing a "zoom level not supported" error

Even Google Docs gets offended.

If you’ve used a Mac within the last 3 or 4 years, you’ll probably have experienced Apple’s “multitouch trackpad”.  With one, you can perform a variety of gestures on the trackpad surface, such as pinch-to-zoom, two finger rotation, and many more.  However, while pinch-to-zoom is is great for some apps (such as zooming into images in preview), it isn’t so great for, say, a web browser, where zooming can be characterized as “that thing that messes up the page layout that you shouldn’t ever do unless the web designer was insane and used 8pt font everywhere”.  In addition, since Mac OS 10.7 (Lion), the default multitouch gesture for “back” is a two finger swipe to the left — something that the gesture recognizer has a habit of mistaking for a pinch.  As such, it’s fairly easy to accidently zoom the page in or out.

Unfortunately, the Google Chrome developers seem to have a “configurability is for losers” mentality, which means that they have repeatedly denied calls for a hidden switch somewhere to disable pinch-to-zoom.  In the quest to disable pinch to zoom, someone even made a Mac OS hack that would supposedly disable the function for Firefox, Chrome, and Safari (it didn’t work for me).

Luckily, there is a way to banish pinch-to-zoom!  The trick is to use BetterTouchTool; if you haven’t heard of it, it’s a program that lets one add new multitouch gestures with actions.  Here’s how you do it:

  1. Download and install BetterTouchTool from here.
  2. Once you have it installed, open the preferences, and click the “+” button next to “app specific”.
    Better touch tool preferences window with plus button highlighted
  3. Select Google Chrome in the window that appears.
  4. Making sure that Google Chrome is highlighted on the left side, click “add new gesture”.Add new gesture button in BTT preferences
  5. Click the dropdown labeled “Please Select a Gesture”, and select “Pinch In”
  6. Now, repeat steps 4 & 5 again, only this time, pick “Pinch Out”.

…and that’s it!  After doing this, Chrome will no longer respond to the pinch in or out gestures!   As an added bonus, this process also works with any other app.

 

[No longer works] MMS on the Samsung Focus S with T-Mobile Prepaid

Published on March 16, 2012 in News. 39 Comments

Note: this technique no longer works, thanks to an update to the “Wireless Manager” app.

I no longer use T-Mobile so I can’t test anything new! I’m keeping this post up for archival purposes, but as far as I know, the steps described won’t work.

I recently acquired a Samsung Focus S with Windows Phone 7 (the best phone OS), and I’m using with with T-Mobile prepaid because I’m a cheapskate!  It works satisfactorily, though the Focus S only works on AT&T’s 3G and 4G bands, so with T-Mobile I get EDGE, a “2G” (read: slow) technology!  (AT&T is just too much of a ripoff to even consider!)

Anyway, so, here’s how to get MMS working on your phone:

  1. Go to the Marketplace, tap “Samsung Zone”, and download “Wireless Manager”
  2. Once that’s installed, open the Wireless Manager app
  3. Go to the “apn” screen, and tap “edit apn”
  4. Push the “+” button at the bottom
  5. Fill out the data as follows: (any fields that I didn’t mention should be left at the defaults)
    APN Name: MMS
    Profile Category: MMS
    MMSC: http://mms.msg.eng.t-mobile.com/mms/wapenc
    APN:wap.voicestream.com
    Auth type: none
    Proxy address:    216.155.165.50
    Proxy port:8080
  6. Click the checkmark button on the toolbar

Now, try to send an MMS message…it should work!  If not, make sure that “cellular data” is set to ON in the “cellular” section of settings.