Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with preview

What is it called when a video game gives you a preview of all powers in the first level?

MostHolyPorcine — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 10:47:31 -0800

VideoGameDesignFilter: What is it called when, in the first level or sequence of a game, the player is given all the available powers, only to have those powers taken away and rebuilt up? I came across the term a long while ago and can't seem to find it again. Some examples of what I'm talking about- God of War 2, before Zeus takes your God powers, SW: The Force Unleashed, The Vadar Level, Prototype, a bunch of others...

Thanks!

Who's the kid in the "Preview" icon?

Lucinda — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 17:28:09 -0800

Who is the child in the icon for the "Preview" application in OS X? Just wondering if it was a child of an Apple employee, or from a movie, or whatnot.

The problem with Preview

jammy — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 08:47:42 -0800

MacFilter: How do I get Preview back? I recently got an iBook G4 to complement my iMac G5. While transferring files from the G5 to the G4 I noticed that the laptop had a newer version of Preview than the one on my G5.

Without really thinking about it I moved the one from the laptop to the G5, replacing the older version. Now, Preview won't work at all on the G5 (error code -34). It still works fine on the laptop.

I still have my startup disks, but they only allow one the option to re-install all the original G5 software as a bundle. I'm worried this will overwrite existing files (e.g. my photos) in the current software so I don't really want to do that.

Anyone know how I can get Preview to work again on my iMac? Alternatively, is there a program out there that performs similar functions that I could get in its stead?

Preview isn't previewing pdfs properly

bluefly — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 10:26:42 -0800

I'm having trouble viewing pdfs using Preview on my Mac (OS 10.4.11). Parts of the document don't show up. I usually have to close the file and reopen it several times before the entire document renders properly. Has anyone else had this problem, and were you able to fix it? And, if so, how? I should add that I tried downloading an alternate pdf viewer (Skim) to see if that would fix the problem, but it didn't. The pdfs themselves aren't bad, as they open just fine on my (Windows) laptop. They come from all different sources. As a data point, I don't notice this phenomenon on documents that are scanned from paper and then converted to pdf (like old articles).

How to preview pdfs in Explorer?

Anonymous — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 08:30:26 -0800

How do I preview a PDF file in Windows Explorer (XP Professional) without opening it? My father is an attorney who deals with a lot of PDFs. He has set me with the task of finding a way to preview the PDFs in Windows Explorer (much like Cover Flow view already does in Leopard) without actually opening them. I work on a Mac, so my immediate response was to switch him over to Leopard - but he's a staunch supporter of Windows. I've searched high and low and have yet to find anything even remotely similar to Cover Flow on a Mac. He says doesn't need to be able to page through the files, just a quick look at the cover page.

Magellan Clone

KRS — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 12:47:10 -0800

File Lister With Preview, like the old Lotus Magellan Years ago, when I went from DOS to Windows, the most painful program to give up was Lotus Magellan, which was a great file manager that showed the file name on the left and a preview of the contents on the right. You could cursor down the left column and instantly see any file from any program on the right.

It would list files by directory, or alphabetize all the files on a disk, making it easy to find duplicates, and you could tag files for deletion or moving.

I've never found a Windows file manager/browser that does this right. You always have to load a viewer (or load the program and the file).

Smooth-scrolling PDFs?

cgomez — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 23:33:04 -0800

What is the best way to scan documents so that they scroll well in OS X? Regardless of which scanner I use, I seem to produce PDFs that scroll/change pages very slowly in OS X, and as a result, applications that use OS X's PDF rendering engine. Is there a particular application or settings I can use in Acrobat Professional that will lead to black and white document scans that scroll "like butter"? I'd like it to be 300 dpi or so just for document clarity.

I'm linking to two documents that are similar in content but perform differently.

Smooth-scrolling: http://rocketsilence.com/mefi/greenstein_pols157_example.pdf
Not so much scan: http://rocketsilence.com/mefi/finstat_deckers_example_118.pdf

markup!

Pants! — Mon, 19 May 2008 18:47:01 -0800

I want to highlight and otherwise mark-up a PDF document in OSX. Unfortunately, it seems that the author somehow protected the file. In Preview, all of the items under Tools, Markup are grayed out. What to do?

Dam you firefox, why can't you be more like Safari?

doctor.dan — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 05:09:51 -0800

I love Firefox. I love using the Fox. I love the warm and fuzzy feeling I get from using opensource software. But, I am drawn to Safari, and for only one feature. I love the way Safari handles PDFs. I like how it opens them in the blink of an eye, letting me view the PDF and then save it with the click of a button (overlay? whatever). What I'm wondering is, is there any way to get the same behaviour in Firefox. I'm relatively new to Macs (soon to be 1 year), so I'm not too familiar with all the ins and outs, but I assume it is somehow connected to Preview.app. There was an earlier attempt at doing something similar on ask.MeFi, but that didn't really lead anywhere. Google searching doesn't help either. In case you are wondering, I like this because I deal with a lot of PDF files (journal articles, woo). I'd consider switching to Safari as a main browser if it wasn't for the little differences (FF3's address bar, Command+1/2/3/4/etc, copious amount of extensions).

Help! My printed PDF pages are so small that they’re ruining my vision!

numinous — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 20:48:28 -0800

Using Preview for PDFs, what can I do to maximize the size of the text as they appear on printouts? The Details: My PDF browser of choice is Preview (4.0, the most recent version), which I use on my MacBook. I do have Adobe, but I would like to find a solution using Preview if at all possible.

The Motivation: In an effort to save paper and money, I am trying to print some PDF documents in the following way: two pages per side, on both sides of the paper (the “both sides” issue was easy enough to figure out). Essentially, I want to maximize my use of the amount of space available per page.

The Dilemma: I am having difficulty, however, printing two pages side-by-side in a way that is actually readable without me having to strain my eyes.

What I am going for is this: look! totally legible! (Please disregard the grey line down the middle. This is simply to illustrate how much of the page I would like the text to cover.)

...but what I inevitably get is this: what the hell? hand me that magnifying glass, would ya? (That's a bit too much margin, even for me!)

Things I Have Tried which Have Not Solved My Problem^TM:
• Cropping the pages (to reduce margin size) in Preview
• Increasing the default zoom to 125% in Preferences
• Using “Borderless” Printing (this just causes the text to spill off the page)
• Scaling the pages “to fit the page” in the printing command window
• Searching all available “help” documents pertaining to Preview (to no avail)

Are there any hidden tips that I am missing? Is there nothing I can do? If this is the case, is there a better software out there that is Mac OSX compatible, and that will allow me to print two PDF pages side-by-side in a size that is actually useful?

Help me, hivemind! I will be forever indebted to you, as my immediate research and future academic endeavors depend on it.

Note: I’m aware that there are a great many wonderful electronic PDF readers out there, many of which I lust after (I have seen this post), but I am not currently in the financial position to buy one, nor would one solve my problem as I need to have these materials portable and in my hands ASAP!

Uh, so there's this movie...I dunno what it's called...

argylekneesocks — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 20:48:45 -0800

MovieFilter: Help me find the movie about teenage Star Wars fans traveling across country to steal the script for Episode 1! I saw a preview for this movie, decided I wanted to see it, then promptly forgot the name. Which makes it kinda difficult to rent...

Thanks!

Previewing email content in Yahoo inbox?

cda — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 16:04:51 -0800

In the Yahoo email inbox - is there a way to see the first sentence of the email like I am shown in my Gmail inbox? I can tell right away if a message is spam in my Gmail account because it shows the first sentence and even if the subject sounds like a business client I can tell instantly if it is spam from the first sentence which shows in my Gmail inbox right after the subject.

My SO uses Yahoo and he has a terrible time being able to tell if an email is spam without clicking on it to read the content (He has over 600 clients he corresponds with by email). He can't change his email to Gmail. Is there any way he can change a preference in Yahoo to be able to preview the content of an email?

I'd like some continuity please.

Friday — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 02:46:07 -0800

Is there a way to set up Preview and the preview in TexShop to display the pdf in continuous mode rather than one-single-page-at-a-time mode? I know you can do this for each document individually through the menus (or by right-clicking), but is there some hidden preference (in the plist?) that I can change to coerce Preview and TexShop to display in continuous mode by default?

How do I fit to page multiple landscape slides in Mac Preview?

remixer96 — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 15:09:11 -0800

How do I "Fit to Page" two slides (landscape orientation) in Mac's Preview if I'm printing two to a page? So my professor sends out lecture slides before class with one slides per page in pdf format. However, when I get into Mac's Preview and get two on a page, they print out very very small (at the original size I presume). Is there any way to expand the slides so that they more or less fill up the whole page (and become readable again)?

How can I get Preview and Aperture to share a single color space?

BlackLeotardFront — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 19:19:58 -0800

Why do my photos look different in Aperture after I white-balanced them with Preview? I'm using OSX Tiger. I took a bunch of pictures with my Canon in sRGB. I changed the white balance in Preview (I had no other color-correction utility, and Preview seemed to work fine), and when I got Aperture and dropped my pictures in, they were obviously super-saturated and darkened, my guess being a gamma shift. I don't understand why this would be the case since the jpgs are in fact color-profiled. Furthermore, there seems to be no way to view or change the color space in Aperture. Anyone got any ideas?

I also tried dropping in a photo straight off my camera and it darkened and saturated that picture too.

Also, I'm looking for an image editing app that can batch re-encode photos into jpgs with quality and size adjustment.

Font preview in Illustrator CS2

hydrophonic — Fri, 13 Oct 2006 12:21:56 -0800

How can I get Illustrator CS2's font preview to work on my Windows machines? On the Macs I've used, font names in the Type Character window are displayed in their corresponding fonts. I'd love to have this on my two Windows machines.

Adobe Help says to go to Edit/Preferences/Type and turn on the preview feature, but this does nothing--it was already on anyway.

Freezing Windows Picture & Fax Viewer

lemonfridge — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 17:52:55 -0800

Everytime i preview a JPG stored on my Windows XP desktop my whole PC freezes up for around 10 seconds...usually longer. if I open a JPG in My Documents (using the preview application by default) it opens instantly.

If i copy the same JPG to my Desktop and do the same it takes 10sec+ to open. it freezes up while displaying "Generating preview". It becomes completely unresponsive.

if i copy the JPG into a new folder on my Desktop, it opens quick as a flash.

if i copy the same file back to My Documents (or any other folder) it opens normally once still.

All other files seem to open just fine. Whats going on?

Seeking an application for previewing videos.

mragreeable — Sun, 30 Apr 2006 11:00:56 -0800

Anyone know of a video player or video catalog application with thumbnails? I wake up around 9:00 am on the weekends. My kids get up around 7. I don't have a TV but I have lots of computers, and the normal routine is to point them at one of my linux boxes, where they know how to point nautilus to a directory with cartoons and pick what they want to watch, so I can sleep for another hour or two.

Nautilus gives you thumbnails of the videos, so a child who can't read can still figure out what they're watching. One great thing about the video previews in nautilus is that they are taken from frames in the middle of the file, so you can kinda see what's going on. It's even got the ability to scale the icons so they see big video previews.

I'm trying to wean them off of my linux box, because I actually do real work on it, and moved my videos over to a rarely-used windows server 2003 machine. I had to jump through some hoops to get video thumbnails working at all, but even when I did, it previews the very first frame of the videos only, which is almost always solid black.

So they see this solid black square and can't tell what's going on and I have to read them the entire list until they finally pick what they want to watch.

Does someone know of an application that a non-reading little kid can use to choose a video from the local filesystem?

Reading Spotlight Comments without using Get Info.

math — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 11:32:03 -0800

In Mac OS X, the "Finder/Spotlight Comments" is a handy way for me to store additional information about documents. It would be great to be able to read them without having to "Get Info". In particular, I'd like to either have them show up when hovering over the document in Finder (that is, use them as Help Tags), or have them show up in the Preview pane. If I had to choose, I'd probably prefer for the comments to show up in Preview, as this would allow me to scroll through a bunch of documents fairly quickly. Anyone have a quick fix, or a software program, that would do this? I've searched the Apple web site and Googled "help tags", but all to no avail.

Adobe Reader vs Preview for Mac OS 10.4?

cahlers — Tue, 15 Nov 2005 06:26:36 -0800

What, if any, are the advantages to Adobe Acrobat Reader over Preview for Mac OS 10.4?

Streamlining live preview code

poopy — Thu, 18 Mar 2004 17:57:05 -0800

This live preview hack seemed so beautiful and simple that I'm currently implementing it on a personal website. Any geekerHeads out there who can find any potential problems, or better yet, provide something more efficient? i understand script is never failsafe, but i would like to know if anyone here notices any significant problems. thanks much!