When I work in MacOS X on my powerbook, I find that my screen fills up with windows. Maybe I haven't adjusted to the one-window zen of the new Finder, or maybe it just makes really big windows. But for whatever reason, my screen becomes cluttered with windows.
I thought it would be nice to clear up that clutter. So, during the hack show at MacHack 2001, I wrote GhostFinder.
GhostFinder turns all of the windows in the Finder translucent.
To honestly convey the flavor of the hack show, I’m leaving GhostFinder in the state in which I demoed it. It’s a little complicated to run.
You'll need the OS X developer tools.
Reboot your machine, so the window server will be fresh. Don’t open too many windows before trying the hack.
Open a terminal window. Type "ps -axg |grep Finder" to get the process id of the Finder. The process ID is the leftmost number in the long line which contains “Finder.app.” (If you don't see such a line, make the window wider and try again.)
Run QuartzDebug, which you'll find in the developer applications folder. When it comes up, click the “Show WindowList” button. Look for any line that ends in “Finder.app.” You'll need the hexadecimal number on the first column, “CID.”
Open the file “ghost,” which comes with this hack, by dragging it to the ProjectBuilder icon in the developer applications folder. You’ll need to edit the first two lines:
attach 217
print 0x3403
Change the “217” to the process ID of the Finder, and change the “3403” to the CID. Save the file.
In the terminal, use cd to go to the directory where the ghost file is. To make the hack look better, type “alias ghostfinder "cat ghost |gdb >/dev/null"” and hit return. Then remove the evidence by typing “clear” and return.
Now you're ready to run the hack. Open a bunch of windows in the Finder, and spread them around the screen. Then type “ghostfinder” into the terminal window, and hit return. In a little while, the windows will go transparent.
As a special bonus, it probably works with most programs which have windows. Try it and see!
