So, here’s how to do it.

1. Start up Automator
2. Choose Workflow for document type
3. Click on Files & Folders and drag and Ask for Finder Items into the Workflow area
4. Check Allow Multiple Selection
5. Click on PDFs and drag New PDFs from Images into the Workflow area
6. Update the Output File Name
7. Modify any other settings you require
8. Run the Workflow
9. Select the images you want in the new PDF and click Choose

That’s it you should find a new PDF of the images in the output directory.

For those creating WordPress websites that need to be iOS friendly, I’ve created a plugin that implements the workaround.

iOS Orientation Change Bug Workaround WordPress Plugin (3.16 KB)

Here’s how to add footer text to a group in a settings.bundle.

1. Expand the dictionary item for the group the footer text will be displayed under. It should reveal items with the keys Title and Type.
2. Add a new item by hovering over one of the items and clicking on the plus icon.
3. Instead of selecting one of the key options in the drop down that appears for the new item, type in “FooterText”.
4. Enter the footer text to be displayed in the value field.

Related Links

Stack Overflow – Is it possible to add info or help text to an iPhone settings bundle?

Notification Center

To display Notification Center, slide your finger down from the top of the screen when on the home screen or in an app. Touching a notification will open the corresponding app. Notifications for an app can be cleared by touching the “X” at the top right of the section and then touching the “clear” that appears.

On the lock screen, you can unlock and open the corresponding app for a notification by sliding the app icon to the right.

To manage what and how notifications are displayed in Notification Center, go to Settings app > Notifications. You can configure which apps use Notification Center, what order they are listed in Notification Center and how each apps display their notifications as they are added.

Reminders

Reminders is a brand new app for maintaining a to-do list. Items can trigger reminders based on time or location (arriving or leaving).

Camera

To unlock and open the camera app quickly from the lock screen, double press the home button and touch the camera icon that appears to the right of the slide lock.

You can now use the volume up button to take photos or start/stop video recording.

Safari

Safari now supports private browsing. To enable private browsing, go to Settings app > Safari and turn on Private Browsing in the Privacy section.

Twitter

To set up your Twitter account, go to Settings app > Twitter and enter your Twitter username and password or create a new account.

Twitter is integrated with many of the standard apps. For example, you can now share locations via Twitter in Maps and share links via Twitter in Safari.

Weather

The Weather app now supports Local Weather. When enabled the left most view will display the weather based on your current location.

Also newly added is hourly weather. Touching the top section of the view will toggle the hourly weather on and off.

Keyboard Shortcuts

You can now add custom keyboard shortcuts which allows you to enter a long regularly used phrase by only typing short string of characters. The example that is already created by default is “On my way!” which can be entered by typing “omw”. To manage keyboard shortcuts, go to Settings app > General > Keyboard and touch the Edit button.

Other Resources

• TNW Review: A complete guide to Apple’s iOS 5 with iCloud, an OS 14 years in the making
• cnet – 15 iOS 5 Tips and Tricks
• ZDNet – iOS 5 secrets

While working on a new page for a client this morning I discovered that relative positioning doesn’t work for td elements in Firefox. The page required a three column grid of products and on the bottom of each product cell would be a “buy” link. So, logically I decided I needed to do the following:

• set position: relative on the td for product grid
• set position: absolute and bottom: 0 on the “buy” link

It worked in Safari, Chrome and even IE. But failed in Firefox to my dismay – the “buy” link appeared outside the cell it should have been in, along the edge of the browser window. A quick Google search showed that it’s a known issue.

The Solution

Here’s my solution to the problem:

• wrap the contents of the td in a div
• set position: relative and height: 100% on that div

The Example

Here’s a web page with examples of the problem and the solution.

Update: It seems this solution has issues when cells in the table row have varying heights. I’ll need to spend some time experimenting.

First, start by creating a string with the contents of the text file that will be attached to the email.

NSString *textFileContentsString = @"some data, some more data, yet more data";

Your text file doesn’t have to be as simple as this. It could be something more substantial, like a CSV or an XML file.

Next, convert the string to data.

NSData *textFileContentsData = [textFileContentsString dataUsingEncoding:NSASCIIStringEncoding];

And then create the MailComposeViewController and add the attachment data.

MFMailComposeViewController *mailComposeViewController = [[MFMailComposeViewController alloc] init];
mailComposeViewController.mailComposeDelegate = self;
[mailComposeViewController setSubject:@"Data Export"];
[mailComposeViewController setMessageBody:@"Here's the data that I am exporting" isHTML:NO];
[mailComposeViewController addAttachmentData:textFileContentsData mimeType:@"text/plain" fileName:@"data.txt"];
[self presentModalViewController:mailComposeViewController animated:YES];
[mailComposeViewController release];

That’s should be enough to demonstrate how it works. I won’t go through the details of using a MFMailComposeViewController. You can read about it at the Apple Developer website.

UISearchDisplayController site:developer.apple.com

This can come in handy as Google very often can be better at finding things in a website than the search provided by the website.

If you just installed Lion and haven’t already, you should study all the new gestures in System Preferences under Mouse and Trackpad. Gestures are much easier and fun to learn than old school keyboard shortcuts.

I also recommend checking out the help documentation for Mission Control. You can find it clicking the “?” button in the bottom right of System Preferences/Mission Control.

FontView 1.4.1 is out. 1.5 is waiting for review. It will have a new icon and launch screen as well as an In-App Purchase to disable ads.

Webstock 1.1 is out. I’ve added buttons to session views to take you to the corresponding video page on the Webstock site. Videos should be AirPlay compatible.