Avoid Long Hierarchical Menus
If you right-click (or Control-click) on some item, such as a file in the Finder, and one of the sub-menus has many options (Open With is a frequent culprit), it may take several seconds to open, even on a fast machine, which is annoying if you did not actually want that sub-menu.
The trick is to not pull the cursor through the menu, but in a curve around it, so the cursor does not touch any menu items until lower on the list where you wanted to go.
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Eolake Stobblehouse
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Published in TidBITS 370.
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Java and Shockwave Security
Java and Shockwave Security -- Although mainstream media has been saturated recently with news of security issues in the Windows version of Microsoft Internet Explorer, a different security problem in Sun's Java received comparatively little attention. Basically, it's possible for a Java applet to disable security safeguards and grant itself full access to the local machine. It's important to note the problem is very difficult to exploit, but theoretically affects anyone licensing Java technology from Sun. Microsoft has released a 500K update to its Java implementations for the Mac version of Internet Explorer; Netscape 3.0 doesn't use Sun's Java, and isn't impacted.
<http://www.microsoft.com/ie/security/java.htm>
<http://www.javasoft.com/sfaq/index.html>
Another, more easily exploited security problem involves Macromedia's Shockwave Director plug-in in conjunction with Web browsers (particularly Netscape Navigator). Essentially, it's possible to author a Shockwave Director movie that can clandestinely read email or files on a user's machine, along with documents residing on other Internet servers, even behind a corporate firewall. The relative simplicity of this particular oversight highlights the possibility other simple loopholes in a variety of products. A pre-release of Streaming Shockwave 6 reportedly does not exhibit these problems, but otherwise the only way to make sure you're not vulnerable is to de-install Shockwave. [GD]
<http://www.webcomics.com/shockwave/>
<http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/ plugin.cgi>
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John K. Lilley, and Honeymoons By Sunset for their generous support!