By far, one of the geekiest, most powerful pieces of technology to come to the Mac recently is MacFUSE. What FUSE does is represents data as a part of the host’s filesystem. The most obvious use is to supply a way to read alternative filesystems. One of the most popular plug-ins for MacFUSE is its NTFS compatibility module. While OS X can read NTFS, it can’t write to it. With MacFUSE, you can.
There have been some other rather geeky uses, such as the SpotlightFS, which lets you browse through Spotlight searches as if they were static directories. The very latest and most useful for my particular needs, is GrabFS. In short, it lists all running processes (programs) as folders. Open up those folders and inside you’ll find screenshots of the windows belonging to that process. For example, if you have Safari running at the moment, chances are that you also have its download window open as well.
Open up the Safari folder and you’ll find two TIFF image files. One will be that open browser window. The other is the download window. Open the browser one and you’ll have a screenshot of that window at that moment. You go to a different page, then open that file again. Suddenly, it’s the new web page. For those that are trying to document interfaces, it’s a quick and easy way to make screenshots that require awkward keystrokes. Even better, you can use Quick Look.
If you want to get even geekier, then check out what happens to the contents of these folders as you change spaces (you may need to navigate in and out of the process folders after switching). You should notice something interesting. If Safari has a window on virtual desktop 1 only, then the screenshot for that window will only appear if you’re currently on desktop 1. Verrrrry interesting. If you like to take screenshots, you need to check this out.
