The Javascripts below were published on Macintouch.com in 2015 when gray-on-white web pages were starting to appear. I captured them and have been using them whenever I come across a web page that is hard to read. Safari’s ‘Reader’ mode, which I really like, has made these less needed, but sometimes they help when Reader doesn’t do the trick.
The first script can be used to make the type on a web page black and the background white, no matter what the designer intended. The second script does this and also changes the font to sans-serif (Lucida Grande). To use them these need to be converted into faux-bookmarks in your browser – the result is known as a “bookmarklet” or “scriptlet.” Depending on your browser, find the bookmark manager panel or screen, and paste one of the scripts into the space where a bookmark’s URL (web address) would normally go. Then give the bookmark a name you can recognize. I use them often so I gave them short names so they don’t take up a lot of space in my ‘Favorites’ bookmarks toolbar. I don’t know Javascript, but I know these work on some pages and not on others. I suspect folks here will be able to clean/debug/improve the code, so feel free!
[Increase contrast - black text on white background]:
They apply only to the currently-open page, not subsequent pages. You have to invoke them on each page. If you reload the page the changes caused by the Javascripts will be gone. They are only temporary.
While it might be a nuisance to re-invoke the command on each page, the simplicity of limiting the bookmarklet to one page and not needing to cancel it sounds like the best solution for me.
The idea is that the bookmarklet should be in the first few favorite bookmarks so that it appears at the top of every browser window. When you find a page that needs fixing, Daring Fireball), you tap the bookmarklet name in the favorite bar.
Coming late to the party, here, but I’ve some observations about these topics based on decades of helping elderly, lively, computer users (who discovered I was a Mac publishing system designer—sigh ).
Passwords. Great advice from other posters which I’ll largely second. I have found that the commercial password managers are great but often confusing. I’ve settled-on encouraging people to use the Monterey password system that is much better than before yet still quite simple. AND most importantly, keep a password book. When passwords don’t work people get very nervous (particularly with bank passwords) and they start making mistakes that often lock them out (which makes them really nervous). Pulling out a tangible notebook with the latest passwords relieves the anxiety to a surprising degree. Particularly with Apple ID passwords which, er, control whether you can get to your other passwords. I had one client who changed their apple id 5 times in a year because they kept confusing it with their admin password or their old Apple ID passwords. With a notebook secreted deep in their desk drawer this problem faded.
The Monterey password system actually allows you to export all of your passwords as a csv. (System Preferences / Passwords / Third button from the left at the base of the list.) So every 6 months or so you have them print it out, shred the previous list, and add the new one to the notebook. They should still update the notebook manually when they change a password because it helps remembering that things have changed.
Time Machine and Backblaze are the bees knees. BUT, be aware that when you receive that USB drive from Backblaze to restore a crashed machine whose Time Machine backup went south you are going to be spending a very long day manually updating and copying endless numbers of things. Vastly better than no-backup disasters but, oy! 1997 again!
I sit in front of a 27” Imac and, now at 70, I’d prefer two but I have found a peculiar resistance in people to getting a larger screen when vision starts deteriorating. “Oh no! That’s much too big! How can I sit on the couch to do Wordle with that thing?” I see 20-somethings in Starbucks crouched over their 13” screens for hours trying to do tabloid-size Illustrator files, ask them, “Why are you doing this?” and the answer is they like working at Starbucks and besides big screens are expensive (not now they aren’t). “Well, why don’t you think about it here and then go back home, plug-in your 32” monitor and execute in half the time?” “Ummm.” It takes considerable persuasion to get older people to get a larger screen (I suspect partly because it forces them to acknowledge that time isn’t kind to eyes) but when you finally persuade them it is immensely gratifying. “How’s the book going?” “OMG this is so much easier—I can see the whole page!”
Firefox, which has the majority of my passwords, also has this capability. I export my passwords to a .csv, immediately open it with Excel and save it as a password-protected file (I understand Numbers can also do this), and then use the Finder’s Delete immediately… command to get rid of the .csv file.
One things that Apple switching to CUPS years did was make it so most name brand printers didn’t actually need computer CODE to be installed on a Mac. Just lots of tables and postscripts files to be placed in the correct spots. And all most printer support installers have done for years now is place these bits into the /Library/Printers folder as needed.
I have users still using multiple models of HP printers which officially are not supported and the printer installers will not run. I copy out the /Library/Printer folder and extract the bits that apply to the specific printer and save them somewhere. You then put them into the current system and run lpadmin to install the printer via Terminal.
Monterey will issue a warning each time saying this way of doing things will go away at some point but it work. For now. I have an architectural firm using a plotter driver from an HP 4200PS which had support dropped 10+ years ago. They actually sold the plotter 2 years ago but still use the driver to generate those 3’ x 12’ PDFs at times.
Anyway. I put the various printer bits and the lpadmin command into a folder organized as it will finally be and zip it up. I leave a copy with them and keep one for myself. /Users/Shared/System Admin is a great place to put such things as Apple’s Migration assistant will bring everything in /Users/Shared to the new system for you.
Referring to password managers, I’ve decided to just avoid the web site form filling aspect of them. This seems to me to be where 99% of the confusion comes from with most people. Either it doesn’t work correctly 99.9999% of the time in their fav browser or they don’t understand what is going on and they create 10 entries for the same web site with a confusing set of names. And at times misread an error to mean they need to create a new password which just makes things worse. And a single error can make some people say it “never” works.
I use 1Password for credit cards and logins and a few other things. I have over 700 entries. But I just say no to it trying to type the information into web forms.
As to telling people paper is OK, let me ask a serious question.
If their iOS and macOS devices are reasonably password protected what is wrong with getting them to use Apple’s Notes?
I love AirPrint. It’s one of the reasons I tell people to get an iPad as their home system. Zero configuration for printers. Not being able to print is literally the biggest support issue I get, and can be the trickiest to solve — especially on a Windows machine. You think after all these years, we’d figure out a better way to get a computer to work with a printer.
Quite a few times, I am at someone’s house, and they desperately needs a document printed, but can’t. I have them forward the document to me, whip out my iPhone, and print it to their printer.
Ironically, Macs can also be configured to use AirPrint, but you have to configure the Mac to use AirPrint with a specific printer which sort of defeats the purpose of AirPrint.
I’d just love to see the day when you try to print from the Mac and it just works.
And the nice thing is that you don’t need to enable the printer’s Wi-Fi to do this. You can connect the printer to your network via Ethernet and AirPrint should be able to see it as long as the Ethernet segment is accessible via your home Wi-Fi network.
But I have found (in the past - haven’t tried recently) that using AirPrint from a Mac isn’t always reliable. Depending on the printer’s firmware and networking capabilities, it may not always be accessible that way.
In my home, I configure my printers with a static IP address, add its entry in my home DNS server (yes, I realize I’m not typical), and configure my computers to use it’s host-name. When AirPrint isn’t available for some reason, printing directly to a known configured IP address may still work - the start of the print job will often cause the printer to wake up even when Bonjour discovery does not.
I wouldn’t recommend having an unencrypted list of all your account information. In addition to malware attacks, there are too many scenarios in which it’s necessary to give someone you don’t entirely trust access to your device. I don’t have experience with Locked Apple Notes, I don’t know if that would be sufficient to protect them in most instances.
I bought my first Mac in 1989. At the time, I’d never seen a computer up close and didn’t know anyone who owned one, apart from one person… a designer/client who showed me a beta copy of Photoshop 0.8. A day on which I realised computers were the future of my business.
So in that context, back around 2005, I understood that the best way to work with Mr Jobs’ Mac, was in plain-vanilla mode. Don’t try and ‘fix’ it with all those alternatives, plugins etc., as we did with MacOS 9 and before.
This has been the absolute best approach for the elderly people I’ve helped over the years, but also for those that have a Mac and who only really use it for mail/web/messages/photos/music/etc. The built-in MacOS is absolutely fine, for all but those who like to get their hands dirty, or who have very specific or specialised desires.
Passwords. I absolutely agree that the MacOS Passwords is the way to go, but instead of the little notebook in her handbag (my 85 year old mother in law) if they have an iPhone, or iPad, I always suggest keeping a note of them in secure-Notes. This way they can easily be accessed via their iPhone/iPad with fingerprint/facial recognition or even just their iPhone/iPad’s passcode. They don’t need to remember a password, to find a password. It’s also useful being on a second device, as it makes it easy for them to read on one device and write/enter it on another. On top of that, I think it’s a very good idea to have a close family member, keep a secure-note with the other person’s passwords and other important details, e.g. banking, legal, etc. So I’m a BIG advocate of Notes’ secure-Notes. Available on all devices, synced in the cloud and encrypted at all times.
Time Machine is a must (for me too) even if you have other backup strategies, but it’s also worth explaining how versioning works if they use, for example Pages, instead of Word. Essentially, it uses the Time Machine system to save as you go, every time you hit ‘Save’ a new version is created and the previous one saved. So easy to use and with the excellent feature of being able to compare versions and copy/paste bits from an older version into the current one.
Big monitors. My business is visual, so I’ve been doing this forever, but I would also add, that resistance to a big screen can be justified, however, it may be down to the glasses they wear.
Progressive lenses, which so many people wear these days, are absolutely horrible for large monitors. The reason is due to the area that is in focus, which is central and quite narrow and usually has massive distortion. You can’t actually use the distance vision part of these glasses, because a monitor is at arm’s length, so you have to look through the middle part, which has a narrower area in focus. Peripheral vision is blurred and you’re constantly tilting your head up and down and side to side to see what you’re looking at in focus. This is completely unnatural and has to be ‘learned behaviour’. There is also considerable distortion… lines become curves.
The answer to this is really simple. Buy a pair of reading glasses, with a focal distance slightly longer than normal, i.e. arm’s length. Opticians are getting used to these requests, but they like to sell progressives because they cost a lot more. You may also have trouble getting them to even produce a pair at this focal length, because the big lens makers aren’t set up for it. However, the advantages are huge. There will be very little of the head-spinning distortion (what I refer to as the ‘womp factor’) and the entire monitor, left to right, top to bottom, will be in sharp focus. This will transform their experience with a large monitor and thereby enable the considerable advantages of working with one for the oldies. Some people who tend to have papers in front of them while working at a computer may prefer bifocals, with a monitor distance at the top and reading at the bottom. Not as good for the monitor, but still a vast improvement on progressives, in that the physical area of glass used is much larger and the in-focus area spans the width of the glasses and also the distortion will be greatly reduced.
I’ll just add one other big thing for me when helping others with the Mac.
Contextual Menu.
One of the things that I grind on about a lot when helping people with a Mac, is the Contextual Menu. For anyone that is unfamiliar, it is an absolute must. What could be more useful, than having a menu which shows you only those things that may be useful for the context your working in? 2-finger and 3-finger tap are amongst the first things I emphasise. Beyond that, I encourage them to invest the time in the trackpad and all its possibilities. It is after all, the entire way, with which we interact with these devices. Ironically, I break my own golden ‘plain-vanilla’ rule with the Trackpad, by using a 3-finger drag (SystemPrefs/Accessibility/Pointer Control/Trackpad Options) instead of press-hold the trackpad, which I’ve always found awkward. I also encourage anyone using iOS to use touch-hold too. You never know what’s going to appear.
I’m not thinking as a replacement for 1Password and its kin. But for those who are never going to embrace any password manager, I feel Apple’s notes behind locked computers is better than a small notebook on the desk next to the keyboard or as someone else said, carried around in a purse.
I have seen the same thing, and let me suggest a simpler solution: buy “reading glasses” sold at drugstores or on the Internet which can serve as computer glasses. Cataract surgery gave me 20-20 vision at distance, but made me farsighted, so my ophthalmologist recommended +2.5 diopter single-focus glasses for reading and +1.5 diopter single-focus correction for computer use. (Unless reading glasses are specified as progressive or bifocal, they are single focus.) Lots of people buy their reading glasses this way, either at a drug store or the Internet, and it works reasonably well for them. If your vision is reasonably good, you can try on reading glasses at the drug store, find out what would be good for reading, then get a pair with rating of 1 diopter less for using on a computer. I got mine at a drugstore for about $10 each. I keep a pair of +1.5 single-focus glasses next to my computer. +1.5 readers will work for many things on paper, but I also keep glasses with +2.5 progressive lenses by the computer in case I need to help to read small type, and switch back and forth between screen and paper as long as needed.
If you have If you go to an ophthalmologist, ask them to give you a prescription for computer glasses.
As an increasingly elderly person myself, I want to add one question to the “how to help” list hoping y’all can point me to an answer.
What’s the cutoff/deadline for older Mac OS machines beyond which it’s vitally important to format the drive and drop the carcass off at the local Apple store for recycling?
I ask because I’ve had ports scanned by an expert inlaw (Windows, UNIX user) who pointed out that our home IP was getting bothered by what he called script kiddies about once every three seconds, and he said it’s now so cheap and automated to probe for vulnerabilities that older Macs have to be written off as hopelessly vulnerable.
But he couldn’t tell me which older macs are intolerable risks.
I don’t think that older Macs are “hopelessly vulnerable” based on mere age.
OS X has a decent Firewall. Port-probing is a thing; it’s looking for a vulnerable open port as a potential doorway. It’s like walking along a street or apartment building corridor and trying all the door knobs in case a door is unlocked.
You can go to Settings > Network > Firewall > Options to see what local apps have access to the outside world, and turn on Stealth Mode to tell your Mac to ignore external Pings (or knocks on the door).
Also check Settings > General > Sharing and turn off services you don’t want/need on, like Remote Acess.
See also Settings . General > Airdrop and Handoff and considering turning off Airdrip if you don’t need or use it.
It’s actually more important, when it comes to script kiddies, to make sure your DSL/Cable/FIOS modem-router firmware is up-to-date. That’s your first line of defense and too often people completely forget that their router needs updates, too.
You should also go into System Settings (er, Preferences on older machines) and check what you’re Sharing. Turn off everything you don’t absolutely need.
As for the danger-age of older macs I’m not aware of a good rule of thumb. Once Apple stops releasing security updates for the OS that Mac is running is probably a time to start thinking about retiring it but I’ve seen 10-year-old Macs running quite happily with no security problems (but they were basically relegated to single-purpose tasks like being a scanner station and not massive TikTok usage).
Good point for all of us old-timers (and others who don’t always keep up). We ran into serious FiOS problems a few months back which led to Verizon sending us a whole new modem and secondary router, and everything works much better now. For some reason, Verizon tends to not to tell us about updates until something breaks.
As for older Macs, my wife insists on using a 2009 MacBook mostly for email and Web access, because she doesn’t want to throw out anything that works. Once in a while she hits something weird and we have to restart the machine. We have Intego firewall/virus protection as well as the Mac firewall, and it seems to suffice for protection.
I can’t help but suspecting Apple is using a certain amount of planned obsolescence to keep selling Macs.
This is good advice. I’ll just add that ShieldsUP! is a good service for identifying open ports. It has been around for years and years and remains a good security and privacy tool. https://www.grc.com/shieldsup
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