Like using Exposé but hate hot corners and function keys? Why not unleash the hidden Exposé Blob built into Mac OS X? You can even make your blob look like Eric Cartman.

When Apple introduced Exposé in OS X 10.3 Panther, many people felt it was the best new feature in the entire operating system. In case you have no idea what Expose is, basically it's a component in the Macintosh operating system that allows you to instantly access any open window or document with a single keystroke. Dragging your mouse into a hot corner or pressing a function key instantly tiles and scales all of your open windows and documents so you can see everything you are working on in a single glance.

Yes, it is a great feature, but activating Exposé is sometimes kind of awkward. Personally I tend to accidentally hit the wrong function key and usually turn on my screen saver several times with a mistaken hot corner before activating finally activating Expose.

The programmers at Apple probably felt the same way. Hidden deep within the Mac OS is a secret, yet fully functional, graphical interface for Exposé. Most people like to call it a "blob." The Blob is really just a shaded blue sphere. The Blob is moveable, clickable and a nice addition or mascot for your Macintosh OS X Desktop. You can even customize the Blob to be any image you want. For example, I've customized my Blob to be Eric Cartman from Comedy Centrals' South Park. Detailed instruction on how to do this can be found towards the end of this article.

BRINGING THE BLOB TO LIFE

Activating the Exposé Blob is easy. Just launch the Terminal (Applications/Utilities/Terminal/) and type this line at the prompt:

defaults write com.apple.dock wvous-floater -bool true

Press return, and then type:

killall Dock

That's it. The Blob should now be somewhere on your Desktop. Just in case the Terminal freaks you out, here's a screen shot of the entire procedure.

KILLING THE BLOB

To reverse this hack, just swap out "true" with "false", and repeat the above procedure like this:

defaults write com.apple.dock wvous-floater -bool false

Press return, and then type:

killall Dock

The Blob should now be history.

USING YOUR BLOB

Once you have activated your Blob, using it is easy. The Blob's normal state is semi transparent. To wake it up, just roll your mouse over it. The Blob will come to attention and not be transparent anymore.

Blob - selected

Blob - normal

Once the Blob is awake, there are several things you can summon it to do:

Click: Clicking on the Blob will activate Exposé for all the open windows in the application you are currently working in.

Option-click: Holding down Option and then clicking on the Blob will activate Exposé for all currently open windows and documents on your computer.

Shift-click: This is the same as just clicking on the Blob, but will tile and scale your windows in slow motion.

Option-Shift-click: Activates Exposé for all open windows and documents in slow motion.

CUSTOMIZING YOUR BLOB

Let's be honest. Not everyone goes crazy for a shaded blue sphere. Luckily for you, customizing your Blob is easy. The Blob is comprised of two images; one for the "natural" state and one for the "selected." To customize your Blob, you just need to change or replace these two images. However, finding these files is a two step process.

First, navigate to your Dock application. It is inside the "CoreServices" folder.

/System > Library > CoreServices > Dock.app

Next, right-click. or control-click. on the Dock application and select "Show Package Contents" from the contextual menu. A new Finder window will appear. Continue to navigate into the "Resources" folder.

Contents > Resources

Scroll down to the bottom of the "Resources" folder. You should find the following two images:

• wvousfloat.png
• wvousfloatselected.png

In case you screw things up, it's a good idea to make backup copies of these two images before you replace them. If you already messed things up, here's a ZIP archive of the two original blue Blob images.

You can now either edit wvousfloat.png and wvousfloatselected.png or replace them entirely. However, before you can do this, you must disable the Blob hack. You can't replace a file that is currently in use. You may also have to change the permissions for the Resources folder that contains these two images. To do this, get info on the folder and give yourself read/write access. You will need Administrator access to change any file permissions.

Once that's all out of the way, just drag and drop your two new images and replace the default blue sphere images. I suggest making 100 pixel square PNG images with an embedded transparency. If you have no idea what this means, then just ask your local Photoshop expert.

Feel free to get creative! For example, I have a picture of South Park's Eric Cartman eating a donut on my Desktop. I guess you can say he's my "Blob."

Eric - selected

Eric - normal

You can download the two images I used to transform my Blob into Eric Cartman here. I also have Meatwad from Aqua Teen Hunger Force. You can download Meatwad here.

ACTIVATE THE BLOB

You may need to restart the Dock after replacing the blob pictures. Launch the Terminal (Applications/Utilities/Terminal/) and type this line at the prompt:

killall Dock

Good luck and have fun!

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