The Tips - Mac Kung Fu - page 166

at the top of the menu under the Offline heading. This might be the case if
you use the same IM account on other devices, like an iPad. The Messages
menu offers no way to take individual accounts back online without starting
the Messages app, but a quick and effective solution is to take all accounts
offline by clicking the Offline entry on the menu and take them all back online
by clicking Online. Hey, presto—all your accounts should now be back online.
Tip 144
Change Fonts Used in Finder
Here is a personalization tip with a little productivity usefulness thrown in.
Like all Mac apps, the Finder uses the Lucida Grande font. However, you can
change both the title bar font and the font elsewhere in the program window,
such as the font used for displaying file and folder names. Doing so can
improve at-a-glance viewing of Finder windows.
Changing the Main Finder Font
To change the fonts used throughout Finder (except for Icon view), open a
Terminal window (open Finder, select the Applications list, and then in the
list of applications double-click Terminal within the UTILITIES folder), and type
the following:
DEFAULTS WRITE COM.APPLE.FINDER NSSYSTEMFONT -STRING AMERICANTYPEWRITER;
KILLALL FINDER
I've specified the American Typewriter font, but the key is to type the whole
name of the font as it is listed in applications like TextEdit, but remove any
spaces between the words in the font name. So, the American Typewriter font
becomes AMERICANTYPEWRITER .
Changing the Title Bar's Font
To specifically change the font of a title bar, type the following into a Terminal
window:
DEFAULTS WRITE COM.APPLE.FINDER NSTITLEBARFONT -STRING ARIALBLACK;KILLALL
FINDER
Here I've specified the Arial Black font, again removing the spaces between
the words in the font title.