I'm fairly confident that even suggesting this probably violates AOL's terms of use. So, in the event this tutorial disappears - you know why.
I love AOL Radio on Mac OS X, even more than iTunes radio. Since AOL Radio partnered up with XM there are more stations and more variety and less commercials. You can literally find anything regardless of your taste. The down side to this wonderful music selection is an ugly side panel that jets out from the side of the application. If it wasn't for this side panel, I think I would be content to use AOL Radio. However, like a good mac user, everything has to be aesthetically pleasing and the side panel just isn't. To say nothing of the fact that most of the time the adds are less then stellar themselves.
My first attempt at rectifying my AOL Radio problem was via Safari AdBlock. I didn't realize at first that AdBlock had stopped the adds, but eventually I caught on after staring at the bland AOL logo. If nothing else, this is a decent option. But, fact of the matter is that I wanted that panel gone.
After getting frustrated with how ugly my desktop was looking, I decided to explore the AOL Radio binary and see if I could figure out how to chuck the panel (aka drawer). After some playing around I was able to successfully remove the drawer from AOL Radio and "pretty-up" my desktop.
The following are some quick and easy steps to remove the side panel from AOL Radio for Mac OS X. I should clarify, there's no warrantee or guarantee with this tutorial, if you screw up your copy of AOL Radio, if you delete your operating system or your Mac explodes into a million pieces you're SOL - I take no responsibility, and don't even care. Now that that is out of the way...
What you need?
- Copy of AOL Radio
- Apple Developer Tools, specifically interface builder.
Before beginning, make sure that AOL Radio is completely closed!
Step One: Explore the Package
Open up your finder and navigate to AOL Radio, then right click on the application and select "Show Package Contents". This opens up the Application (.app) container and shows you the guts of the application.
Step Two: Navigate to the NIB Folder
For this, I suggest the multi-column view in Finder. After opening the package contents for AOL Radio click on Contents > Resources > English.lproj. At this point you should see a list of files similar to the image below. The important one is RadioWindow.nib.
Step Three: Open the NIB up.
Assuming you have the Apple Developer Tools installed and you double click on the NIB file, it should open up in Interface Builder and look something like this:
Step Four: Delete the Drawer
Select both "Drawer" and "DrawerView" from the window (you can use the command key to select multiple items) and then press the delete key, successfully removing these items for that your NIB looks like:
Step Five: Save the NIB
Now save the NIB (File > Save or Command + S).
Try it Out
Now open up AOL Radio, the drawer should be removed, alleviating your life of more worthless adds and keeping your desktop clean all at the same time.
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