[clarkgoble]

I've noticed that Preference Pane names sometimes are overly long. The Microsoft Keyboard pane and the Microsoft Mouse pane are examples of this, as is the Samba Pref Pane. The names are wide enough to overwrite things.
Is there a relatively easy way to rename them so they show up in the System Preferences with a shorter name?

[Ibson]

Locate the pref pane (in [~]/Library/PreferencePanes), control-click and choose "Show Package Contents". Launch TextEdit. Open the Contents folder, then drag the Info.plist file to the TextEdit icon on the dock. Press Command-F and search for "NSPrefPaneIconLabel" (without the quotes). Change the text within the <string> and </string> tags. If that wasn't found, search for "CFBundleName", and change that text. Or, look inside Contents � Resources � English.lproj � InfoPlist.strings and change the CFBundleName or NSPrefPaneIconLabel there (which is probably a better idea).

Hope this makes sense.

[mogura]

If im not mistaken, i think you also one more step to do:

"Now you have to go into your ~/Library/Caches/ and delete the "com.apple.preferencepanes.cache" file. Do this with the System Prefs app not running. Then start the System Prefs app and voila, you now have shortened MS PrefPane names."

This is taken from an anonymous post over at http://www.macosxhints/com

[clarkgoble]

I did that and now it shows up as MSMousePrefPane and then won't connect to the application properly. So presumably it corrupted things somewhat. (Not a big deal since I usually run the application directly anyway - but still)

[mogura]

i'm not sure if you've done so, but check out that link i posted above. the tip in question there was specifically posted because of the long names microsoft gave their prefpanes.

The sites search engine works quite well. Give it a try!