Version History/What was New (les temps perdu)

• New: FinderPop 1.7.5 Fix “blank” keycodes problem.

• New: FinderPop 1.7.4 New contact addresses.  turly@kagi.com

• New: FinderPop 1.7.3 is more MacOS-8.5 compatible. Add FinderPoplets!

• New: FinderPop 1.7.2 was the “public release” of 1.7.1fc1

• New: FinderPop 1.7.1fc1 fixes my fix to 1.7.0 (a crasher which I unfortunately couldn’t reproduce.)  This was a “private beta” to members of the FinderPop Announce mailing list so people experiencing the crash could try it out.  It worked.

• New: FinderPop 1.7.0 fixes a few small things, such as drawing the hierarchical menu triangle properly.

• New: FinderPop 1.6.9b2 is more compatible with 8.5 (menus now look better, but some icons are still missing, presumed dead.) Stash the modification date instead of the creation date when creating menus for folders.  As we were later comparing this stashed value with the mod date, we were always rebuilding menus in 1.6.9b1.  ’Twas a slip-o-the-tongue, yer honour, honest. Handle corrupt StuffIt archives better (thanks, DaveP.) Grabbing a StuffIt archive now works as you'd expect (it grabs the archive file, and doesn't try to expand it first.)

• New: FinderPop 1.6.9b1 fixes a font switching problem. New user interface.  Adds StuffIt™ archive support. Judicious caching should make this version a bit quicker, but injudicious “assert-check-everything-in- sight-cos-this-is-a-beta” code will probably nullify these improvements until 1.7.0 final is released.

• New: FinderPop 1.6.5 fixes a Prefs-saving problem with the “Turn on/off FinderPop control-free popup” item in the Help Menu.  Adds ability to automagically popup a contents menu if you click and hold on a folder in the Finder.  Better icon stuff.

• New: FinderPop 1.6.4 fixes a problem with the standard file “contents” popup in ResEdit.

• New: FinderPop 1.6.3 attempts to fix the “Info” balloons so they’re a bit more consistent, and finally allows Command-clicking the file list in a standard file dialog box now works regardless of the setting of the “Auto CMM Popup delay.” (Previously, command-clicking only worked if you had auto-popup enabled.)

• New: FinderPop 1.6.2 fixes a bug whereby quitting the Finder (actually, the first app in which you invoked contextual menus) caused crashes the next time you popped up a contextual menu.

• New: FinderPop 1.6.1 fixes a possible startup/shutdown Prefs problem, gives you the choice of colorizing menu item text according to the item’s Finder label, and fixes the bug whereby the “Popup Near” settings were ignored. “Grabbing”, etc., now works from any “Contents” popup.

• New: FinderPop 1.6.0 fixes an infinite-loop alias resolution bug (thanks James). Better interoperability with DragThing and other apps which add menus with embedded icons to the contextual menu (FinderPop’s icons are now handled completely separately from the system’s.  By the way, if any CMM plugin writers would like to have icons displayed in their menu item names, they could do worse than contact me so we can flesh out an API for this type of thing...)  Ditto for people who would like to know various other things which _ContextualMenuSelect won’t tell you...

Choosing the “Largest Block” item in the “Processes” menu now shows the Finder’s “About this Computer…” window.

• New: FinderPop 1.5.9 adds configurable auto-CMM-popup (via an item in the Help menu.)  Other minor tweaks.

• New: FinderPop 1.5.8 fixes a problem with Menuette, and who knows, a few other INITs and cdevs. Control-free clicking on a selection now works much better in most apps; apple data detectors become usable again!

• New: FinderPop 1.5.7 Improves stability, fixing a couple of bugs which for some reason never had malign effects on my — and most people’s — machines.

• New: FinderPop 1.5.6 Improves Standard File Enhancements (now also works in PutFile dialogs), adds optional “Put Away” menu item.

• New: FinderPop 1.5.5 Fixes bugs in 1.5.4 Standard File Enhancements.

• New: FinderPop 1.5.4 (alpha release) adds Standard File Enhancements (click on a folder in a file Open dialog and you get a popup menu displaying the items — select one and it gets opened.)

• New: FinderPop 1.5.3 fixes the “Empty Trash” bug.

• New: FinderPop 1.5.2 fixes “Grabbing” and a couple of other bits.

• New: FinderPop 1.5.1 fixes one or two minor bugs.

• New: FinderPop 1.5f11 fixes a problem with Sleeper and a couple of other apps.  This became 1.5 final.

• New: FinderPop 1.5f10 allows user to turn off menubar clicking, new algorithm for determining whether a piece of menubar real estate is in use.

• New: FinderPop 1.5f9 attempts to get control-free clicking working in other apps. Rewrite of core low-level patches. Clicking in unused menubar can cause FinderPop to activate.

• New: FinderPop 1.5f8 should fix any menu font problems on Japanese OS 8 systems.

• New: FinderPop 1.5f7 should fix the odd behaviour of items in the “Desktop” submenu.

• New: FinderPop 1.5f6 should fix the embarassing “every alias gets italicised” problem — sorry about that (I’m afraid I use it all the time, with generic icons and Geneva 9.)

• New: FinderPop 1.5f5 should fix the menu font/size problems that some people were experiencing. It also finally implements the Desktop submenu.

• New: FinderPop 1.5f4 was released only to a few people in order to test a couple of bugfixes.

• New: FinderPop 1.5f3 should fix the nasty “Couldn’t prepare code fragment” startup errors which some people were getting.  It also implements a first stab at a couple of extra features.

• New: FinderPop 1.5f2 is freeware again. Because I’m currently working for Apple, this is probably the best way to avoid conflicts of interest.

• New: FinderPop 1.5f1 fixes a couple of cosmetic mini-icon bugs, and allows application launching to occur from the main menu even if there is no process menu (thanks, Stephen Giles.)  There are also one or two menu item name changes pending a future release.
 
• New: FinderPop 1.5f0 has a revamped and simplified user interface, allows you to embed the FinderPop Items directly inside the Finder’s original contextual popup menu as opposed to inside a “FinderPop” submenu, supports generic icons and selectable menu fonts and sizes, plus a few bugfixes.
   Oh yeah, it’s also “PintWare” — it’s still free, but if you’d like the opportunity to get me a couple of pints, you can do so by registering it via Kagi for $7 (the price of two pints of Murphy’s in Fibbar Magee’s — say, what’s with these wimpy 16 fluid ounce “pints”? :-).  You are under no obligation to register it; this is strictly for the people who wanted to send me “something cool”, but got put off by the postage costs, hassle, etc.

There is no functional difference between PintWare-registered and “normal” FinderPops. See the FinderPop AboutBox for details.

• New: FinderPop 1.4b5 has a simplified user interface, getting rid of a few items which everyone seemed to have always turned on. FP 1.4b5 allows you to display the FinderPop Items inside the Finder’s original contextual popup menu as opposed to inside a “FinderPop” submenu. This was released only to one or two people who had a problem with Adobe Type Reunion.

• New: FinderPop 1.4b4 optionally adds a “Volumes” submenu to the popup; this displays all mounted volumes, with hierarchy. “Hide Others” works at last, as does the “Finder Windows” submenu — you can now move/copy/alias the Finder selection to a completely obscured Finder window!  Hurrah!
To all intents and purposes, the “Volumes” submenus behave like the “Contents” and “FinderPop” submenus. “Trashing” a volume by holding down the appropriate modifier keys (see the “Features” section below) will cause that volume to be “put away.”
Did quite a bit on FinderPop this weekend.  More next weekend (or sooner, if there are any serious bugs uncovered...)

• New: FinderPop 1.4b3 optionally adds a Finder Windows submenu to the popup (thanks to Aaron and others who suggested this!)  This is just a Windows menu for now (i.e., there are no submenus and you can’t copy or move the Finder selection in there), until I figure out how to get the disk location of Finder windows.  Hey, just ’cos I work for Apple don’t mean diddly when it comes to finding out stuff like this!  (Hints gratefully accepted, btw :-)  Also shrunk the control panel slightly, and hopefully fixed a problem that some people were seeing where the Finder small icon showed up as a generic document icon.  Oh yeah, “Hide others” still doesn’t work, sorry.
And, err, I decided to enjoy my weekend instead of squinting at my PowerBook’s screen. I did take a brief look at trying to build the FinderPop menus “in the background”, but went to Santa Cruz instead (and have the sunburn to prove it.)  Cool city, though!

• New: FinderPop 1.4b2 apparently fixes a problem with MS WORD 5.1 (I was not able to reproduce this problem.)  This version was never released, except to the person who had the problem, who says it's fixed.

• New: FinderPop 1.4b1 fixes a problem where the Mac thinks the mouse button is still down when it isn’t.  Also allow prefix ordering to work even when “Display Small Icons” is not enabled.  Fix the code which opens the folder selected in the Finder if you select the "Contents" menu item.  Don’t autopopup when a Finder window’s scrollbar is being clicked. If the Finder selection contains aliases, opening them with a choice from a FinderPop menu will now open the original items, not the alias. (Unless the shift key is down.) Whew!  And I swore blind that I wouldn’t touch FinderPop until next weekend.  Ah well — these fixes were easily and quickly done — I just hope I didn’t break anything.  Thanks to various people who spotted these bugs!
Oh yeah, one oddity — if you click an icon on the desktop while some app other than the Finder is frontmost, autopopup doesn’t happen as the Finder is not immediately switched in as it is on a Control-click.  Clicking on the desktop, however, will result in autopopup. I’m investigating.  Oh, and the “Hide Others” still doesn’t work, dammit. I’m investigating that too.  Next weekend.

• New: FinderPop 1.4b0 fixes a cosmetic icon problem, and attempts to implement the "hold down the mouse button for a second and you get the contextual popup menu".  The delay is configurable in the control panel.  Let me know if you've any problems...

• New: FinderPop 1.3b3 fixes a problem with items which don’t have small colour or black-and-white icons (i.e, no 'ics8', 'ics4' or 'ics#' icons.) We now scale down the item’s 'ICN#' icon.  Not released due to absent-mindedness (Who was that Maude person, anyway?)

• New: FinderPop 1.3b2 fixes a problem with aliases to items on disks other than the startup disk not displaying their submenus properly.

• New: FinderPop 1.3b1 fixes a few glitches such as certain items beginning with a '-' character being transmogrified into menu dividing lines (due to an MDEF 0 oddity.) Also a number of other fixes and enhancements. FinderPop, as always, uses alphabetical ordering when adding items in folders to menus (i.e., the same ordering used by the Finder when you view by name); you can now have more control over the cosmetics of ordering by inserting an ordering prefix before the item’s name in the Finder. This ordering prefix consists of three characters at the start of an item’s name, of the form <digit><digit><rightparen>, i.e., '0'…'9','0'…'9',')'. This prefix will not appear in the menu. It means you may have more one-time work to do setting up your ordering, but it’s eminently configurable!
Thanks to various people for the bug reports and suggestions.
The reason for the 10 day delay between 1.3b0 and this version is the fact that I’ve just moved to Cupertino to start a new project (snif, goodbye SC[pp]) — I’ll be here sunning myself for the next couple of months.  The weather sure as hell beats Cork hands down (alas, the downside is that there’s no Beamish!)  Expect slightly more regular updates from now on (well, weekly-ish anyway.) 

• New: FinderPop 1.3b0 is a major rewrite of the core engine. Lots of changes.  Menus are now built “on-the-fly” as you move around the hierarchy.  Placed FinderPop code back in the System Heap as some people were having “Couldn’t Prepare Fragment” problems at startup (must look into this some more!)  Removed superfluous “Icons for Contents Menu” checkbox, you now get this if “Display Small Icons” is on.  The “Are you sure you want to move” dialog now offers you the choice of moving, copying or making an alias of the Finder selection to your chosen folder, which is cool.

• New: FinderPop 1.2b5 removes the “Expand Folder” checkbox; folder expansion is now always on.  You will now also get the “Contents” submenu if you control-click an alias to a folder in the Finder. 

• New: FinderPop 1.2b4 is smaller, and finally allows you to act on all items in the Finder selection, rather than just the last one. Better icon and menu caching is done for the “Contents” submenu. The “Move to Trash”, “Get Info” and “Show” cursors now also work for items in the “Contents” submenu. To prevent accidents, only aliasing of the Finder selection is allowed if the target is the “FinderPop Items Folder” (i.e., choosing the “FinderPop” item in the contextual menu, or the “FinderPop Items Folder” from the “Finder Windows” submenu.)

• New: FinderPop 1.2b3 adds a “command key canceller” feature -- lengthy operations (such as building the hierarchy of the “Contents” menu of a server) can be cancelled by pressing the command key twice; the menus displayed in such circumstances will obviously be incomplete…
FinderPop 1.2b3 also resolves alias chains (an alias to an alias…); I suspect this could be the cause of a number of people’s problems with FinderPop not showing submenus properly. However, you should really consider replacing alias chains with just one alias to the original item. (Hmmm -- sounds like a good utility idea...)

The release notes for earlier versions of FinderPop have been lost in the mists of time…
Lucky for you.