Bugs/Features/Troubleshooting

31-January-99: Kerim Friedman, kerim.friedman@ibm.net writes:
Although FinderPop appears when i click on the unused space in the menu bar of any application, it doesn't work. I can't select anything within the menus. I am using OS 8.5.1 (international version).
I ran Conflict Catcher myself and located the conflict - it seemed to be a conflict between FinderPop and a control panel that controls one of the input kits included with MacOS 8.5.1 Taiwan. The name of the control panel is in Chinese and will appear as gibberish on your computer, but here it is: "¶rΩX¥ººz≈„•‹" sorry, as I'm sure that doesn't help you one bit . . .Anyway, by making FinderPop load AFTER that control panel I was able to get the pop-up menus to work again.

• 02-January-99: FinderPop cannot yet look inside StuffIt 5.0 archives.  This is because the Aladdin people have not yet released the API for doing this.  So bug them about it, not me :-)

• 27-October-98: Note that some people have problems when DataViz’s MacLinkPlus CM plugin is installed.  With or without FinderPop, but FinderPop may exacerbate it.

•19-October-98: Clicking at (0, 0) — i.e., the top left of the main screen — will cause a FinderPop menu to drop down immediately.

•25-August-98: Deletion of items from StuffIt archives won’t work.  This is because the StuffIt Engine doesn’t provide this functionality.

•05-August-98: Yet another UPDATE on WorldScript II and FinderPop “Grabbing” problems with VM on: Peter Hartmann sez:
I am using the [FinderPop’s] grab option with the JLK without any trouble since I removed a folder called Language Kit Additions from the system extensions folder. I think one of the files in it is the real culprit. This folder is installed by the JLK updater for OS8. It contains Japanese (J) and universal (Z) customization ressources for System 8.0, Quick Time 2.5 and LaserWriter 8.

•09-June-98: UPDATE on WorldScript II/FinderPop problems. Peter Hartmann sez:
I recently found out that the real culprit of some of the JLK/World Script II problems is not WSII itself but the corruption of a file called"WorldScript II Resources". This file is automatically rebuilt if it is not found.
After a lot of investigation, I managed to solve a problem where AppleScript wouldn't do anything any more and instead of AppleScript syntax the Scripteditor showed class names. Maybe deleting this prefs file solved the FinderPop grabbing problem as well.
I earlier had a problem, where the machine crashed at startup at the exact moment the AppleScript extension loaded. Since I didn't realize the possibility of the "WorldScript II Resources" being at fault, I de- and reinstalled the JLK then (since I did not succeed by reinstalling AppleScript), which probably did not fix much more then removing this prefs file. (Kind of a fix-it-all-remedy…)

•28-May-98: Dr. Solomon’s AntiVirus, according to Paul Tavernise, appears to conspire with FinderPop to cause problems with mounting CD-R drives and opening the File Sharing Control Panel. UPDATE 06-Jun-98: Paul received an email from Dr. Solomon: “This particular problem was due to a bug in MacGuard.  It was fixed in V7.78 release.  It was also seen to happen on OSes other than system 8.x…”

•13-May-98: WorldScript II — after some stout detective work by Peter Hartmann, it turns out that this extension causes FinderPop to behave badly if you press “G” to “Grab and Drag” an item from a FinderPop menu. I’m looking into it (unfortunately I can’t reproduce his crashes.)

• QuicKeys 3.5.2 and FinderPop may not be 100% compatible.  UPDATE 29-Apr-98: Jonathan Jacobs has narrowed this down to the QuicKeys Extension called “Pop-up Menu”.  Removing this fixes the problem (but also means that any QK macros which use it will no longer work.)

The bug can apparently be alleviated by turning OFF the “Popup near…” items in the FinderPop “More Settings” dialog. (In my limited playing around with QK, I have not been able to reproduce this bug.)

• There may also be problems with PPP Menus.  As I can’t use this, I can’t debug it, so don’t expect a quick resolution to this one.

• Apple Data Detectors 1.0.2 requires you to use a US keyboard layout. Don’t look at me, guv. UPDATE 11-May-98: Apple Data Detectors and non-US keyboard layouts news: According to Timo Orre: “I just want to add that if you use Contextual Menu Enabler extension version 1.0.2 (the previous version), it works fine for non-US keyboard layouts (but without the possibility to turn it off in applications). Unfortunately I dont know a publicly-accessible download site for it.”

• If you have a folder on your desktop whose name is the same as one of your mounted volumes,  control-clicking on it results in a “Contents” submenu which refers to the disk, not the folder you clicked on. This appears to be a system software bug; I’ve filed a bug report at Apple.

• 68K support?  HIGHLY UNLIKELY as I no longer have ready access to a 68K box and don’t have the spare time, either. Sorry about that…

• At the risk of stating the obvious, if you’re displaying the FinderPop Items embedded directly in the main popup menu and the FinderPop Items folder is empty, there will be no FinderPop Items added to the menu. (Other submenus, like the Processes and Desktop submenus, will  be at their usual spots if you have enabled them.)
Some people who wished for only the “Contents” submenu without any extraneous FinderPop submenus can now have their wishes fulfilled.  In a roundabout fashion — the result of a happy accident.

• FinderPop maintains two caches: one for menus it has built up, and one for icons.  If you ever need to flush these caches, simply open the control panel, turn FinderPop off and then back on again immediately.  The next time you Control-click, all FinderPop’s menus and icons will be rebuilt from scratch.

• FinderPop checks that its menu hierarchy caches are up-to-date by looking at the folder being cached’s modification date. Unfortunately, renaming an item in (for example) the “FinderPop Items Folder” doesn’t affect the folder’s modification date; you can force the folder’s mod date to change by creating a new folder and then immediately deleting it (Command-N, Command-Delete.)

• The Menu Manager will only display a maximum of 5 hierarchical menus at one time, so not all levels of a deep hierarchy can be displayed.  I’m looking into extending this; one incredibly  skanky method springs to mind…

• Menus are now (1.3b0) built on-the-fly one level at a time, so you may sometimes notice a pause as you navigate into a large hierarchy. Menus are still cached, however, so you should only see this happening the first time you enter a particular folder (unless the folder is changing.)

• Want to speed up FinderPop’s building of a complicated menu hierarchy? Make sure the disk cache in the Memory control panel is set to some reasonable value -- for example, by clicking the “Use Defaults” button.  96K is not a reasonable value; my rule of thumb is to use one sixteenth of my physical memory up to a max of 2048K.

• Copying/aliasing/moving from a tabbed folder doesn’t appear to work. (The folder appears to close before the Finder can respond to the AppleEvents FinderPop sends to it.)  At first glance, this appears to be a Finder bug, but I’m looking into it! Latest: this is indeed a Finder bug; apparently to be fixed in 8.0.1 or 8.1 or whatever it is they’re calling it this week.

• Holding down the Option Key while the Process submenu is active will display balloons which show the memory usage of a process.  For some bizarre reason, you may need to depress it a few times, and move the mouse over to one edge or other of the menu item.  A low-priority fix, but I’ll get around to it.

• Holding down the mouse button during startup will disable FinderPop.

• The “FinderPop Items Folder” in the Preferences folder can itself be an alias.

• FinderPop currently has no knowledge about which documents are openable by which applications, so it may be possible to ‘open’ a document using an inappropriate application.  This will also be fixed in a future version (i.e., applications which can’t open what’s selected in the Finder can be disabled or removed from FinderPop menus.)

• Some people state that FinderPop fails to load with a “Couldn’t Prepare Code Fragment” error.  I have not ever seen a case of this, but people to whom this has happened state that by getting FinderPop to load later (e.g., by renaming it to “~FinderPop” or “zzFinderPop”) seems to fix this problem.  Some helpful user sent me a Macsbug StdLog of his crash, and it looks like the system was unable to prepare ObjectSupportLib, an AppleScript library which is in the System File under Mac OS 8.  Bizarre. I’m investigating. This should be fixed in version 1.5f3; please contact me if you encouter this again!

• Plotting colour icons in the FinderPop submenu -- things might look a tad strange in right-to-left text systems due to the skanky method I use to draw the icons for folders.  As soon as I get around to locating a right-to-left MacOS 8 system, I'll do further testing.  But be warned...