Version 1.5 final 05 November — “Woo-hoo! 1.5 complete at last!”
Hello and welcome to the slightly better organised manual, formed by taking the old ReadMe and banging at it with a piece of two-by-four. Complaints, clarifications, bugs, omissions, rephrasings of my deathless — if only for sheer turgidity — prose all welcome at turly@geocities.com.
See also the webpage at http://bounce.to/turly (a bit easier to remember than all that wretched geocities gobbledegook, even if you do have to look at an advertisement for five seconds…)
I’ll be heading back to Cork next week (5th Nov), so there'll be a bit of a hiatus — maybe a week or so — in the FinderPop release schedule… Still, I’m looking forward to “real” weather and “real” stout again!
What is it?
FinderPop 1.5 final extends the Mac OS 8 Finder’s contextual menus. Features include: user-selectable contextual menu font/size/icon size, automagic CM popup by clicking and holding without having to press the control key, and a number of optional submenus — including Processes, contents of selected folder, Finder windows, FinderPop, and Desktop. It is free.
What’s New?
FinderPop 1.5 final is the same as 1.5f11 with just a name change. I will post this to InfoMac, and will contact the people who volunteered to localise FinderPop to ask them to localise this version.
Hey, by the way, did you know that there have been — count ’em — 18 versions of FinderPop in the last 13 weeks? Now I’m heading back to Cork and a social life, this rate will be somewhat reduced… :-)
FinderPop 1.5f11 hopefully fixes a problem with St. Clair Software’s nifty-looking Sleeper control panel (and probably a few other apps also.)
Went to an interesting Halloween party in Oakland… Quite entertaining; everyone there seemed to be enjoying themselves; some of the music was quite good, too! Didn’t think much of yer man Josh Wink, though ;-)
FinderPop 1.5f10 fixes a couple of embarrassing bugs (eg, you were not able to switch off the “clicking in unused menubar area” feature) Implements new algorithm to check whether a piece of menubar real estate is, in fact, “unused.” Sports a new, snazzy-looking icon courtesy of Will Cosgrove.
Unless people report major showstopping bugs, this will become 1.5 FINAL next week. (Or unless I go mad over the weekend and start implementing new stuff...)
Oh yeah, one other thing, would the person who posted 1.5f7 to InfoMac using my name and email address please desist? I know you meant well, but I was hoping to give ’em 1.5 Final instead of all these half-baked version numbers. If you do think it’s worthwhile to post an interim version, please do so with your name, not mine! Thank you.
FinderPop 1.5f9 has a completely rewritten low-level trap patching mechanism in an attempt to get it working in apps other than the Finder. This works relatively well for non-CMM-aware apps if used in conjunction with Apple’s Internet Data Detectors. Grabbing seems to work a bit more reliably (and in colour!) One minor tweak to the font stuff might make things even better for OS8/J users. You can now control-click (or click and hold) in the unused portion of the menubar and have the Contextual Menu drop down. Lots of other minor tweaks, etc. If there are no showstopping bugs (hah!), I’ll release this version as 1.5 Final next week (and would-be localisers can contact me then.)
As usual, you’ll have to pay a visit to the ever more crowded “More Settings” dialog to enable some of these features.
Just back from a weekend in San Diego. One cool city, and I don't mean that in the thermal sense — the weather was superb; the thermometer didn’t say so, but the sun seemed to be far hotter there than it is up here in Cupertino. Even ran into a FinderPop user in a pub (Hi Tim, and thanks for the pints!) Small world.
FinderPop 1.5f8 should fix the odd font behaviour seen by Japanese users, plus a couple of other bugs. It also adds a first stab at “Grabbing” — press the ‘G’ key when you have something selected in a FinderPop submenu, and you can pick it up and drag it around the Finder, to do with what you will.
My apologies for the user interface, which is again becoming more cluttered. I will redesign this sometime after I get back to Cork in mid-November.
A “Marketing Slogans” chapter has been added. I’ve made the “What’s New” section blue to make it stand out.
On a brighter note, it may interest regular readers of the FinderPop saga that I finally found a place that sells Beamish Stout on draught in San Francisco! My first pint of Beamish since August 4! <f/x: lip-smacking sounds> And it wasn’t bad, either — better than their Guinness, anyway, although I suspect my tastebuds were in tatters by that stage. I think the place was called “Lucky 13” or something (possibly at Market and Church?) In any event, I recommend that any fine beer connoisseurs amongst you give this stout a try. One caveat: an ideal pint of Beamish (would be 20 fluid ounces, but that's another matter :-) should have a creamy “collar” less than 1 inch high, and not a three-inch job like they gave me. Or tried to — once they heard my accent I think they realised I wasn’t some gullible non-stout drinker...
FinderPop 1.5f7 hopefully fixes the odd behaviour seen by some unfortunates in the “Desktop” submenu.
FinderPop 1.5f6 fixes the embarassing ‘every alias is italicised’ bug; sorry about that. As we say in the trade, “Duhh.”
FinderPop 1.5f5 should fix the menu font/size problems that some people were experiencing. I tried about five different ways before finally remembering the way the old comms toolbox MDEF did it. Duhhh. It also finally implements the Desktop submenu.
I’ll have to redesign the user interface some more, but I thought I’d get the bugs fixed first.
FinderPop 1.5f4 was released only to a couple of people who’d experienced bugs — basically testing a couple of bugfixes.
FinderPop 1.5f3 is now freeware! This version should fix the annoying “couldn’t load code fragment” startup errors which some people were getting. It also adds a first stab at some extra features; these will be expanded over the coming weeks.
FinderPop 1.5f2 is no longer “PintWare”, I have contacted those who have registered so I can return their registrations. It is now freeware again! Because I’m currently working for Apple, this is probably the best way to avoid any perceived conflict of interest.
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.)
FinderPop 1.5f0 has a revamped and simplified user interface, and allows you to display the FinderPop Items embedded directly inside the Finder’s contextual popup menu as opposed to inside a “FinderPop” submenu. 1.5f0 also supports generic icons and selectable menu fonts and sizes, and has a number of other bugfixes.
Oh yeah, it’s also “PintWare” — it’s still free, but if you’d like the opportunity to express your gratitude and get me a couple of pints, you can do so by registering it via Kagi for $7 (the price of two US pints of Murphy’s in Fibbar Magee’s — hey, why are US pints a wimpy 16 fluid ounces? :-). 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. Other than the glowing feeling in the depths of your soul if you got me a pint, that is.
See the FinderPop AboutBox for details.
What’s Coming?
Christmas, and the goose is getting fat.
More and more features. I now have a feature “wish list” the length of my arm (but still welcome other submissions.) Certain features of the late and apparently much lamented PopupFolder are well represented in this list. Some of the more obvious features which should eventually appear:
• Grab-and-drag — “grabbing” an item from within a FinderPop submenu will “pick it up”; you’ll then be able to drag the icon around as if you’d picked it up in the Finder. Hopefully — this is still being worked out.
• Advanced FinderPop Settings — a new dialog which will allow you to fine-tune various aspects of FinderPop operation.
• Memory — if you opened a document with a certain application last time, and control-click a document of the same type again, FinderPop will remember this and automagically add the application to the main CMM menu, and have the mouse positioned over the relevant item in the menu, so all you need do is release the mouse button.
• Disable inappropriate applications — if you have a Finder icon selected, inappropriate apps will be disabled or removed from the FinderPop submenu. (E.g., SimpleText isn’t really appropriate for Word documents, so why present you with the choice?)
• Ability for FinderPop to operate in applications other than the Finder.
This could build on Apple’s new Internet Address Detector stuff…
• Embedded Application Menus — i.e., have the Finder menus appear in the CMM popup menu. A minor convenience, but one that a number of people have asked for.
• Background Menu Caching — FinderPop submenus will be capable of being built in the background during idle time.
• More options for menu organisation (along the lines of Fabien Octave’s cool BeHierarchic, which I had never seen until today — thanks, AA.)
Feel quite free to contact me with feature requests, but please don’t expect miracles. There’s only one of me — admittedly quite a bit more of me now after thirteen weeks of American-sized meals, and no soccer matches three times a week…
