Version 1.7.5 Wednesday 28 Oct 1998 — “The more haste, the less speed. Again.”
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 — and tenebrous prose all welcome at turly@kagi.com.
See also the webpage at http://www.kagi.com/turly/.
Unfortunately, my spare time is at a premium as I’m trying to find somewhere to live and dealing with banks/solicitors/estate agents, etc., has me coming out in a rash. (A minor update — I thought I’d found somewhere reasonable, put a deposit on it but never signed anything, paid large amounds of dosh for legal fees, valuation fees and structural survey, etc., and have now been told that the vendor doesn't want to sell it after all. 10 weeks wasted and now I have to start all over again, dammit. 25-May-98 Update: Argh! Dammit! — It’s happened again! Different house, same old crud — and on the very day we were due to exchange contracts! Look for a news item on your TV screens soon involving a deranged programmer, a 100 gallon vat of custard, a bicycle pump, and the entire population of Cork estate agents :-/ Meanwhile, the search continues…
19-Oct-1998: Found a house, signed the contract and have the keys! It’s a tad expensive, has a nice view over the river, but the house itself is over 150 years old (and looks it.) All the electrics are of the old two-pin plug variety, probably dating from the 1930s or 1940s, so they'll have to be ripped out and replaced. At last — a roof over my head (although not for very long, as a new roof will be needed soon due to the fact that the old one is, errr, on the verge of collapse.) The house is nearly as decrepit as I am, but it should be fun… I might even be able to move in before January or February…
What is it?
FinderPop 1.7.5 is a pintware control panel which 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, disk, folder and StuffIt™ archive navigation, and a number of optional submenus — including Processes, contents of selected folder, Finder windows, FinderPop, and Desktop. Additionally, it enhances navigation via the Standard File dialogs.
• The return of Pintware! After spending (waaaay too) much of my spare time in the last few months working on FinderPop, I’ve decided to revert to the old “pintware” system whereby users, if they want to and can afford to, can get me a couple of pints by “registering” it with Kagi for $8. (See the FinderPop aboutbox or the last page of this, errrm, “manual”.) Note that the Pintware concept is entirely voluntary and FinderPop is neither Crippleware nor Nagware. You are more than welcome to use FinderPop without paying anything.
Features
Just thought I’d list the major features of FinderPop here, as this manual has become very badly organised (“badly disorganised”?)…
• Control-free CMM popup — just click and hold — now works in many more apps; Apple Data Detectors become even handier (or handy-less!)
• Command-click (or click and hold) a folder to get a popup of its contents (or command-control-click for an immediate contents popup.)
• Selectable Font/Size for FinderPop submenus
• Process, Contents, Windows, FinderPop and Desktop submenus
• Move, Copy, Alias or Open items selected in Finder to any item in the FinderPop hierarchy (see Power User Topics chapter)
• Control-clicking or clicking and holding in any unused menubar area pops up CMM in any app
• Grab and drag — “grab” an item in a FinderPop menu by pressing ‘G’ while it’s selected, then drag it around to do with as you will…
• Standard File enhancement — click and hold on a folder in Standard File to see (and select from) its contents!
• You can now select items from the FinderPop menus (e.g., by control-clicking or double-clicking an unused portion of the menubar) while the Standard File dialogs are up — whatever you select will be “opened.”
What’s New?
FinderPop 1.7.5 (Weds 28 Oct) features:
• A fix for the case where, if any key in the FinderPop “keys” panel was blank, it could sometimes behave as if it were being pressed. Whoops.
FinderPop 1.7.4 (Tuesday 27 Oct) features:
• Looks like the new MacOS 8.5 _SetMenuFont system call doesn’t. I’ve gone back to my original skanky but working method.
• Incorporate a new FinderPoplet icon from Laurent Poidevin; it has a "drop" in it with a menu reflected in it. Very artistic indeed!
• New contact and email addresses — thanks a bunch, GeoCities. Bozos.
FinderPop 1.7.3 (Monday 19 Oct) features:
• More MacOS 8.5 compatability — Pressing Keys (and in particular, Grabbing) now works (at least on my system!)
• Note that some people have problems when DataViz’s MacLinkPlus CM plugin is installed. With or without FinderPop, but FinderPop may exacerbate it.
• Use a bitmap instead of a PICT for the modifier key glyphs on the “Keys” panel.
• Clicking on the very top left of the main screen — i.e., at location (0,0) — will cause the FinderPop menu to drop down. This has been in there since the year dot, but I appear to have forgotten to mention it anywhere. Sorry about that.
FinderPop 1.7.2 (Tuesday 29 Sept) features:
• Fix nasty bug involving my patch to _CopyMask where I managed to do a _DisposeRoutineDescriptor on the original _CopyMask address, with *BAD* results if someone else had patched it. Bad Dog, turly, Bad Dog.
• a new user interface
• better — but not complete — MacOS 8.5 compatability
• StuffIt archive navigation if you have the StuffIt Engine installed
• try harder to always do “the right thing”
Please read the following notes for the beta versions 1.6.9b1 and 1.6.9b2 for further information.
FinderPop 1.6.9b2 Private Beta Release to members of the“FinderPop Announce” mailing list.
Bugs fixed since 1.6.9b1:
• 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.
• The Windows menu now guesses about files opened by apps, and displays icons appropriately (and which you can Reveal, or Get Info, etc.)
• A tad more 8.5 compatible — they’ve done something funny to the fonts, and many of the system icons have been renumbered! I’ve fixed the font problems, but I’m still trying to figure out some of the icons, though I think I’ve got ’em now. A long session in Macsbug enabled me to figure out, among other things, the offsets for the dirID/vRefNum info for Finder windows, which means they should now work like they used to.
•In 8.5, Pressing keys won’t work while the menu is down (e.g., the Grab key), ’cos 8.5 interprets a non-modifier keypress as a mouseUp and thus “selects” the highlighted menu item. I *hope* I'll have a fix for this soon. Note that the modifier keys still work fine (cmd-option for ‘get info’, etc.)
•Also in 8.5, the “AutoPopup” pane in the control panel looks funny ’cos they’ve broken the Group Checkbox control even more than it was broken in 8.[01], so my workaround for the original CDEF’s bug no longer works.
•Again in 8.5, you have to double-click the menubar if you want control-free FinderPopping there (clicking and holding doesn’t work, but I find double-clicking to be quicker...)
• Still awaiting confirmation from Aladdin that they've accepted my licence fee so I can legally use the StuffIt Engine.
• Grabbing a StuffIt archive now works as you'd expect (it grabs the archive file, and doesn't try to expand it first — thanks, someone whose name I’ve forgotten:-)
If 1.6.9b2 passes muster, I’ll try to release 1.7.0 before I head back home to real weather (and real Beamish :-) at the weekend. I’ll try to add Popup Path menu and Navigation Services Support in succeeding versions (1.7.1+) in the coming weeks. Depending on spare time: I wouldn’t mind a biteen of a social life again...
FinderPop 1.6.9b1 (Weds 02 September) Private Beta Release to members of the“FinderPop Announce” mailing list
• The return of Pintware! After spending (waaaay too) much of my spare time in the last three months working on this version of FinderPop, I’ve decided to revert to the old “pintware” system whereby users, if they want to and can afford to, can get me a couple of pints by “registering” it with Kagi for $8. (See the FinderPop aboutbox or the last page of this, errrm, “manual”.) Note that the Pintware concept is entirely voluntary and FinderPop is neither Crippleware nor Nagware. You are more than welcome to use FinderPop without paying a thing.
• Substantial speed improvements, improving the user experience. I hope.
• Open items selected in Finder via Internet Config (i.e., based on their extensions and Internet Config extension mappings.)
• The “Get Info” help balloons now display version info (if available.)
• A FinderPop menu brought up by control-clicking an unused portion of the menubar while a standard file dialog is active will now display a “Finder Windows” submenu, from which you can choose an item in the usual manner.
• Double-clicking an unused portion of the menubar now pops up the FinderPop menu.
• Fix a font switching problem I introduced just to see if anyone would notice :-)
• If you have the StuffIt Engine installed, you can treat StuffIt archives somewhat akin to folders. You can’t delete items in archives as the StuffIt Engine does not provide this functionality, for obvious reasons (i.e., why would anyone buy StuffIt Deluxe? :-)
• Oh, yeah, the beginnings of a new user interface…I hope you like it.
• Peter Hartmann’s latest detective work with the Japanese Language Kit and FinderPop’s “Grab” feature implicates the “Language Kit Additions” folder. See the ‘Bugs & Features’ chapter.)
• The beginnings of a public API for programmers who want to control or use FinderPop’s features from within their own programs. Interested parties should contact me so we can flesh something out.
FinderPop 1.6.5 (Bloomsday 16 June)
• Fix Prefs saving problem for turning control-free popup on or off via the item in the Help Menu (it wouldn’t be saved to disk unless the FinderPop control panel was opened before shutdown.) As we say in the trade, “Duhhhh.”
• Optionally allow clicking-and-holding on a folder or disk in the Finder to popup a Contents menu rather than a contextual menu — this behaviour is more in line with what PopupFolder users expect. Apparently. Control-clicking a folder will bring up the normal contextual menu in all cases.
• Be a bit smarter about generic icon sizing — if the font is big enough (read: 12 point or greater), use 16*16 generic icons instead of the much more limited 16*12 mini icons (of which there are far fewer in the System file.)
• Optimise things a bit more.
• WorldScript II and FinderPop: Peter Hartmann sends his latest findings (see the “Bugs and Features” chapter) which more-or-less exonerates FinderPop. Yay! Which, unfortunately, doesn’t do much for his unhappy situation. Boo!
FinderPop 1.6.4 (Tues 9 June) Fix problem reported by Stephen Giles involving opening files within ResEdit using FinderPop’s contents popup menu during the file open dialog. ResEdit would insist the file was damaged beyond repair (it lies — the file was perfect, and opening it “normally” worked without problems.) Additionally, control-command-clicking a folder inside a file open dialog’s file list should now have the same effect as command- clicking — this is specially to please all six people on the planet who have four-button mice.
FinderPop 1.6.3 (Mon 8 June) Be smarter about the help balloon (command- option) file info stuff — still not 100%, but improved quite a bit. Moving the mouse outside the selected menu item while FinderPop is generating the folder submenu for that item will now abort the submenu generation. Option-clicking a process from the process menu now hides the current process before switching to the selected process; New Logo graphics courtesy of Carlos, merci bien. Slightly more snazzy and shameless Aboutbox. Command-clicking somewhere in a standard file dialog box’s file list now works regardless of the setting of the “Auto CMM Popup delay.” A few other minor fixes. Have just spent a marathon 7 hour Macsbug session ’til 3:30AM chasing one heisenbug, and still haven’t squished it. Moan. Grumble. Gripe. I’m off to get some sleep…
FinderPop 1.6.2 (Fri 15 May) Fix bug whereby quitting the Finder causes nasty things to happen the next time a contextual menu is invoked.
Fix bug in standard file stuff where, under certain circumstances, no folders would show up in the file list. Be a bit smarter about switching to the Finder — cuts down unnecessary switches to Finder immediately followed by switches to something else; speeds things up a bit...
In addition to displaying the “Get Info” cursor when holding down command and option over a menu item, FinderPop will now also display a little help balloon giving some basic information about the file under the mouse (alpha stage, may not work correctly all the time!)
Some other news:
WorldScript II — after some stout detective work by Peter Hartmann, 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.
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.”
FinderPop 1.6.1 (Sun 10 May) Add option to not colourise an item’s text if it has a label (any icon will always be label-coloured.) You’ll never guess to which already horrendously overcrowded dialog I had to add yet another checkbox. Sigh. Pretty soon you'll need a 1024*768 screen to view it.
Also fix embarrassing bug whereby both the “Popup near…” items stopped working. Additionally, you can now “Grab”, get info, show or move to trash any item selected from a “pure” Contents popup — i.e., a popup got by command- control- clicking a folder.
May-01-98: The last version’s “contest” has been won by Lawrence Guzzetta, who identified Thomas “Prozac” Hardy as the author of the poem from which the phrase “Ah no, the years, the years…” comes, and provided “see, the white storm birds wing across.” as the next line (actually, Hardy has some pretty natty, if depressing, lines in that poem — “Ah no, the years, o; / Down their carved names the raindrop ploughs.”) These lines have stuck with me since I last read the poem (at school in 1983!) Perhaps Hardy’s the Leonard Cohen of the ’90s — the 1890s. Anyhow, enough of my witterings and on to the prizegiving ceremony proper: If ever FinderPop goes explicitly “Pintware” again, Lawrence, feel quite free to check that little “I got turly a pint” checkbox…!
FinderPop 1.6.0 (Weds 29 April — my birthday!) fixes some bugs (and hopefully doesn’t introduce any.) Sorry it took so long to get this one out — been up the walls with “real” work, I’m afraid, and had two weekend stag parties to attend (yee—haaa!)
Rewrite icon gathering/drawing code. We now support label colours and no longer interfere with an app’s own menu icons. FinderPop now works as you’d expect with apps other than the Finder that expose file aliases (such as DragThing 2.5.) Still some work needing to be done to the icon stuff — including speed increases.
Choosing the “Largest Block” item from the Process menu now shows the “About this Computer” Finder window.
••Things to note: QuicKeys’ “Pop up Menu” extension is incompatible with FinderPop. I’m looking into it. Also, Jan Skarbek alerts me to the fact that Apple Data Detectors 1.0.2 won’t work properly unless you’re using a US keyboard layout.
This version’s competition is (as it will be from now on): name the poet and complete the quotation at the top of this page (following the date.) The use of Internet Search Engines is not allowed. The first person to email me with the correct answer wins a free copy of FinderPop! :-)
FinderPop 1.5.9 (Tuesday 17 Mar — the St. Patrick’s Day “Paddy MacHackery” special) allows you to selectively toggle control-free popups on a per-application basis.
It works by adding a menu item to the Help menu, much as Apple Data Detectors does; this means that Jigsaw Puzzle* and a few other apps (hopefully including Escape Velocity) become usable again when “control-free popups in all apps” is enabled.
Bit of a rewrite of the low-level patches to be more stable in the presence of QuicKeys, etc. Hopefully I haven’t broken anything in the process...
Better popup menu positioning algorithms. Decouple “Empty Trash” item from the Desktop submenu code. Better Prefs File format — hopefully this will be future proof… (famous last words).
FinderPop 1.5.8 (Thursday 26 Feb) fixes a problem with the Menuette control panel (among other things.)
[Saturday night, 4:15 AM] A Paddy MacHackery special: you can now click-and-hold on an existing selection in most applications without the dreaded “oh no! my selection has become deselected” just before the contextual menu pops up…
You can now Command-Control-click a folder in the Finder for an immediate contents popup. In Standard File dialogs, command-clicking a folder in the list will bring an immediate contents popup.
Note new Apple Data Detectors address: http://applescript.apple.com/data_detectors/
FinderPop 1.5.7 (Friday 13 Feb —wooo! tempting fate or what?) should be a tiny bit quicker and a good bit more robust. Also, you can now command-click and hold a folder in the Finder to get a popup of its contents. Revampled° one or two sections of the manual (the website address may be changing soon...)
Still haven’t had the spare time to implement the new “tabbed” user interface, I’m afraid...
FinderPop 1.5.6 (30 Jan) does a better job of enhancing the standard file dialogs — click and hold on a folder in a file Open… or Save… dialog and be presented with a popup menu displaying the folder’s contents; select a file from it and, voila, it’s opened!
The Standard File “Contents” popup menus should now work as expected in all cases (thanks to John Gotow for a handy hint — I owes ya a pint, John :-).
The “Contents” submenu, which normally only appears if you have selected a folder in the Finder, can now be made to appear if you just click in a Finder window (without selecting anything.) This can be handy if you just want to “view by name” quickly in order to locate something.
You can now have an optional “Put Away” menu item, for when you’ve selected something in the Finder whose “home” directory isn’t where it currently is. This also works for disks and network volumes — just like selecting “Put Away” from the File Menu. I was amazed at the number of people who asked for this — lads, in all fairness, have yez considered pressing Command-Y? But it was easy to add, so I did :-).
Finally, I made a number of other improvements — hopefully I haven’t broken anything in the process. The “More Settings” user interface — to which you’ll have recourse if you want to use any of the new features here — is getting worse; I’ll have to redesign the entire control panel when the “More Settings” dialog starts getting too big for a 640*400 monitor (which should be about March/April at the current rate of progress.)
FinderPop 1.5.5 (8 Jan) was the initial attempt at enhancing the standard file Open/Close dialogs.
FinderPop 1.5.4 (2 Jan) was only released as an alpha (well, actually, two alphas) with some very hairy bugs.
FinderPop 1.5.3 (8 Dec) should fix the “Empty Trash” bug introduced in the last version. Sorry about that…
If you’re one of the kind people who’ve localised FinderPop and want to do this version, the only thing that’s changed from 1.5.1 is the addition of the “Empty Trash” string in the STRs resource.
FinderPop 1.5.2 (24 Nov) is the latest entrant in my attempt to keep the great volunteer crew of localisers busy — nothing’s changed on the UI front, lads! :-)
It fixes a number of minor bugs, adds an “Empty Trash” feature (only if you have the “Desktop” submenu enabled.) “Grabbing” should now work all the time instead of intermittently as it did previously.
Oh yeah, a number of people didn’t know that you can cancel any drag-and-drop operation by “dropping” the item being dragged into the menubar, so I thought it might be worth mentioning.
Additionally, it’s probably a good idea to highlight the fact that you need Apple’s Internet Address Detector stuff (available at
http://applescript.apple.com/data_detectors/) to get FinderPop working in non CMM-aware apps. Note that IAD is incompatible with some apps such as Quark XPress which use Control-Clicking — John Moe, moejo@post.uwstout.edu, has written a freebie control panel, IADD, which lets you turn off IAD for selected apps. It’s available at http://www.luminet.net/~dmoe/iadd.sit.hqx
Thank you Mr. Moe.
Matthieu Baudoux, matthieub@skynet.be, has kindly set up *FinderPop Announce*, a read-only mailing list to which you might like to subscribe in order to receive information about the availability of new versions of FinderPop.
To subscribe, send a mail to <requests@lists.qwentes.be> with the following message in the body of your mail :
subscribe finderpop
To unsubscribe, send a mail to <requests@lists.qwentes.be> with the following message in the body of your mail :
unsubscribe finderpop
FinderPop 1.5.1 should improve stability, and fixes a couple of bugs.
FinderPop 1.5 final (5 Nov) 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 (available at
http://applescript.apple.com/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. Although this will probably change! In fact, it has, but not so’s anyone would notice — see the last page of this manual for details.
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 or the last page of this manual for details.
What’s Coming?
Christmas, and the goose is getting fat. (A free copy of FinderPop to the first person who emails me with the next line to that piece of doggerel. Apr-01-98: This “contest” has been won by Phil Hudson, who emailed all the way from sunny Botswana, correctly replying “Please put a penny in the old man’s hat.” If ever FinderPop goes “Pintware” again, Phil, feel quite free to check that little “I bought turly a pint” checkbox…!)
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 (see the last chapter, “Contact Info”), 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…
______
* What amazes me is that someone is still using Jigsaw Puzzle and noticed the bug.
° Whaddya mean “Revampled” isn’t a word? :-) "Revamped" + "Trampled" = "Revampled". So there.
