You can download CustoFinder 7 from http://www.teaser.fr/~hfiguiere
English, French and German versions are available.
Abstract
CustoFinder 7 is a small Control Panel that alters some option in System 7 and its Finder. It features:
• date format
• keyboard menu
• alias name style
• small icons on the desktop
How to use
First, you should check that your system met the requirements. You should run System 7 or any later release up to MacOS 7.6. There no support for any earlier version since there is not reason to do so (most if not all the feature are not in System 7). Macintosh and PowerMacintosh are both supported. This program is not PowerPC native, but the Finder isn’t too.
How to Install ?
However, even if CustoFinder 7 is a control panel, CustoFinder 7 does not need to be installed in the system folder. It can be placed anywhere on your disks, but it is better to put it in the Control Panel folder. To install it simply move it (or copy it) into the right location. Dropping it on the system folder’s icon will put it in the Control Panel folder
Customize
1) Open the CustoFinder 7 control panel double-clicking it or selecting it in the Apple menu (if installed there).
2) Change the settings you want to alter
3) Close CustoFinder 7
4) Restart your Mac (sorry about this, but there is no easy way to have the changes take effect immediately).
Date Format
You can have 3 different date formats: Standard, Long and Short. Pick up the one you want it the popup menu. Standard is the default value. The following table shows you the different format for a US system.
Format Result
Standard Sat, Jul 10, 1993, 1:14 PM
Long Saturday, July 10, 1993, 1:14 PM
Short 7/10/93, 1:14 PM
Please, remember that those dates can be different just because you can change the related format in the Date & Time control panel. Note that there is a correspondance between those and the one you’ll find in the Date & Time control panel.
Keyboard Menu
The keyboard menu is a system menu that appears between Help and the application menu that show the different keyboard layouts available. It is shown by default in some localized versions of the system like French version. You can decide to show or hide it depending on what you want. Some wants to get rid of it to get a few extra space in the menu bar, others want to be able to use it (they don’t have it by default). This is one of the hidden feature Apple did not make available to common user.
Alias name style
Alias name style is not hard-coded to italic. This can be changed too. But why do you want to change it ? Because, for example, you use a font for the Finder that does not look well in Italic. Personnaly, I use Tekton as a display font for the Finder. Tekton does not look well in italic. I prefer condensed bold. You may want to choose something else. Just select what combination you want with the checkboxes. A sample is displayed in the Finder’s font.
Small icons on the desktop
You won’t believe if I tell you that you can have small icons on the desktop. But why having small icon? Just to have a bigger mess on a small screen. If I wanted I could have implemented a feature to have list icons sorted by name, by kind or by size on the desktop. But the problem is that we can not have scroll bar.
By default you do not have small icons on the desktop.
Troubleshooting
Here I’ll answer the most common problems encountered with CustoFinder 7.
Q: When I open the CustoFinder 7 control panel, I get an alert that tells me that I can not use CustoFinder 7 on this Macintosh. Why ?
A: Make sure that you have a System version between 7.0 and 7.6. No older or newer System is currently supported. If this is not the case, contact me. Be sure to check the Finder version. It should currently be as new as 7.5.6. Not much.
Registering
CustoFinder 7 has the following pricing.
Single License $5
Site License $100
World License $500
A Single license covers only one computer. If you use several at a time, you can install it on all of the computer you use given nobody else use them. So, you can install them on your office Macintosh, on your PowerBook and on your home Macintosh.
A Site License costs $100 (roughly equal to 20 users) and covers all locations for your organization within a 160 kilometer radius of your site (100 miles). One big advantage of a Site License is that you do not need to keep track of how many people at your site are using the software.
A World-Wide License costs $500 and it covers all locations for your organization on the planet Earth.
Paying for CustoFinder 7 is fairly simple. Open the Register program that accompanies CustoFinder 7. Enter your name, your email address, and the number of single user licenses you desire for each program you wish to purchase (or Site or Word-Wide licenses). Save or Copy or Print the data from the Register program and send the data and payment to Kagi. More specifics on the Register program to follow. Kagi handles my payment processing.
If paying with Credit Card or First Virtual, you can email or fax the data to Kagi. Their email address is sales@kagi.com and their fax number is +1 510 652-6589. You can either Copy the data from Register and paste into the body of an email message or you can Save the data to a file and you can attach that file to an email message. There is no need to compress the data file, it’s already pretty small. If you have a fax modem, just Print the data to the Kagi fax number.
Payments sent via email are processed within 3 to 4 days. You will receive an email acknowledgement when it is processed. Payments sent via fax take up to 10 days and if you provide a correct internet email address you will receive an email acknowledgement.
If you are paying with Cash or USD Check you should print the data using the Register application and send it along with your payment to the address shown on the form, which is:
Kagi
1442-A Walnut Street #392-HF
Berkeley, California 94709-1405
USA
You can pay with a wide variety of cash from different countries but at present if you pay via check, it must be a check drawn in US Dollars. Kagi cannot accept checks in other currencies, the conversion rate for non-USD checks is around USD 15 per check and that is just not practical.
If you have a purchasing department, you can enter all the data into the Register program and then select Invoice as your payment method. Print three copies of the form and send it to your accounts payable people. You might want to highlight the line that mentions that they must include a copy of the form with their payment.
Kagi can not invoice your company, you need to act on my behalf and generate the invoice and handle all the paperwork on your end.
Please do not fax or email payment forms that indicate Cash, Check or Invoice as the payment method. As far as we know, there is still no technology to transfer physical objects via fax or email and without the payment, the form cannot be processed.
Payments sent via postal mail take time to reach Kagi and then up to 10 days for processing. Again, if you include a correct email address, you will hear from Kagi when the form is processed.
Contact Information
If you have any questions, find any bugs, have feature ideas, etc. feel free to e-mail me at figuiere@kagi.com.
I can only answer question via e-mail. I won’t do this via snail-mail. I’m sorry about that, but snail-mail take time to write, take time to post, and cost money. If you are interested sending me a postcard from your home town my snail-mail is :
Hubert FIGUIERE
24 rue des Filmins
92330 Sceaux
France
Special Thanks
I would like to thanks without any preferred order:
Olivier, Rainer Lanz, Benoît Widemann, Samuel Pelletier, all the Macintosh developers I know and all the user that registered and gave me feedback.
