Another new beta with further fixes to the preview server, corrections for visual glitches with MS Office, and refinements to the new “retro” look. Details and a download linke are on the Default Folder X Beta Testing page.

Here’s the latest iteration of the look - yes, those of you who missed the color icons, they’re back!

OK, time for more geek-talk. I’ve spent a couple of late nights fussing with fat binaries, bundles, and mach-o architecture API’s to try and find a way to determine if an app is running in 64 bit mode. Surprisingly, I couldn’t just Google it and get an easy solution.

Looking at the darwin source, I found there’s a sysctl() token to get this information. This code will return the processor type (including the 64-bit flag). Note that it uses the sysctlbyname_with_pid() function in Apple’s Universal Binary Programming Guidelines:

cpu_type_t GetProcessArchitecture(pid_t pid)
{
    cpu_type_t cputype;
    size_t cpusz = sizeof(cputype);    

    // Default values
#if __i386__
    cputype = CPU_TYPE_X86;
#else
    cputype = CPU_TYPE_POWERPC;
#endif

    if (sysctlbyname_with_pid("sysctl.proc_cputype", pid,
                              &cputype, &cpusz, NULL, 0) == -1)
    {
        fprintf(stderr, "proc_cputype: sysctlbyname_with_pid failed:"
                "%s\n", strerror(errno));
    }
    return cputype;
}

I’ve posted a new beta version of DFX 4.0.1. Fixes include better compatibility with Mail.app, a correction for DFX’s hotkeys not working in the Finder, keyboard focus issues, and improvements to the new preview server for cases when images are corrupted (which used to cause the preview server to crash).

Grab your copy from the Default Folder X Beta Testing page.