Archive for August, 2009

Default Folder X in New Take Control Book

Friday, August 28th, 2009

Matt Neuburg recommends Default Folder X in his new eBook “Take Control of Exploring & Customizing Snow Leopard”.  More importantly, Matt’s eBook and the companion Take Control of Upgrading to Snow Leopard” offer great recommendations on safely upgrading to Snow Leopard, what’s new and interesting in the new OS revision, and how to get the most out of it.  I highly recommend them – I’ve learned some new stuff myself thanks to Take Control Ebooks.

Default Folder X 4.3 Is Available!

Monday, August 17th, 2009

Default Folder X 4.3 sports Snow Leopard compatibility and a number of other enhancements and fixes.  You can get it from the Default Folder X release page.

IMPORTANT: There’s a bug in older versions of Default Folder X that can cause crashes while you’re using the hierarchical path menu if you’re running Mac OS 10.6.  Make sure to install this update before you upgrade to Snow Leopard!

And now that we’ve got that dire warning out of the way, there are a couple of geeky little additions in this release that I’m partial to:

  • You can globally set a minimum file dialog size and column width. Use these commands in terminal to set the values:

    defaults write com.stclairsoft.DefaultFolderX minimumSize.width 800

    defaults write com.stclairsoft.DefaultFolderX minimumSize.height 600

    defaults write com.stclairsoft.DefaultFolderX minimumSize.columnWidth 250

    Change the numbers at the end of the commands to the sizes you want to use (in pixels).

  • You can list items in hierarchical menus chronologically rather than alphabetically by holding down the Control key.

Take a look at the release page for details about all of the changes.

New Default Folder X Screencast

Wednesday, August 12th, 2009

I’ve added a new Overview screencast to the screencasts page.  I kept it focused on the efficiency side of Default Folder X, so it doesn’t highlight all of the features. I felt it was important to get the primary point across and not get lost in the details.


Screencast: Default Folder X Previews

Default Folder X Overview
(QuickTime video – 3:18)

I’m interested to hear your opinions – particularly whether the focus is right (getting to your files vs.  details like rebound, tagging, etc).