Posts Tagged ‘Development’

DFX 4.1.2d3: Better rebound and menus with files in them

Monday, February 2nd, 2009

Thanks to Rick Meikle’s careful detailing of exactly what has been wrong with Default Folder X’s “rebound” feature, I’ve now rewritten the rebound code to work much better.  It’s in the latest development build of DFX, which is available here:

http://www.stclairsoft.com/download/DefaultFolderX-4.1.2d3.dmg

In addition, I’ve added a hidden option to display files as well as folders in Default Folder X’s hierarchical menus.  When you select a file, the file dialog is taken to its parent folder and the file is selected if the current application can open it.  To get to the switch to turn this on, go to Default Folder X in System Preferences and click on the “Settings…” button while holding down the Option key.  Turn on the bottom checkbox in the window that comes up – it’s labeled “AlwaysShowFilesInMenus”.

As always, your comments, feedback, and bug reports are crucial to making better software, so speak up!

Jon and Ben interviewed on MacVoices

Saturday, July 26th, 2008

Ben and I spent some time with Chuck Joiner of MacVoices talking about NetSketch, Ben’s new iPhone app, as well as discussing some of the challenges and excitement coming on the iPhone both for customers and developers.  As always, it’s great to talk to Chuck – he really does fun and informative shows!  Go here for the interview.

Default Folder X 4.0.1 is out!

Monday, February 11th, 2008

I just posted Default Folder X version 4.0.1. Thanks to everyone that provided feedback on the functionality and the UI, tested various fixes for me, and helped sort out a few of the truly funky circumstances surrounding a couple of issues.

I’m very happy with the user interface at this point – the “old style” sidebar turned out very well (thanks for the push Warren)!  The preview generator is nice and fast, even under Tiger, and performance and reliability are solid on all machines, not just on the hopped up hardware here in the office and in the original beta group 🙂

You can read the change log and download the new version on this page:

http://www.stclairsoft.com/DefaultFolderX/release.html

More UI Choices and MUCH Faster Previews

Thursday, January 24th, 2008

OK, so there’s a (very) vocal minority that really don’t like (some have even used the word “hate”) the black HUD windows in Default Folder X 4. For you folks, here’s the solution in a pre-release build:

http://www.stclairsoft.com/download/DefaultFolderX-4.0.1d16.dmg

http://www.stclairsoft.com/download/DefaultFolderX-4.0.1b1.dmg

And a picture of what it looks like:

To get this appearance, select “Gray sidebar” in the Options tab of the preferences:

The previews are also created much faster, and with much less overhead. This is especially pronounced on Tiger, where DFX doesn’t have QuickLook at its disposal and has to generate previews with QuickTime, WebKit, and regular text rendering. If you have any performance or stability complaints about version 4.0, please grab this build, give it a try, and fire off an email if you still have issues.

Of Turkey and Travels and DFX 4

Tuesday, November 20th, 2007

Happy two-days-before-Thanksgiving! At least for those of you that live in the USA or for some reason share America’s penchant for excessive eating.

Here’s an update on new the look and feel for Default Folder X. Among many things, the buttons have lost their borders for better Leopard karma, fonts and alignment are correct now, and Scott’s been working his magic with the icon. Feature-wise, the previews are smoother, you can now see and change Finder labels in both Open and Save dialogs, and stuff just works like it should. There are also a lot of under-the-hood tweaks for Leopard. I’m happy with the features now and DFX 4 should be ready to roll after a couple more weeks of testing.

Speaking of which, I need a few more dedicated folks to nit-pick and test. If you’d like to get your mitts on a beta copy, drop me an email at betamacs@stclairsoft.com and let me know what kind of machine you’re using, whether you’re running Leopard or Tiger, and why I should listen to your opinions 😉  Sorry folks, but we’ve got enough testers now – thanks to all the folks that volunteered to help!  The release will be next week (the week of December 10).

I’ll be heading out to Denver for the holiday, but toting my MacBook Pro as usual, so I’ll never be far from the net. Opinions, rants, and kudos are all welcome (I’m not saying I’ll heed the former, but if you’ve got valid criticisms, I’m never above changing my mind). And yeah, I actually do like turkey, and I really love the getting-together-with-family part of the holidays.

Oh yeah – and to reiterate my response to one of the comments in an earlier entry, if you buy Default Folder X 3.0.6 now, you get 4.0 for free. I’m not going to charge you an upgrade fee if you buy the software 2 weeks (or 2 months) before the new version’s released. That’s just mean.