Archive for March, 2014

Folders disappearing from your Favorites in the Finder sidebar

Monday, March 31st, 2014

Several people have reported that folders that they’ve put in the Favorites section of the sidebar in Finder windows just disappear, and have thought that either Default Folder X or Jettison was at fault. I’ve confirmed with Apple that this is a known bug in Mac OS 10.9.2. It’s not caused by Default Folder X, Jettison or any other 3rd party application. It’s an issue that Apple needs to fix in OS X.

Here’s a more complete description of the problem:

Bug:

If I drag a folder to the Finder sidebar to add it as a Favorite, then later eject the disk containing the folder, the Finder deletes the folder from the sidebar. It doesn’t return when I remount the disk.

Steps to Reproduce:

  1. Plug in an external drive (I used a FW800 drive, but apparently any old disk will do).
  2. Open a Finder window, navigate to the external drive and then drag a folder from the drive to the Favorites list in the Finder window’s sidebar.
  3. Eject the external drive.
  4. Run Disk Utility and remount the external drive.

Expected Results:

I would expect the folder to stay in the Favorites list in the sidebar, regardless of the availability of the disk. If I click on it it should ask for the disk or try to remount it automatically. Failing this, if the folder is going to be hidden in the sidebar because the disk is unavailable, it should reappear when the disk is available again.

Actual Results:

The folder is removed from the Favorites list in the sidebar, never to return.

Posted in Default Folder X, Jettison, Mavericks | 23 Comments »

App Tamer 2.0.2 Delivers Fixes and UI Tweaks

Friday, March 28th, 2014

App Tamer 2.0.2 is available now, providing fixes for a couple of bugs, as well as some minor changes to the UI that help to show what’s going on.

First the fixes:

  • In certain situations, App Tamer 2.0.1 could crash when you launched it. This was due to a bug in the way it tracked subprocesses. The common example was a command in Terminal that ran a couple of other commands which in turn spawned subprocesses themselves. A few simple checks were all that was needed to fix it.
  • A more common problem was that App Tamer would occasionally stop limiting the CPU usage of an application it was supposed to be managing. This turned out to be a timing issue: If App Tamer stopped throttling a process and then immediately started again, the original CPU limiter would still be winding down and App Tamer would find it and use it rather than creating a new one. A few milliseconds later, that CPU limiter would finish shutting down and disappear, leaving the managed application free to use as much CPU as it wanted. App Tamer doesn’t do that anymore 🙂

The UI enhancements:

  • Mark Mackay, an App Tamer user in New Zealand, pointed out that if App Tamer wasn’t limiting the CPU use of an application at the time (because that app wasn’t doing anything) he couldn’t tell if he’d configured App Tamer to slow it down. He suggested I enhance the status indicators that App Tamer puts next to each application to somehow show that running apps – the ones with blue squares – had settings attached to them. A little triangle of color in the bottom right corner now shows you if that app will be slowed down or stopped (with yellow or red corners, respectively).
  • Version 2.0.2 also dims the icon and name of any application or process that can’t be stopped, so you know not to bother clicking on them.

Grab your copy from the App Tamer Release page. The update is free if you’ve bought App Tamer 2!

Posted in App Tamer | No Comments »

Default Folder X 4.6.4 delivers compatibility fixes

Thursday, March 13th, 2014

I just put the finishing touches on Default Folder X 4.6.4, which is now available on the Default Folder X page. It includes a bunch of fixes for bugs and compatibility issues.

There are corrections for problems with specific applications like OmniOutliner, Sublime Text and Reunion. More importantly, there’s new logic for automatically setting the initial folder for all Open and Save As dialogs. Seems like that’d be a simple thing, right? Unfortunately, there are a host of application- and OS-specific quirks that Default Folder X has to deal with, as well as several options that you can select in your Default Folder X preferences. The combination of all these things had made for some contorted logic, especially with Mavericks’ “creative” handling of Carbon applications. It’s now simplified and properly sorted out and works a lot better. If you still encounter problems with a specific application, send us a tech support request and I’ll have a look.

 

Posted in Default Folder X | No Comments »