Archive for January, 2019

Well, that didn’t go well… so now we have Default Folder X 5.3.4

Friday, January 25th, 2019

So I learned an important lesson in user interface design: There are times when you DON’T want a consistent look and feel. The user-confusion resulting from my mistake in Default Folder X 5.3.3 necessitated the release of Default version 5.3.4 yesterday.

First a little background: Due to the increased Privacy controls in Mojave, when you first launch it, Default Folder X has to lead you through several steps to give it permission to access necessary information and API’s. It does so by opening System Preferences and presenting a couple of dialogs that provide steps that you need to follow. Easy, right? These are the dialogs from version 5.3.3.

See a problem there? Well, I didn’t, and neither did my testers. But the dialogs are very similar – same heading text, same buttons – the fine print is different and the Default Folder X icons are in different places, but they’re a lot alike. The first dialog pops up, and after you follow its instructions, it is automatically replaced by the second one. Because they look alike, a lot of people thought that the instructions hadn’t changed and that they were stuck, with no option but to hit the “Quit Without Authorizing” button. And send me a freakin’ email… I got lots of email.

So here are the fixed dialogs. Different overall look, different boldfaced heading, and different buttons. And an important lesson learned: People are busy, and are not necessarily giving your app 100% of their attention. Make sure that when the state changes, the change is noticeable to them. Especially when their only option if they don’t notice the change is to quit your app.

Sooo – get Default Folder X 5.3.4. In addition to the updated Privacy prompts, it contains several bug fixes. You can get it from the Default Folder X release page, where you’ll also find release notes describing the changes.

Posted in Default Folder X, Development, Mojave | 1 Comment »

Default Folder X 5.3.3 adds helpful text labels, new keyboard shortcuts and more

Monday, January 21st, 2019

Version 5.3.3 of Default Folder X is now available! I’ve been resistant to adding labels to the icons in the toolbar, but have finally been convinced – the improved usability for some people (especially casual users) trumps the aesthetic “messiness” of having the text there. The icon names are now turned on by default, but you can easily turn them off in the prefs, or just by Control-clicking above the “D” icon and choosing “Icon Only”.

This release also lets you set keyboard shortcuts to quickly hop to the Tags or Comments field below a Save dialog. And if you hold down the Option key while clicking the “Save” button to dismiss a Save dialog, Default Folder X will automatically open the folder you just saved your file to, letting you do whatever you need to do with it in the Finder.

There are also bug fixes to resolve several crashes that have been reported, tweaks to clean up the user interface in the Preferences window, and a compatibility fix so that the Finder Windows feature now works with the version of ForkLift distributed through the SetApp subscription service.

Check out the Default Folder X release page for a complete list of changes, as well as download links. Or if you’re already a Default Folder X user, just choose “Check for Updates” from its menu in your menu bar.

Posted in Default Folder X, Mojave | No Comments »

App Tamer 2.4.2 is more keyboard-friendly, can float its window, and fixes a really annoying little bug

Thursday, January 3rd, 2019

Version 2.4.2 of App Tamer is available! There’s an exclamation point there because it offers a fix for an annoying problem that cropped up in Mojave, where Core Graphics Event Taps no longer deliver events to applications when they’re in the background (Radar #45934966 if you’re listening, Apple). While that may sound cryptic, the end result was that App Tamer never saw mouse scrolling events when you used a scroll wheel or gesture to scroll the contents of a background window. If the background window belonged to an app that App Tamer had slowed or stopped, that meant that the window would scroll slowly or not at all. This drove me crazy ALL THE TIME because I apparently scroll through web pages and other background windows very frequently.

Anyway, in addition to that issue, this release improves the ability to move through App Tamer’s process list using the keyboard, and lets you keep App Tamer’s window floating on top of all other windows if want to use it to diagnose a problem or keep an eye on CPU-gobbling processes. A number of little interface issues have also been addressed, and a bug fixed for App Tamer waiting too long to slow or stop background processes when they were also set to be hidden after a certain amount of time.

As usual, this update is free for users who’ve already purchased a license for App Tamer 2.x. You can head over to the App Tamer Release Page to see more details or to download the new version (or just hit “Check for Updates” in App Tamer’s utility menu if you’re already running it).

And Happy New Year!

Posted in App Tamer, Mojave | No Comments »

HistoryHound 2.0

Thursday, January 3rd, 2019

HistoryHound 2.0 was released last month, shortly before Christmas, and I neglected to announce that here on the blog with all the holiday goings-on. This update to our ‘personal web search’ tool adds support for the latest versions of your favorite browsers, as well as providing Mojave compatibility.

In addition, version 2.0 makes HistoryHound smarter about fetching and indexing visited web pages. It won’t repeatedly try to load a page that returns an error, nor will it index “front door” pages where you’re being asked to log in to a secure site. Its error handling has also improved, eliminating a number of bugs and situations where you’d previously have gotten an error message or warning.

Ronald combed through the French localization, providing a host of corrections and improvements to make the user experience more fluid for French-speaking users. And I modernized all the resources to bring everything up to date (though the main window does still use a drawer instead of a sidebar – that anachronistic interface element will be replaced in a future update).

You can hop on over to the HistoryHound Release Page to see a full list of the changes, as well as to download a copy. The update is free if you’ve got a license for version 1.x, even though the major version number has changed. The extent of the internal modifications felt like they merited a “2.0” version number, but because there aren’t many changes on the outside, it didn’t seem fair to charge for the update.

Posted in HistoryHound, Mojave | No Comments »