Thanks to everyone that’s given me input and bug reports on the first public beta of Default Folder X 5. There’s now a new build based on your feedback – you can can click “Check for Updates” if you’re already running 5.0b1, or grab it from:

http://stclairsoft.com/DefaultFolderX/beta.html

If you submitted a bug or feature that’s not in yet, that doesn’t mean I’m not listening. I was just anxious to get this build out because it fixes several big problems that affect quite a few people.

I’m particularly happy that I was able to find the bizarre one that was causing the Save button to stop working in save dialogs. It’s actually a bug in OS X that Default Folder X was triggering – get this: If a file dialog is showing the contents of a folder and you tell it to show the contents of that same folder, the Save button stops working. Who knew? So the hugely complicated fix was just to make sure that Default Folder X checks to see what the current folder is, then just does nothing if the file dialog is already showing the folder it wants to go to (which it really should have been doing all along in the interest of efficiency anyway).

You can reproduce the bug by hand pretty simply (turn off Default Folder X before doing this – otherwise its Finder-click feature will get in the way):

1. Run TextEdit
2. Create a document
3. Choose File -> Save
4. Switch to the Finder and drag any folder into the file dialog to make the dialog show that folder
5. Drag that same folder to the file dialog again
6. Now try to click the Save button. It doesn’t work!

Pretty cool, eh? Not really >:( This has been stressing me out for a couple of days because I had no idea what was going on. Glad it turned out to be easy to fix after a bunch of you helped me track it down and reproduce it here. It’s really nice when beta testing works like it’s supposed to 🙂

So thanks everyone! And keep the feedback coming.

– Jon

Here it is! http://www.stclairsoft.com/DefaultFolderX/beta.html

Please read the list of what’s still to be implemented. Then download it and let me know how it goes. Thanks for your patience!!

– Jon

So I just finished the preference file conversion – version 5 now imports your settings, favorites and default folders from version 4. It was surprisingly gratifying to get that done, I guess because I’ve been dreading doing it for a while. Converting data and moving it from one place to another is rarely something developers enjoy doing…

The current testers report that version 5.0a19 is working well for them (well, except for the new drag and drop area, which is still a work in progress). There are still some things that need to be done, but version 5 is definitely functioning well enough and is complete enough that I feel comfortable putting it out into the world tomorrow – at least with the “public beta” moniker to let everyone know that there are still some rough edges.

As long as nothing comes up in the next 24 hours, we’ll finally have Default Folder X up and running on El Capitan with System Integrity Protection turned on. Yay 🙂

Ok, here’s where things are. You’ll notice a couple of unfinished bits in the screenshots – the menu prefs are missing the bottom half, which allows you to custom configure Default Folder X’s menu in the menubar. And the appearance style in the Open & Save prefs is grayed out because I haven’t finished the “minimal” toolbar appearance. Those will come after we’re in public beta – I don’t see either as critical to getting it into your hands.

Functionally things are in good shape. I’ve still got a good-sized To-Do list, but what’s there has been working well for the 30 person test crew who’ve been using it. To be perfectly frank, I’m a bit sleep deprived and feel I need a couple of days to methodically go over everything and weed out any issues, so I’m looking at next week for a public beta release. The last thing I want to do is put something crappy out there that’s going to cut into your productivity and generate lots of email for me (which cuts into my productivity too!)

Thanks for being so patient – it’s been a long haul on this one.

– Jon

Wow – I’m getting inundated with email and tweets asking what the status is and when it’s going to be done. It’s great to hear from everyone and I’m sorry to keep you waiting. Some bits have taken quite a bit longer than I expected :-/

So, taking a break from coding for a few minutes, here’s a summary of where things are:

1. File dialog stuff is all working except for handling default folders. Recents, favorites, hierarchical menus and the new drag and drop bar work well. Here’s a quick screenshot of what’s on my screen today (that’s the tagging view showing below the dialog, including recently used tags, and the drag and drop bar on the left).
2. DFX now also automatically adds a button to your Finder toolbar, and clicking it slides out the drag and drop bar below the current Finder window. This lets you toss a file into the bar, switch to another Finder window, and then drag it to where you want it.
3. There’s more information in the attribute tabs below the file dialogs and it all works more smoothly than it did in v4 (and the code is way better now – much easier for me to work with!).
4. Update checking just went in – it wasn’t hard, but just hadn’t been on my hot list until I got all DFX’s basic features working and debugged well.
5. So what’s left? The big thing is getting the preferences finished. There’s a lot of configurable stuff under the hood (the menu structure, shortcuts for a ton of things, etc), but I may hold off on actually putting that in the prefs due to the amount of time involved. Other things: I have to drop in the licensing engine and get the upgrade process put together (both for licensing and upgrading from old prefs).
6. There are still a lot of features and suggestions on my To-Do list, but I’m making sure the fundamentals work well for the first release and getting it into people’s hands as quickly as possible, given how much feedback I’m getting that you just want that stuff to work on El Capitan first and foremost.
7. Oh, and yes, there’s the appearance… This is what I’ve got now, and like v4, version 5.0 will probably ship with one appearance. Then you’ll all send me hate mail about what you think of the new look and I’ll add other appearance options (including something that takes up less screen real-estate).

I’m trying to balance features with getting it into your hands ASAP.

So the bottom line? We’re half way through October and it’s not feature-complete, so it’s not going to be fully tested and done by the end of the month, as much as I’d like it to be 🙁 But I’ll have a public beta in your hands by the end of October that will be solid and will get your workflow sped back up again.

OK – back to work….

As some of you have undoubtedly noticed since installing beta 2 of El Capitan (aka Mac OS 10.11), the current version of Default Folder X is not compatible with the upcoming OS X release. The Default Folder X background application will run, but cannot enhance the file dialogs of many applications.

To dip into the technical side a bit, this is due to Apple’s new System Integrity Protection, which prevents Default Folder X’s scripting addition from loading into some applications and, most importantly, into the “PowerBox” helper app that presents Open and Save dialogs for all sandboxed applications.

Never fear, however – Default Folder X isn’t dead. I’ve been hard at work on a major revision of Default Folder X that will support El Capitan (yes, I saw this coming). It uses a completely different method for enhancing your file dialogs, and adds a number of handy new features and changes that you folks have requested.

I don’t yet have a firm release date – to be honest, I may have to scale back in a few places to get this into your hands before El Capitan ships, but it’s on the way. The upgrade will be free for anyone who purchases Default Folder X in the 6 months before the new version is released, which means if you buy now, you won’t be paying again for version 5 in a few months.

More news as things develop – for now it’s back to Xcode for me…

– Jon

P.S. And yes I KNOW the website relaunch is way overdue, but software comes first.

P.P.S. For more on System Integrity Protection, read Glenn Fleishman’s article at Macworld.com.