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February 6th, 2008
OK, time for more geek-talk. I’ve spent a couple of late nights fussing with fat binaries, bundles, and mach-o architecture API’s to try and find a way to determine if an app is running in 64 bit mode. Surprisingly, I couldn’t just Google it and get an easy solution.
Looking at the darwin source, I found there’s a sysctl() token to get this information. This code will return the processor type (including the 64-bit flag). Note that it uses the sysctlbyname_with_pid() function in Apple’s Universal Binary Programming Guidelines:
cpu_type_t GetProcessArchitecture(pid_t pid)
{
cpu_type_t cputype;
size_t cpusz = sizeof(cputype);
// Default values
#if __i386__
cputype = CPU_TYPE_X86;
#else
cputype = CPU_TYPE_POWERPC;
#endif
if (sysctlbyname_with_pid("sysctl.proc_cputype", pid,
&cputype, &cpusz, NULL, 0) == -1)
{
fprintf(stderr, "proc_cputype: sysctlbyname_with_pid failed:"
"%sn", strerror(errno));
}
return cputype;
}
Posted in Code, Development | No Comments »
February 4th, 2008
I’ve posted a new beta version of DFX 4.0.1. Fixes include better compatibility with Mail.app, a correction for DFX’s hotkeys not working in the Finder, keyboard focus issues, and improvements to the new preview server for cases when images are corrupted (which used to cause the preview server to crash).
Grab your copy from the Default Folder X Beta Testing page.
Posted in Default Folder X, Development | No Comments »
January 28th, 2008
There’s now a public beta of Default Folder X 4.0.1. You can download it, as well as see the full list of changes it incorporates, on the Beta Testing Page. In short, it’s faster, more stable, more convenient, and delivers the user interface changes that you’ve been asking for in your emails.
Posted in Default Folder X, Development | No Comments »
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.
Tags: Default Folder X, Development, Interface, Performance, Speed, UI
Posted in Default Folder X, Development | 2 Comments »
January 24th, 2008
A great review of DFX 4 at PlanetQuark.com, complete with a laundry list of features. Folks seem to either love or hate the new UI (these guys are on the “love” side, I think). Which brings me to my next post….
Tags: Default Folder X, review
Posted in Default Folder X | No Comments »
January 8th, 2008
Wow! It’s been a long few weeks, and I’ve been buried by all of the feedback and follow-up to the Default Folder X 4.0 release. Reviewing all the happenings, some great stuff has been going on:
- Default Folder X 4.0 made it out into the world, as most of you already know. The reception has been overwhelmingly positive, and I’ve really enjoyed hearing from so many of you. Keep those comments and suggestions coming!
- Chuck Joiner over at MacVoices sat down for an audio chat with me. We talked about DFX, of course, but also the history of St. Clair Software and my approach to writing software.
- Matt Neuberg of TidBITS authored a great article about Default Folder X that talks about its features and the history and evolution of Open and Save dialogs. Regardless of whether you read this particular article, I recommend that you follow TidBITS – it’s a great source of insight, reviews, and commentary by Adam Engst and his very knowledgeable staff.
- Gene Steinberg of Mac Night Owl fame talked with me on his Tech Night Owl LIVE show about Default Folder X, Leopard, and interesting Mac tidbits and tech stuff.
- There have been more great blog mentions, reviews, and comments than I’ve been able to keep track of. I need to put together one of those marketing-hype pages with all of the positive stuff 🙂
Now, on to the future. First, aside from doing a few interviews and fielding lots of emails, I’ve been working on issues with 4.0. Here are things I’ve taken care of already:
- “Make Save dialogs automatically default to the current document’s folder” now works correctly with Photoshop.
- Rebound now correctly activates the automatically selected file so that keyboard navigation works without requiring a click in the Open dialog.
- Updated the DFX application in the Extras folder to be a universal binary.
- Fixed a problem with the path menu in Open and Save dialogs – in some cases, the hierarchical menus would not work. They do now.
- Fixed the installer so it automatically takes care of the “quarantine” feature in Leopard so you don’t see the “You downloaded this application from the Internet. Are you sure you want to run it?” warning over and over.
- Fixed handling of recursive Navigation Services calls so Default Folder X will work in very old Carbon applications like FileMaker Pro 5.
- Fixed menu fonts so that menus are always the right size when you turn on the “small menu fonts” option in the secret settings dialog.
- Only show Finder and Path Finder windows when the Finder or Path Finder isn’t hidden.
If you’re dying to get your hands on one of these fixes, there’s a prerelease build available here:
http://www.stclairsoft.com/download/DefaultFolderX-4.0.1d11.dmg
On my to-do list for the next few days (I’m all about lists today, aren’t I?):
- UI changes. Yes, I’ve heard those of you who’ve written to say you want less black, less translucency, and smaller UI elements.
- A QuickLook-like preview server for Tiger. DFX uses QuickTime to generate previews in Tiger, and that’s, shall we say, not working very well. QuickTime is too slow, uses too much memory, and crashes occasionally (if you’ve had any of these problems with DFX 4, it’s likely that QuickTime’s the root cause). So I’m moving the preview rendering into a separate process that will supply the preview images to DFX.
Now back to email and coding, so I can get my lists done… 🙂
Posted in Default Folder X, Development | No Comments »
December 8th, 2007
We’re getting a lot of questions, so to answer what seems to be on many people’s minds:
- If you purchase or upgrade to Default Folder X 3.0.6 now, the upgrade to version 4 will be free.
- If you purchased or upgraded Default Folder X any time on or after June 1, 2007, the upgrade to version 4 will be free.
- Upgrade pricing for other Default Folder X users will be $14.95. Again, if you upgrade now, your serial number will work with both DFX 3.0.6 and 4.0.
- Upgrade pricing for those who are using the really old OS 9 version of Default Folder will be $19.95.
Hope that helps!
Posted in Default Folder X | 3 Comments »
December 7th, 2007
Dan Frakes, a senior editor over at Macworld.com, just finished a really nice video preview of DFX 4: First look at Default Folder X 4. He does a great job of highlighting both the old and new features, and demos one of his old favorites, Finder-click.
I’m impressed (and very happy) with the quality of the video, Dan’s narration, and the overall coverage. If you’re wondering what Default Folder X has to offer, hop over and take a peek at the H.264 video, or subscribe to the video podcast via iTunes.
Thanks Dan!
P.S. There’s also a post by Ian Beck over at TagaMac with a reminder about DFX’s ability to set Spotlight tags – something that makes life so much saner for you tagging folks!
Posted in Default Folder X | 10 Comments »
December 6th, 2007
I was a little surprised that I couldn’t find this online anywhere, so for others that may need it, here’s a function that gets the effective owner of a Mac OS X process, given the process pid:
uid_t OwnerForPID(int pid)
{
struct kinfo_proc info;
size_t length = sizeof(struct kinfo_proc);
int mib[4] = { CTL_KERN, KERN_PROC, KERN_PROC_PID, pid };
if (sysctl(mib, 4, &info, &length, NULL, 0) < 0)
return kProcessValueUnknown;
if (length == 0)
return kProcessValueUnknown;
return info.kp_eproc.e_ucred.cr_uid;
}
And of course, you know you can get your own process ID with getpid() and use the Process Manager’s GetProcessPID() function to get a pid if you know another process’ ProcessSerialNumber.
Tags: Code, mac os x, owner, permissions, process, process manager, sample
Posted in Code, Development | 2 Comments »
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