Do you like the time-wasting animation the Finder draws every time you open a window, close a window (or an application) or align an object to the grid? I sure don't. For the open and close window stuff I guess it's not so bad, but when I want to clean up a bunch of stuff, it can take seemingly forever. (About eight seconds for perhaps 50 items when viewed by large or small icon.) And Apple hasn't given us the option to turn off this little show.
This application, Kill FinderZooms, will hack a copy of your Finder to disable these zoom rectangles. I made the original hack by hand quite a while ago (June '94) on Finder 7.1.4 and have haven't seen anything really wonky happen as a result. Therefore I feel it's safe to release this to the world.
This will work on Finder versions 7.1.3, 7.1.4, 7.5.1, 7.5.3 and 7.5.4 (check the "Get Info" for your copy to be certain). These versions are seen with all flavors of System 7.5.x, on 68K or PPC Macs, on NuBus Macs and the new PCI Macs. The application will only modify a copy of the Finder (one that has the name locked bit turned off). This is for your protection. This practically forces you to keep a backup of the original file... just in case. There's no guarantee that there won't be some really obscure nastiness that might show up later, but I've run the modified Finder on many machines for many months and have lived to tell the tale.
IMPORTANT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!(get the idea?)!!!!!!!!!
Before trying this, make sure that you have some other way (CD, Zip, floppy, etc.) to reboot your computer, should something bad happen.
To use Kill FinderZooms, open your System Folder, select your Finder and choose "Duplicate" (Command-D) from the "File" menu. The new file should be named "Finder copy" and you should be able to rename it after you run KFZ. (These directions are included in the opening screen of KFZ, but they are important enough to repeat.) To insure the least chance of screw-up, run KFZ after restarting with extensions disabled. Once the program reports a success, you should move your current Finder into a temporary folder and rename "Finder copy" to "Finder" (don't forget to wipe out that space...). The special folder icons (on Extensions, Control Panels, etc) should reappear within a few seconds after you do this. (You may need to close and reopen the System Folder to force the update). If all has gone well, you can restart, again with extensions off, to make sure that the new Finder will load.
If the modification seems stable, you can see if it will work with all of your extensions. There have been no confirmed incompatibilities so far. Please keep your original Finder for a few days, just to be absolutely safe.
This is being released "as is." I have been pretty good about fixing all reported bugs and have even cleaned up the logic a bit. That's because I've received some positive response from the Mac community (lots of e-mail,and a growing number of postcards... It's nice to feel appreciated).
Feel free to distribute this package to all the usual places as long as you do not modify the program or documentation. Oh, yes, this does NOT apply to any service that makes money beyond the costs of distribution of the media on which the program resides, without my written permission. (This means YOU, Educorp, unless you are willing to fork over some of those bucks.) Kudos to ZiffNet for making their utilities available to one and all now. If any publisher wishes to include this program on a CD-ROM collection they may do so if I get a subscription and a copy of the CD.
Any bugs, praise or cold, hard cash should be sent to:
Jonathan Jacobs
2374 Euclid Hts. Blvd. #407
Cleveland Hts., OH 44106-2745
jxj24@po.cwru.edu
Dept. of Biomedical Engineering
Wickenden Building
Case Western Reserve University
Cleveland, OH 44106
Enjoy.
!!! Please send postcards: I'm trying to impress my officemates... !!!
ÑÑÑVersion HistoryÑÑÑ
1.5.1 (February 15, 1996)
Ñ Oh, hell. I released as version 1.5 a program which was a mistake which should never have seen the light of day. I apologize to anyone who got nailed by this. This version fixes the problem (which was a transposed pair of numbers). Again, I'm sorry.
1.5 (February 14, 1996)
Ñ Happy Valentine's day.
Ñ Support for Finder 7.5.4
Ñ Added a better set of directions to this readme file
Ñ Rewrote the modification. This version won't interfere with previous versions, but it will not be able to reenable zoom rectangles that were disabled by the earlier versions.
1.4 (December 17, 1995)
ÑRewrote most of the hacking code from scratch due to a dumb move on my part:
for( i=1; i=1000; i++ )
printf( "I will _always_ make a backup, no matter what.\n" ); // ...what a schmuck...
ÑIncorporated the fix from 1.3.1.
ÑKill FinderZooms is now a fat binary again. It turns out that I had left an old 'SIZE' resource in the resource file, and it caused the PPC version to abort upon launch with no clue as to why. Clearing this bad 'SIZE' resource allowed CodeWarrior to create an correct one. This was harder to track down than it should have been. ("Adopt, adapt, improve...")
1.3.1 (December 17, 1995)
<<This version may actually never have seen the light of day, as version 1.4 came out later that afternoon. >>
ÑFixed a small bug that would sometimes cause windows to open in the background, rather than in front. This bug also seem to have caused problems with "Snitch," opening windows off screen. No other changes.
1.3 (December 5, 1995)
ÑUpdated to work with the PCI Macs, which run Finder 7.5.3 which was changed just slightly from the older versions. Just enough to make me rewrite more of KFZ than I had originally planned. This version is for the almost 100 people who send e-mail or postcards. (Should I really have sympathy for someone with a 132 MHz PPC 604 who claims that the silly zoomrects are making his machine too slow?) Keep those postcards coming...
1.2 (April 1995)
ÑAdded compatibility with Finder 7.5.1. Removed PPC code, because something seems to be very wrong with Codewarrior at the moment.
1.1 (December 1994)
ÑYou can now re-enable the zoom rectangles. Alert messages may be a bit more informative, as well. And for fun, this is now a fat binary.
1.0 (November 1994)
ÑFixed a problem where occasionally the Finder wouldn't load (error -41). This was due to my failure to reset the locked bit for CODE resource 2. I am extremely grateful to Michael Hecht, the creator of "ResCompare" for helping me find this problem. ResCompare is a fantastic program. Thanks, Mike!
0.99 (October 1994)
ÑUh, oh! Found a little typing error that could kill your Finder. Sorry about that. Fortunately you all kept your unhacked version, right?
