Default Folder Version 2.5.1 Release Notes - 1/7/95
Version 2.5.1 of Default Folder contains a number of enhancements over version 2.48, some of which need to be explicitly turned on via the control panel. Also, version 2.5 now requires System 7 or higher.
This release fixes a bug found in 2.5 that caused crashes at startup if the Prefs dialog was opened for the first time after installation and then exited with the Cancel button.
Registered users who still have versions prior to 2.42 should contact St. Clair Software for a registration number. Refer to the registration chapter in the documentation for contact information.
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New Preferences:
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The largest change that old users will notice is in the control panel's Prefs dialog, which now has a menu to toggle between groups of settings. The old options are still available, but have been augmented by switches for the new features:
- Available disk space displayed in disk menu.
- "Get Info" and "Move to Trash" commands in the folder menu.
- Variable length folder history.
- Make "Replace" the default button when asked to replace or cancel.
- Turn off the new pretty icons in file dialogs in System 7.5.
- Configurable hotkeys for New Folder, Get Info, Move to Trash, and
Use Default.
The online help, accessible by clicking on the question mark in the control panel, has been updated to explain these new features, so at least take a minute to read the Preferences section. Balloon help is also available to explain all the switches in the Prefs dialog.
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Other New Features:
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In addition, the following features have been added, but don't have a corresponding setting in the Prefs dialog:
- Tracking applications by creator code in addition to by name (you can
rename applications and DF won't "forget").
- Option + arrow keys for traversing the folder history and locked folders.
- New online registration form.
- Rewritten documention.
All new links will remember the creator code as well as the application's name, but links set up with prevous versions of Default Folder will not. You'll eventually want to remove all your existing links and remake them so that the creator type will be remembered, but this can be done as needed along the way. To check which links have the creator saved and which ones don't, you can export your link sets and check in the resulting text file.
The option+arrow key handling is a handy shortcut that's available whenever the command keys are enabled - if you use the command+arrow combinations to navigate in file dialogs now, these will quickly become second nature.
In the help window, the "Registration Form" button is also new, in that it provides an on-screen form for people to fill out, rather than just printing a blank form as it used to.
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Revision History
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Version 2.5.1 fixes a bug that caused crashes at startup if the user hit Cancel in the Prefs dialog and it was the first time the Prefs had been used since installation.
Version 2.5 adds a number of new features: Variable folder history, Get Info, Move to Trash, option-arrow hotkeys and hotkeys for other menu selections, tracking applications by creator type, making "Replace" the default, and turning off fancy file icons. VISA and MasterCard payments are now accepted, and an online registration form has been added to make registration easier. Several bugs were also fixed: The Finder sometimes got confused when a disk or CD was ejected using the Eject button in the file dialog. The cursor would not be restored until the mouse was moved if the "Show Default Folder cursor during disk access" option was turned on.
Version 2.48 fixes several minor bugs. In the control panel, selecting the rebound feature under System 6 could cause an error when closing the Preferences dialog, sometimes resulting in a system crash. In file dialogs, click selection at the Desktop level was erratic when an Appleshare volume, a floppy, or a CD-ROM was being used . Also, the first selection made after the file list was refreshed did not select the correct file or folder. Fixes were also made to make Default Folder operate correctly on PowerMacs and to remove a conflict with DiskCheck.
Version 2.47B fixes an error in the patch to StandardGetFile() that resulted in folders being omitted from file dialogs. The StandardGetFile() function is apparently very seldom used, since the problem went undetected for more than two years.
Version 2.47 fixes the conflict with the Inline Tsuika Kinou extension distributed with KanjiTalk System 7.1. The conflict which caused Claris Works macros to run very slowly in file dialogs has been fixed. A switch to turn rebounding off has been added in the Prefs dialog, and rebounding is now much more intelligent. Users must explicitly turn rebounding back on when upgrading from previous versions. Holding down the option key within a file dialog displays the pop-up menus without the mouse being over the volume name. The list of recently used folders is now saved with each link set, so switching link sets switches your list of recently used folders.
Version 2.46 fixes a bug which caused crashes if an extension displayed a dialog box after Default Folder loaded at startup but before any application (including the Finder) was launched. Problems arose with Apple's Cache Switch and Magnus' Empower.
Version 2.45 adds features and fixes bugs:
Added another pop-up menu which allows you to switch link sets and modify them on the fly. Made rebound and recording of recently used folders more robust - they now work consistently on all machines. Added CompuServe registration info. Added on-the-fly switching of link sets from the pop-up menus. This feature must be turned on in the control panel preferences dialog when users upgrade from previous versions.
Version 2.42 fixes a minor bug that caused preferences from older versions to be misread, running Default Folder in "always switch" mode until the preferences were changed in the Control Panel.
Version 2.41 adds a host of minor features:
Added "rebound" feature under System 7. Added styled text to the online help (it's about time…). Added support for substitution files. Added user registration. Default Folder will now annoy users who've had it installed for more than 30 days without registering. The #INCLUDE directive can now be used in imported text files to load links common to more than one set from a single file. Fixed a bug that would cause file dialogs not to refresh correctly if an error message was popped up on top of them. Properly close the preferences file when an error occurs. Fixed a conflict with QuickTools PowerStrip that caused the default folder to not be set correctly. Fixed a bug with DeskScan II. They don't save and restore registers properly in one of their patches, which caused update handling to crash in file dialogs. Changed method of detecting when a folder is "used," so Default Folder always notices that you've been somewhere and puts the folder in the recently used folder menu.
Version 2.33 fixes some minor bugs:
The list of locked folders is now sorted correctly by folder name rather than by full path name. When a disk is ejected, if the current application has a link to a folder, the file dialog is set to that folder rather than just going to the next mounted volume.
Version 2.32 adds a feature and deals with a couple of ill-behaved applications:
Added an option in the Preferences dialog to always switch to an application's default folder, even if the application was launched by double-clicking on one of its documents.
Added additional exception resource entries to handle FileMaker Pro and Microsoft Excel specially. The former doesn't respect a document's folder, so Default Folder always switches to FileMaker's default folder, and the latter won't open the startup macro file unless Default Folder puts off the directory switch until the first file dialog is called up.
Version 2.31 fixes several bugs:
An incorrect system patch caused applications that were using the new System 7 StandardPutFile() file dialogs to display the prompt incorrectly. The code switched heap zones while handling the Preferences file, causing address errors on 68000 based machines on startup or shutdown if the prefs file didn't exist. Import didn't understand pathnames containing only a volume name. An attempt to truncate the pathname during import and export resulted in an infinite loop under System 6.
Version 2.3 fixes several bugs, adds some new functionality, and increases robustness:
Erroneous code caused applications that were using the new System 7 file dialogs with filter procs to crash. An error was fixed in the balloon help resources. The old name, DFaultD, was dumped in favor of Default Folder due to complaints that the name did not adequately imply the utility's function. Default Folder now uses a preference file, like all good Mac programs should. The internal representation of links was changed to improve robustness. Folder links were previously remembered only by their directory ID number, which could change if the user deleted the folder and replaced it with another of the same name, or if the folder was restored from a backup. The full pathname of the folder is now saved and used as a fallback if the directory ID method fails, making the "Can't find this folder!" error message much less likely to occur. Note that pathnames longer than 255 characters can't be used, so the directory ID method will have to do in these cases. The capability to print a registration form was added to the control panel in the help dialog. Import/Export was added to allow simple editing of links in text format. Special-case handling of certain applications was made extensible, to allow additional 'problem' applications to be accommodated without recompiling. To deal with a few ill-behaved applications like Claris' FileMaker Pro 2.0, a flag was added to tell Default Folder to always switch to the default folder, even when the application is launched with a file. The icon was changed (again) to follow the current "control panel look" conventions.
Version 2.23 fixes one bug and some inconsistencies in the code:
DFaultD would sometimes crash under System 7 when trying to enforce a link if the folder had been deleted and the sound volume was set to zero (SysBeep crashed when trying to flash the menu bar).
Version 2.22 fixes a very nasty bug:
A late night typo introduced a bug which could cause the program stack to get corrupted, resulting in crashes at random times after a customized standard file box was invoked. Thanks to Aron Nelson for finding this one as a conflict with Handoff II.
Version 2.21 fixes a very minor bug:
A misplaced HLock() call caused an unpleasant interface bug when DFaultD was used with the OpenWide control panel.
Version 2.2 adds support for System 7.0 and the following additions:
Fixed a bug in the patching of traps which caused DFaultD to crash on startup under System 7. Under System 7, DFaultD patches InitMenus() rather than InitAllPacks() to catch the startup of applications. This was necessary because at InitAllPacks() time, the Apple Events which tell the application which files to open hadn't been posted yet.
The startup message which displayed the current link set was removed, as per Apple's guidelines. Support was added for Apple Events that are used to open and print documents from System 7 aware applications. Balloon help was added for the control panel device and for the Finder's balloon help. The icon for DFaultD was changed - some marketing people at a company that briefly licensed DFaultD thought that the old icon was too suggestive of bondage or some such. The interface for the control panel was cleaned up considerably (thanks to the unnamed company which licensed DFaultD for helping me with that). The link set editor has been modified to make it more intuitive. The pop-up menu now presents a couple of buttons rather than mysteriously popping up from out of the volume name. The pop-up menu for file dialogs has been enhanced to support switching between drives and saving the last folder used on each drive. The pop-up folder menu has been given a "New Folder" command to allow the creation of folders from within file dialog boxes.
Version 2.02 adds two bug-fixes and a couple of additions:
A programming error caused the DFaultD control panel to crash under Multifinder 6.1b7 - it actually should've crashed in other situations, but I just got lucky in prior system versions. Fixed a bug that caused the control panel to crash when adding folders on a TOPS network. TOPS is unusually picky about the way it patches one system trap. Holding down the shift key at startup now disables DFaultD, and the icon displayed indicates so. Holding down the command key when launching a desk accessory disables DFaultD so that it won't change the directory.
Version 2.0 adds a bunch of new features and two bug-fixes:
Added support for desk accessories, the most clamored-for feature. Added a pop-up menu similar to Boomerang's, which remembers the last 10 folders you used. The menu also lets you switch to an application's default folder whenever you want, and lets you "freeze" folders in the menu permanently. Included a scrolling help window in the control panel which explains things much more clearly. Added an options dialog to let you turn off the startup message, turn off the pop-up menu, set the command key equivalent for switching to the default folder, and some other, more technical stuff. Bulletproofed everything a little better against problems which occur when DFaultD is run on machines without adequate features (specifically, HFS and System 6.0). Fixed a bug which caused the wrong volume name to be shown in the disk-switch alert (a very strange interaction with the system error handler). Fixed a conflict with Quickeys version 1.1 (even though that version's obsolete, and has been for quite some time).
Version 1.01 fixed a bug in 1.0 that caused the Add... and Link... SFGetFile dialogs to "not show" the last item if the list had to be scrolled. This was simply my naive assumption that the System would resize the list box to an even number of text lines before displaying the files, which it doesn't. What resulted was that the last file or folder name was shown, but the list box was sized so that you could only see 2 pixels at the top of the file name. Whoops. A simple ResEdit fix. Thanks to D.L. Fuller for pointing this one out. The Add... and Link... functions were also modified to remember the last disk and folder they used.
