Archive for March, 2013

Default Folder X 4.5.5 – Reliability Fixes & More QuickLook Previews

Thursday, March 7th, 2013

Default Folder X 4.5.5 is now available, fixing a couple of vexing little problems that have driven me (and some of you) crazy for far too long.

First, the easy one: Rebound in version 4.5.4 did not always work – there were occasions when it’d fail to select anything. That’s now fixed. There was a subtle error in Default Folder X’s internal logic that could leave it with no rebound information for an application until after a file dialog came up – not very helpful if it’s supposed to re-select your last selected file before the file dialog appears!

Second, there’s been this troubling little problem with Default Folder X’s status menu (the “D” menu in the menubar) since the release of Mac OS 10.7. Every once in a while, seemingly at random, it’d just refuse to do anything when you clicked on it. Clicking a second time would bring it back to life, but of course you shouldn’t have to do that. As it turned out, the problem wasn’t actually random (of course). The OS X window server will apparently get confused if you click on a floating, non-activating window to pop up a menu, select something from that menu, dismiss it without clicking anywhere else on the floating window, and then hide the frontmost application. Mind you, it doesn’t get visibly confused, just flummoxed enough that if you try to pop up a status menu from the menubar, that menu doesn’t track the mouse correctly. Go figure.

Long-time Default Folder X user Kimron Shapiro had a keen enough mind to actually discover this sequence of steps – I owe him a HUGE thank-you (and a beer, whiskey, or whatever you drink, Kim). Finally having a set of reproducible steps allowed me to hammer away at it for a few weeks until I found a workaround. I’m thrilled to finally have this one put to rest, as I’ve been chasing it for a LONG time.

Oh, and version 4.5.5 also has a handy little “QuickLook this file” item in its contextual menus, so you can right-click on a file in a save dialog (even if it’s grayed out) and see a preview of it. Pretty helpful if you’re about to overwrite it with a new file and want to make sure you’re not wiping out the wrong file.

Enjoy the fixes, and keep the suggestions coming!