DFX: Important Snow Leopard and DFPreviewServer fixes

I’ve put together a development build of Default Folder X that incorporates a couple of important fixes, plus some handy new tweaks.  If you’ve noticed a process called DFPreviewServer slowing down your machine or have experienced problems while running Snow Leopard, this build will fix those problems.

You can download the latest pre-release build of Default Folder X here:

http://www.stclairsoft.com/download/DefaultFolderX-4.2.2d6.dmg

If you are running Default Folder X on a seed build of Snow Leopard you should install this update NOW.

Changes include the following:

  • Default Folder X contains a workaround for a bug in OS X’s hierarchical menu system.  The old workaround functioned fine in 10.4 and 10.5, but intermittently causes the hierarchical path menu in Open and Save dialogs to hang or crash in Mac OS 10.6 (Snow Leopard).  It’s been rewritten and now works correctly.
  • Fixed a bug in DFPreviewServer that could consume a lot of CPU time and memory. This occurred when previewing very large files (greater than 200 MB) that the system identifies as text files.
  • Added some user defaults so you can globally set a minimum file dialog size and column width.  Use these commands in Terminal to set the values:

    defaults write com.stclairsoft.DefaultFolderX minimumSize.width 800
    defaults write com.stclairsoft.DefaultFolderX minimumSize.height 600
    defaults write com.stclairsoft.DefaultFolderX minimumSize.columnWidth 250

    Change the numbers at the end of the commands to the sizes you want to use (in pixels).
  • Added a way to override the time before menu previews zoom to full size.  In Terminal, use this command to change the value (the default value is 1.5 seconds):

    defaults write com.stclairsoft.DefaultFolderX menuZoomDelay 1.5

    Change the “1.5” in the line above to the number of seconds you want for the delay.  Note that you need to turn Default Folder X off and back on again for this change to take effect.
  • Default Folder X’s “New Folder” command would not work in some applications when creating a folder within a folder that was reached by double-clicking on an alias. This has been fixed.
  • Corrected a problem with the “Make Save dialogs automatically default to the current document’s folder” setting that would cause DFX to default to the top level of your hard disk or your home folder in certain applications (including Address Book).

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