Total Finder V 0.9.5

By Unrealistic
in iPhone - iOS/tvOS/watchOS

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  • 2 weeks later...
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0.8.2

released on April 04, 2010

  • NEW TotalFinder main icon and relevant graphics like installer icons, status menu icons, etc. (read more)
  • NEW Redesigned the website (read more).
  • FIXED TotalFinder plays nice with TimeMachine (issue, issue, issue and issue).
  • FIXED Prevent a monster memory leak when sliding Visor window (issue). My apologies for this.
  • FIXED Fixed stuck scrollbars in icon view of dual panel (issue and issue).
  • FIXED Resolved random crash in showToolbar call.
  • FIXED Hiding sidebar works properly in dual mode.
  • FIXED Auto-connection to Echelon didn't work after machine restart (in some cases).
  • FIXED Robust shutdown path. TotalFinder state was not properly serialized into plist (when Finder's code decided not to save my in-memory changes).
  • FIXED Prevent crashes in getFinderGradientParams call.
  • IMPROVED Drag&drop between tabs respects system springing preferences and can be customized on the Finder's General preferences pane.
  • IMPROVED Better uninstaller (original Uninstall.scpt wrapped in Platypus app).
  • IMPROVED Descriptive error message when launching TotalFinder.app without SIMBL installed.
  • IMPROVED Renamed some status menu items and added "Check for Updates" item.
  • IMPROVED Pixel perfect sidebar width syncing in dual mode.

totalfinder-icon-new.png

New Icon is kind of sweet. Slight variation to the original, but much cooler than the sunglasses.

  • 4 weeks later...
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0.8.3

released on April 26, 2010

  • More details in the blog post: TotalFinder now works without SIMBL
  • NEW TotalFinder has its own mechanism for Finder injection.
  • REMOVED Removed SIMBL dependency.
  • NEW Echelon.kext renamed to TotalFinder.kext. Launch daemon is not needed anymore for .DS_Store redirect feature to work.
  • NEW Added option which prevents adopting new Finder windows as tabs automatically. See TotalFinder/Tweaks preferences. (issue)
  • FIXED Fixed window jump problem (issue and issue).
  • FIXED FinderSize utility works again with TotalFinder (issue).
  • FIXED Fixed CMD+P glitch. (issue).
  • IMPROVED Warning dialog appears when running TotalFinder with untested Finder version.
  • IMPROVED Updated crash dialog UI and also updated Breakpad sources to the latest version.

No More SIMBL. Definitely a good update.

http://blog.binaryage.com/totalfinder-without-simbl/

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TotalFinder loves SIMBL, but SIMBL scares people on the streets (even during the daytime)

The SIMBL is a great and well maintained software. All kudos to Mike Solomon who has been doing an awesome job on it for so many years. TotalFinder probably would not be here today without the SIMBL.

The current SIMBL has one fundamental problem related to TotalFinder. It requires people to do something. Running an installer is not much work I know. But still there is a dependency. They need to install a separate program prior to TotalFinder. They should keep it up-to-date. And they probably want to look and understand what it is. Let's be honest, the SIMBL homepage is not very welcoming to non-programmers.

There are also some technical questions. Is it really worth to replace SIMBL with my own homebrew solution?

simbl-replacement-questioning.png

Good question, Shane. Here are my reasons:

  • I want TotalFinder installation and uninstallation to be as seamless as possible. It should be ideally one-click experience. No brainer!
  • I don't want to depend on a component which may evolve. Testing compatibility and keeping up with Finder.app alone is quite enough work for me.
  • To sleep well in night I wanted to implement future compatibility check for Finder
  • I don't really need SIMBL's Agent functionality. Actually it does no good with Finder's auto-restart and it complicated my life in the past (I needed to prevent continuos crashing scenario for example)

So I decided to roll my own solution. It does not need Agent and it is Snow Leopard only so it turned to be a really easy (the plugin injector has less than 100LOC). I was able to implement future Finder version check like this:

totalfinder-future-compatibility-check.png

Ok, to wrap it up. TotalFinder.bundle is still a SIMBL plugin and you can run it with SIMBL if you want to play with Info.plist. But I'm using my own OSAX to do the Finder injection by default. Don't worry I will open-source my solution in a few days on GitHub. Of course I will be glad to get some feedback/code reviews on this.

And as a side-effect I've learned how to rule the world with my own Scripting Additions. Wait for the next release .-)

A general project refactoring and Echelon rename

Echelon scares people too. So I decided to rename it simply to TotalFinder.kext. This way when you happen to look into /System/Library/Extensions you don't scare yourself to death by simply forgetting Echelon is something related to the peaceful TotalFinder.

And by the way, if you are still scared please note that TotalFinder.kext is going to be also an open-source in a few days on GitHub. You may then compile it on your own in case you want to be 100% sure about your kernel extensions in your system. I understand the geek inside of you so I will write a separate technical article about how it works in the future :-)

This was also good excuse to refactor the whole XCode project into several smaller projects, solve dependencies, improve build scripts and clean things up. Unfortunately I cannot present any visible progress here, but I personally feel much better now. You know I hate cruft, especially in my own baby projects.

Oh, maybe I should have added that the installer's footprint is 3.4MB now, which is ~30% less than the previous 4.8MB. Yeah, faster downloads for you and cheaper S3 bills for me :-)

Want new windows always as tabs?

Folks using OSX Spaces feature were asking for better dealing with new Finder windows.

By default TotalFinder turns new popping Finder windows into tabs of the last active TotalFinder window. This caused problems in a case of having TotalFinder window on a different space. Let's say the TotalFinder window is on space1, the user is working on space2 and clicks for example on desktop to open a new folder. This would trigger switch back to space1 because newly created Finder window converts to tab and that activates TotalFinder window living on space1. I personally don't use spaces, but I understand that this is an annoying thing.

Since 0.8.3 you may go to TotalFinder/Tweaks preferences panel and check in "Don't adopt new Finder windows as tabs". This will enable you to open new Finder windows in separate TotalFinder windows. In the future I want to improve this behavior to deal also nicely with DMG files and other special types of Finder windows. This option might become default in the future releases. Any ideas? Tell me what do you think..

Good stuff is coming. Stay tuned as usual!

  • 3 weeks later...
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Unrealistic

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  On 13/05/2010 at 08:20, Wannes said:

I've installed this application, which I love by the way, but now I can't change my Finder icon using Candybar. Does anyone have a solution for this?

I know upon every boot up, Total Finder changes the image of the finder on my dock. You may want to contact the developer, or try changing the icon of TF itself.

With that said, it is update time.

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0.9

released on May 17, 2010

  • NEW Toggle display of hidden files without Finder restart! (CMD+SHIFT+.)
  • NEW Visor has blue pin button in place of close button (CMD+SHIFT+P)
  • NEW Visor window can be resized by dragging main window's title bar vertically. Visor window is no longer movable.
  • NEW New Tweak option 'Always Maximize' - makes Zoom behave like in Google Chrome.
  • NEW New Tweak option 'Narrow Tabs Bar' - saves some vertical space for folks with 13" notebooks.
  • NEW CMD+Q closes all open windows. This does not terminate Finder process tough.
  • FIXED Fixed random crashes caused by pending tabs animations accessing already destroyed browser window.
  • FIXED Fixed possible crash in tabs state serialization code.
  • FIXED Prevented crash when last windows was closed and user requested to create a new tab via a keyboard shortcut.
  • FIXED Fixed `Cycle Through Windows` menu command (issue).
  • FIXED Fixed `Zoom` and `Zoom All` menu commands.
  • FIXED Zoom acts as the original Finder `Zoom` command - hold SHIFT to maximize (issue).
  • IMPROVED Seamless switching between free-form and classic visor mode. Resizing works without Visor window recreation.
  • IMPROVED Improved look of TotalFinder preference panels. Also renamed some options and added more descriptive texts.
  • IMPROVED Installer disables POSIX names in Finder's plist option during installation (issue).
  • IMPROVED LSUIElement hides TotalFinderLauncher.app from the Dock (issue).
  • IMPROVED Better logic for selecting target browser for a new tab: open it in visor if visor is visible and key window else use last active non-visor window.
  • IMPROVED Overall refactorings, dead code removal and speed improvements.
  • IMPROVED Dual panel separator line goes over toolbar and statusbar.
  • REMOVED Removed close button on Visor window.
  • REMOVED Removed continuous crash preventer code (not needed anymore).
  • REMOVED Removed TotalFinderOptionTab tweak option. Switching panels is going to be just OPT+TAB. Using plain TAB wasn't good idea.

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0.9.1 released on May 17, 2010

  • More details in the blog post: TotalFinder almost gold
  • FIXED Fixed keyboard shortcuts problem. I didn't test Command and Shift key modifiers properly (issue).
  • FIXED CMD+Q does not kill the Desktop window (issue).
  • FIXED Prevent window jump during the Zoom operation.

http://blog.binaryag...er-almost-gold/

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The major feature: "no major features"

I have still head full of crazy ideas about new exciting features for TotalFinder but I decided to stay calm and polish TotalFinder in its current state. Don't worry I'm also evaluating your ideas from http://getsatisfaction.com/binaryage.

The one thing is clear to me. TotalFinder must not turn into a bloat-ware. On the other side the TotalFinder is by definition a product for Mac tweakers who love to have options. I want to support separate orthogonal features which should be disabled by default and which may be enabled at will on separate preference panels. So everyone gets easy way how to use only subset of TotalFinder features.

For example not that many people is interested in .DS_Store redirection while for some it is an essential feature. By the way I renamed this feature to "Asepsis" which is kind of cool name for real system surgeons ;-)

new-preferences-panel.png

This is the new look of TotalFinder preferences. New mini tab buttons give room for new feature panels in the future :-)

Fixed several crash situations

The root of all evil was my extensive usage of performSelector:withObject:afterDelay: calls to make things smooth and sane. This was used for example when animating tabs. The problem is that target object with scheduled method call does not go away until the timer fires (performSelector calls retain on target). Cocoa system uses autorelease which does deallocation at some point in the future after the timer fired. The problem were weak references the target has to other objects. These objects may die in the meantime when the target is waiting for animation to finish.

As you can imagine this was the source of all sudden crashes when dealing with tabs. For example 100% repro case for one tabs related crash was:

  • open window with two tabs
  • with mouse click on close button of the second tab to initiate a tab closing animation
  • use CMD+Q to close the whole browser window (you may be fast and close it with mouse or pressing CMD+W to close second tab quickly after first one)
I believe I've solved all these nasty issues by reviewing all performSelector calls and fixing object dependencies.
Visor window can be pinned and resized by dragging
I've replaced Visor close button with pin button. Visor Window may be also pinned by pressing CMD+SHIFT+P keyboard shortcut. You may also drag tabs bar to resize Visor vertically. Sweet!
totalfinder-pinned-visor-window.png
I've also improved free-form mode of Visor window and implemented seamless switching between these modes.
Narrow Tabs Bar for small screens
This is just a cherry. It was easy enough so I decided to make some folks with small screens happy. You have keyboard shortcut for this too CMD+SHIFT+B.
totalfinder-narrow-tabs-bar.png
Display hidden files without restarting Finder!
This one was really hard one. As I wrote before, there is no simple way how to force Finder to display hidden files programatically. You may tweak AppleShowAllFiles key in Finder's plist, but it requires Finder restart to take effect.
So I've followed the hard path again. I've searched memory where Finder stores the bit which tells the file browser how to filter the files when rendering. As you would expect this memory offset differs for each hardware platform and Finder version. So I ended up with two table where I store known memory offsets for both i386 and x86_64 platforms.
As of 0.9.1 release. This feature works for Finder 10.6.3 and 10.6.4. The Apple is probably going to release Finder 10.6.5 soon, so I will release TotalFinder update for it shortly. If you encounter future compatibility warning you are going to lose this functionality for a while (Finder restart will work always of course).
totalfinder-future-compatibility-check.png
Note: Finder's minor version number is advanced by +1 in comparison to OS X system updates numbering.
What's next?
This is pretty much what you are going to get in 1.0 release. You should be already saving your 15 bucks as a reward for my hard work.
I plan the following features for 1.0:
  • Pixel perfection (right now tab gradients visually mismatch the Finder windows)
  • Localization support
  • Registration (a funny box for pasting a license key)
  • Small usability fixes

I'm pretty excited how TotalFinder matures. Let me know what are yours must-haves for the 1.0 release.

Looking good, although I'm not sure if I'm thrilled to be ready to pay for this software. I guess I will have to not be a cheap ass.

Narrow tabs is awesome! Also, Wannes, you now have the option of retaining the original Finder icon. I believe now, CandyBar should work by editing changing the Finder Icon and leaving that option checked. It's in the "tweaks" section.

PS. I'm not sure who rated the thread a one star, but that's pretty silly. I've put a little bit of effort into keeping this thread up to date every time there is a new release. Thanks for showing your hospitality.

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Bah - let the 1 star wonders drop posts down because they don't understand the whole Mac thing.

I was a bit surprised to launch finder and see an update already, but glad it did. Shows the developer is hard at work. :)

I generally can't afford a lot outside of the budget these days, but this will probably be one program I will jump on when I have a little extra to devote towards computer schtuff I can sometimes buy.

  • 3 weeks later...
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Unrealistic

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New build, although it was kind of odd that I didn't get or see the update yesterday.

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0.9.3

released on June 08, 2010

0.9.2

released on June 07, 2010

  • More details in the blog post: TotalFinder with customizable shortcuts
  • NEW TotalFinder keyboard shortcuts can be overridden in Preferences. This should solve the headaches for people with AZERTY keyboards.
  • NEW Newly CMD+SHIFT+W closes current window including all tabs (like in the Google Chrome Browser the option available in the File menu) (idea).
  • FIXED Fixed installer bug when TotalFinder failed to install with unselected TotalFinder.kext (issue and issue).
  • FIXED Visor's Pin button is click-through.
  • FIXED Do not alter with Visor window level when pinned, it solved some pin button problems.
  • FIXED Installer creates /usr/local/.dscache with proper rights when TotalFinder.kext is selected. Also when this folder is missing TotalFinder gracefully works with Asepsis feature disabled.
  • FIXED Clicking right-side close button of dualized tab closes the right-side Finder panel properly (issue and issue).
  • IMPROVED TotalFinder actions are available in the Finder menu (mostly under View submenu).
  • IMPROVED Revised logic which decides if a new Finder is opened in a new tab or a new window (issue).
  • IMPROVED Improved look & feel of Preferences Panel.
  • REMOVED Removed CMD+Q keyboard shortcut for closing all windows. You should be using standard CMD+OPT+W.

http://blog.binaryage.com/totalfinder-with-customizable-shortcuts/

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TotalFinder 0.9.3 is out with few more features. This release has customizable shortcuts.

Customizable Shortcuts

People with AZERTY keyboards had problem with my choice of keyboard shortcuts in 0.9.1. I decided to solve the problem once for all. You may define your own shortcuts in case the default one conflicts with your custom keyboard layout.

totalfinder-customizable-keyboard-shortcuts.png

Fixed installer and Asepsis initialization bugs

Installer usually failed for people who decided to not install TotalFinder.kext. Maybe you didn't notice, but you may click the "Customize" button during the installation.

This is also related to problems caused when /usr/local/.dscache folder wasn't present during TotalFinder start. In this case some of initialization steps were not properly executed and TotalFinder might behave unpredictably.

I've got a little productivity crisis

First, I decided to switch from TextMate to XCode for Objective-C development. This was quite a productivity backslash, but I believe it is a good time investment for future. I still do love TextMate for web development, ruby and ad-hoc text file editing, but XCode is way superior with its Objective-C integration.

Second, Google I/O talks, WWDC presentations, tech-podcasts and all the new technical stuff coming out these days. Sometimes I wish a day had 48 hours unless I feel I cannot consume this all :-)

Third, with nice weather there is much more "real life"™ activity out there. Friends are doing meetups, celebrations or just hanging out in pubs. I had to do several hard decisions if to go out or stay and code something on TotalFinder. There is still some boring work ahead like writing documentation, preparing localization support, implementing licensing subsystem and setting up a web store. I would rather spend that time working on new features, but this has to be done. At least for me to stay motivated on the project.

Don't worry. I will keep you posted.

  • 2 weeks later...
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New version released today. Adds support for the 10.6.4 update.

0.9.4 [Download Link]

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released on June 16, 2010

  • IMPROVED Compatibility update with Finder 10.6.5 coming in OSX v10.6.4 update.
  • FIXED Visor window accepts new tabs even if it is hidden (issue).
  • FIXED Show Hidden Files works reliably also in 32-bit Finder.
  • FIXED Fixed possible crash situation when main window controller was deallocated too early.

  • 2 weeks later...
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Unrealistic

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I feel like I'm spamming but...

0.9.5

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released on June 29, 2010

  • NEW Localization support (more info).
  • FIXED Switching between keyboard layouts caused OSX to slow down! (issue).
  • FIXED Toggling hidden files does also refresh the desktop (issue).
  • FIXED Fixed random bug in TotalFinder launcher (issue).
  • IMPROVED Pixel perfection! Tabs have a better colors matching the current Chrome Browser.
  • IMPROVED Removed some dead code and minor house keeping.

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