The Book of Words

FinderPop is a Universal Preference pane that extends OS X's contextual menus using a FinderPop Items folder much as the Apple Menu Items folder used to do for the Apple menu. It has other features too:

• Control-free popup in the Finder - handy for those with one-button mice.
• a launcher that takes up zero screen real estate, merely a click on any blank area of menubar away,
• a handy filesystem browser, allowing quick and easy access to files and disks in the Finder,
• a Processes menu (Command-click a blank menubar area.)
• fast access to 'Where's that dratted file I had on the Desktop?' (Shift-Click a blank menubar area.)
• a comprehensive collection of vaguely beer-related aphorisms in the Aboutbox.

What's New since 1.9.9b4?

Universal at last! A friend loaned me a MacBook for the weekend so I could port FinderPop to Intel. It's a lot faster than my Mac Mini, that's for sure...
Control-free popup in the Finder - if enabled, just click and hold to get a contextual menu.
Significantly enhanced info and previews of items you're mousing over - press Cmd-Option for Info or Cmd-Shift-Option for Preview.
On 10.4 and later, while browsing FinderPop menus, press TAB to change the cursor to , select an item, and get this:

The Basics

INSTALLATION
If the System Preferences application is running, quit it. Strange things can happen otherwise.
Double-click the FinderPop.prefpane icon. System Preferences will open and ask if you want to install FinderPop for all users or just you. Choose 'just you'.

If you're lucky enough to have an Intel Mac, FinderPop will ask you for the admin password in order to set certain permissions on some FinderPop files. This is only done once at installation time.

USAGE
Open the FinderPop preference pane. Click on the Show FinderPop Items Folder button in the Items sub-panel. Add aliases to your favourite applications, folders, documents, and whatnots to that folder. Now, every time you control-click, you'll get a few more options...
Here's my FinderPop Items folder and the corresponding FinderPop menu:

Simply put, FinderPop will try to open whatever it is you select from any of its menus. If there is a Finder selection and you've chosen an application from the FinderPop menu, FP will ask the app you chose from the menu to open the Finder selection. For example: you want the ability to Stuff the Finder Selection? Add an alias to "DropStuff" to the "FinderPop Items Folder", select your files in the Finder, Control-click on the last file in your selection, choose "DropStuff" from the resulting FinderPop submenu, and Bob's your mother's brother.

Items generally appear in FinderPop Menus in alphabetical order. You can control this ordering process by inserting an ordering prefix before the item's name in the Finder. This ordering prefix consists of three characters at the start of an item's name, where the third character is a right parenthesis ')' and neither of the first two characters is a left parenthesis. This prefix text will not appear in the menu.

Note that you can choose among various standard orderings in the "Sort Items in FP Menus" popup in the Appearance tab: for example, order by modification date, order alphabetically, or an ordering where applications appear first, then folders, then other documents (with alphabetic ordering in each of those sub-groups.) Note also that this setting overrides any sort order you may have specified with the ordering prefixes mentioned above.

Any item inside the FinderPop Items Folder whose name ends in '-***' (that's minus-star-star-star) is considered to be a menu dividing line, following the convention set by James Walker's OtherMenu.

Extending the OtherMenu convention somewhat, any folder -- or alias to one -- whose name ends in '-!!X' (minus-pling-pling-capital-ecks) will not be expanded (i.e., there will be no submenu hanging off it.) The name displayed in the menu will not have the '-!!X' suffix, so the FinderPop menu is aesthetically pleasing (even if, like so much else, the underlying organisation isn't.) If the folder's name ends in '-!!x' (minus-pling-pling-lowercase-ecks) then, in addition to not being expanded, no folder icon will appear. Back in the days when I was receptive to all sorts of mad ideas for FinderPop, I put that no-icon thing in for someone who claimed that FinderPop was "fundamentally flawed" without it.

Any item ending in 'mbar!!!!' will only appear when you click a blank portion of the menubar.

We freely admit that that the user interface for this really is fundamentally flawed, but until we have the time to improve this, I'm afraid we're stuck with it. Hey, you only have to do it once!

Invoking FinderPop

• Control-click or right-click somewhere - this brings up a Contextual Menu as per normal; FinderPop attaches itself onto this menu.
  If you have enabled "Control-free Contextual Menu Popup In the Finder" (Options pane), you can click and hold in a Finder Window or the desktop and a contextual menu will pop up on whatever it is you clicked on.
  You can also arrange to have FinderPop pop up a "Contents" menu if you click-and-hold on a Folder. Command-clicking-and-holding on the whitespace inside a Finder window will also pop up a Contents menu, as of course will Command-Control-clicking on either the whitespace or a folder.
  If you have the Caps Lock key pressed when the main FinderPop menu pops up, the state of "Inline FinderPop Items into Main Contextual Menu" is toggled. Remember to turn the Caps Lock key back off!
• Clicking an unused portion of the menubar will pop up a FinderPop menu.
  (You can also set that this only happens for a control-click (or right-click) in the menubar.)
• Command-clicking the menubar will get you a Processes Menu: Note that the other FinderPop menu items are still available.
• Shift-clicking the menubar will get you a Desktop Menu listing the mounted volumes (disks) plus the contents of the Desktop Folder. (If the Control key is pressed, only the disks will be shown. I'm sparing you the 150+ items on my desktop here - and if you think that's bad, you should see my real desk! I am a firm believer in the First Available Surface filing system.

Navigating the FinderPop Menus

As usual with menus in OS X, typing a character will select the first menu item beginning with the character typed, which can save quite a bit of mousing.
Be aware that the OS X Menu Manager appears to do some very time-consuming processing if you are in a deep hierarchy and press any key. It is not unusual to get a beachball for a few seconds, but don't worry, the menu manager will eventually come back to life. I have reported this bug to Apple. For this reason, the use of Cmd-Option-Shift modifier keys is preferred when invoking the various FinderPop features described below.

Additionally, by pressing various modifier keys (Control, Command, Option and Shift) while traversing FinderPop menus, you can modify FinderPop's actions. The list below outlines the facilities available if there is no Finder selection while you're traversing any FinderPop-related submenu. You should notice the mouse pointer changing as indicated.

• Command (or 'r') -- Reveal In Finder or Show -- cursor looks like :
  Shows the chosen menu item (process or FinderPop item) in the Finder.
  With regard to the first sentence in this section, if you want to select a menu item beginning with 'r', type Shift-'R', i.e., capital-'R'.
• Command-Option (or 'i') -- Get Info --
  Displays an info-help-tag window for the currently selected item in the FinderPop menu which looks like the following:



Different text appears depending on whether the mouse is currently over a plain file, a directory, an app, a running process, or a disk (volume.) This can be quite handy to see the creator and type of an unknown item: just Command-Control-click a blank spot in the Finder window in which the item lives, and from the ensuing FinderPop Contents popup menu, press Command and Option and mouse down to your item.

• Command-Shift-Option (or 'p') -- Preview --
  Displays a preview-help-tag window for the currently selected FinderPop menu item which looks like the following:



This behaves like the Get Info cursor above. Note that it can take a while for the preview to appear if the file is big or on a slow disk!
You can thank a sudden strike by the Iberia ground crew in Barcelona airport for that one. (It meant my weekend in Amsterdam got canceled.) Shower-o-shaggers...

• Control-Command-Option (or delete) -- Trash --
  Move the chosen FinderPop menu item to the trash, or "puts away" a disk chosen from the Desktop submenu.
  Note that if the item you chose to trash is an alias, only the alias will be moved to the trash.
• Command-Control-Option (or delete) -- Quit or Kill--
  When you're mousing over FinderPop's Processes menu, you can quit a process by choosing it after pressing delete so the cursor goes into kill mode. You can also quit background-only apps. (To see background-only apps, have the Control key pressed when you move the mouse onto the Processes menu title, or press Control and Command while clicking a blank portion of the menubar.) Note that running apps that are hidden via (Command-H) appear in FinderPop's Processes menu with their icons dimmed.
  If the Shift key is not pressed, then FinderPop will send a 'quit' AppleEvent to the process, giving it a chance to quit in an orderly fashion by asking you if you want to save any modified documents, for example. If Shift is down, FinderPop will kill the process via _KillProcess, which basically blows the process away. Any unsaved work in that process will be lost, so caveat user!
• TAB -- Info Window --
  (10.4 and later only!)
  Pops up a floating info window on whatever you select from the FinderPop menu, which looks like this:
  

  It displays a little preview of whatever it was you'd selected; plus some basic info on the file/folder/volume. If the item is a picture or an MP3 file, various useful bits of info are also presented, as in the example. If the item is a file, the preview sub-panel will display the first few lines of the file (if it's a text file), or optionally a hex dump of the first hundred or so bytes in the file if you option-double-click the Preview area. If the item is a folder, a really small representation of its contents will appear there. (You can't yet select items in that mini-contents-representation.)
  From this info-window, you can:
  

  • Click on the Trash icon or press Delete to move the item to the trash. You will not be asked to confirm, so be careful!
  • Click the magnifying glass icon or pressing R will reveal the item in the Finder.
  • Click on the Info icon or pressing I will ask the Finder to display information about the item. (Holding down Shift while clicking or typing will reveal the item in the Finder and get info on it.)
  • Press Escape or click the Dismiss button to dismiss the info window.
  • Press Return or Enter to open the item (double-clicking the preview also does this.)
  • Click the item's icon or preview area to open it. Command-clicking it will reveal it in the Finder.
  • Option-double-clicking the preview area toggles a hex dump of the first 0x68 bytes of the file's data fork (if the item is a file.)
  • You can also control-click the icon to bring up a new contextual menu for the item. (Click-and-hold for control-free popup works too.)
  • Drag-and-drop of the icon works. As usual with drags on the Mac, dragging to the menubar and letting go aborts a drag, you can Command-Tab to the Finder or another app while dragging. If you're dragging to the Finder and want to Copy or Alias the item instead of moving it, use the Option key modifier to get the Finder to Copy, and the Command-Option modifiers to get the Finder to Alias.
  • Double-clicking the pathname string will copy the path string to the clipboard and dismiss the dialog.
    
  • You can move the FinderPop Info Window by its titlebar or by dragging from any non-button item.
  • Command-clicking the filename or pathname texts, will pop up a Contents menu of the item's parent folder.

  This may eventually evolve into a shelf thingy, but at my rate of development... well, don't hold your breath...

  Sorry about the crappy icons, they're the best I could find/cobble together on short notice. Hey... any graphic artists reading this who'd like their names to appear in the FinderPop AboutBox? Submissions gratefully received! (And come to think of it, the FinderPop Preference Pane icon is pretty poor too :-)
  I'll be adding more features to this dialog - suggestions welcome.

If there is a Finder selection, FinderPop automatically changes the cursor if it's over a menu item representing a folder while traversing a FinderPop related menu. The cursor will change to a to signify that the Finder selection will be copied to whatever directory you select. Note that if you do select a folder in this case, FinderPop will always ask for confirmation:

(Pressing the initial letter of a button has the same effect as pressing the button, thus pressing the m key corresponds to a click on the Move button.)

The cursor will revert to the normal arrow cursor if copying would be impossible (for example, if the destination disk is write-protected, or if you were attempting to move a folder into one of its offspring.) If you manually force another cursor by pressing Command/Option/Shift/Control etc., then of course that forced cursor takes precedence.

All these modifier key chords are good piano practice, if nothing else.

Hints & Tips (or: "You know much that is hidden, O Tim.")

• Command-Control-clicking in a Finder window (or the Desktop) will pop up a Contents menu (i.e., the contents of the folder corresponding to the window.) This can be very handy because it's sometimes easier to find a particular item in a sorted FinderPop menu than in a Finder window! If you command-control-click (or command-click-and-hold) a Finder icon corresponding to a folder, you'll also get a Contents popup menu. (There's a checkbox in the FinderPop PrefPane's Options tab which allows you to choose whether you want a plain Click-and-hold on a folder to popup a Contents menu or a contextual menu.)

• If you have the Shift key pressed when you're logging in (i.e., when your Startup Items are running), FinderPop will not install. Just like OS9 :-)

• If you have Control and CAPS LOCK pressed simultaneously when an app starts up, FinderPop won't patch that app (so menubar-clicking etc will be unavailable.)

• When switching processes by selecting something from the Processes menu, holding down the Option key will bring only that process's frontmost window forward.

• In the Move/Copy/Alias dialog, holding down the Command key when clicking any of the buttons (or typing any of the shortcut characters) will perform the button's action and then reveal the Finder window corresponding to the destination.

• In the absence of a PrefPane element for this, you can choose your own background colour for the FinderPop Info window by doing this in Terminal.app:

       defaults write com.finderpop.finderpop infoBackground -data RRGGBBAA

  where RR, GG, BB and AA are hex byte values representing the red, green, blue and alpha components of the info window's background colour. For example,

       defaults write com.finderpop.finderpop infoBackground -data 556677FA

  gives RGB = {0x5555, 0x6666, 0x7777} and an alpha of 0xFA / 0xFF == 0.980.

• Exactly the same format can be used to color the background of the "info-help-tag" and "preview-help-tag" windows shown by FinderPop. This prefs variable is called helpTagBackground.
  Additionally, you can control the size of the icon displayed in FinderPop's "info-help-tag" by

       defaults write com.finderpop.finderpop helpTagIconSize -integer 128

  The example would cause FinderPop to use 128-pixel icons in its "info-help-tag" windows the next time an app is patched (these values are loaded once per app.) Setting the helpTagIconSize to 0 instructs FinderPop to not display icons in help tags.

• If you'd like FinderPop to remember more than one "Last Item Chosen", you can use

       defaults write com.finderpop.finderpop numLastItemsChosen -integer 5

  Values supported are 1..5.

• Buy low, sell high. Don't be like me!

FAQ me!

• So where's the Intel version, then?
  It's finally here! Xxx was kind enough to lend me a MacBook for the weekend and I spent 30 hours getting FinderPop working on Intel. There goes my last chance for Christmas shopping - still, they say it's the thought that counts. Heh.
  See the Release Notes section for more.
  Apropos of nothing at all, my last days at Apple were spent banging on the OS X intel gcc compiler with a blunt piece of wood until it worked. It seems to have recovered.

• Does FinderPop patch my system?
  FinderPop does not patch Mac OS X per se, instead it inserts a small fragment of code into the memory space of individual Mac OS X applications as they are being launched. This code fragment adds the various FinderPop features to contextual menus and clicks-in-unused-menubar-area.

  FinderPop does not change any of your application or system files.

  FinderPop has been tested by a gang of 40+ beta testers (see the FinderPop Beta Testing page if you would like to join them.) However, problems could still arise, such as instability in certain applications, etc. If you are experiencing problems, simply turning off FinderPop in the Preference Pane will deactivate it. If you are continually experiencing problems in a particular application, please tell me about it [ ]; you can also tell FinderPop to avoid "patching" that application by adding it to the the Excludes list in the FinderPop Preference Pane.

• How do I uninstall FinderPop?
  If you wish to completely uninstall FinderPop, open the FinderPop Preference Pane's Etc tab, and click the Uninstall FinderPop button. If there's something bad about FinderPop that you don't like, please tell me so I can try to fix it! [ ]

• Is FinderPop compatible with Unsanity's FruitMenu or other CM enhancers?
  Unfortunately not. I will work on this issue when I get a chance. Apologies for the inconvenience...

• Why do I sometimes see a submenu containing nothing but the words "Empty Folder"?
  This can happen because FinderPop is lazy about deciding whether a folder item should have a submenu. At the time it decides this, it only knows how many items are in the folder. It doesn't know whether the current user has permissions to see inside the folder, or if all items inside it are invisible, for example. A future version of FP will fix this.

• Why are the various FinderPop icons so manky?
  Because I have no clue about graphic design. Suggestions (better yet, icons) welcome -- icons I eventually decide to use will ensure their owners a place in the FinderPop Aboutbox!

• Why do I get a spinning beachball when I press the 'p' key for 'Preview'? (or 'i' key for info, or...)
  I think that this is down to the OS X Menu Manager's handling of keystrokes to move the menu selection (ie, pressing 'a' should take you to the first item in the menu beginning with 'a' or thereabouts.) If you are browsing a deep hierarchy and press a key, the Menu Manager appears to do a linear search of all currently visible items or something; it can take a few seconds before control reverts to the user. See above.

Release Notes

• 2.0.1 So late it's early!
  • Updated manual regarding keypresses during menu display.
  • Fixed 'mbar!!!!' bug caught by Francisco.
• 2.0.0 Stumbling towards finality
  Minor UI tweaks in PrefPane
  • Display MP3 track length when Getting Info (Cmd-Opt) or Previewing (Cmd-Opt-Shift) an MP3 file.
• 2.0.0rc4
  • Don't patch Rosetta apps on intel - they crash if we do. Sorry about that!
  • I noticed that the MacBook came with a monitor dongle thingy and so was finally able to fix the "control-free popup doesn't work on a second monitor which is above or to the left of the main monitor."
  • Great Henny Youngman one-liner added to About text.
  • Happy Christmas / Solstice / Hannukah / Whatever-you're-having-yourself.
• 2.0.0rc3
  • First cut at an Intel version! Many thanks to Bertrand Guihéneuf for doing the donkey-work of porting mach_inject to Intel. And many thanks to Xxx for lending me a MacBook for the weekend. Compiling FinderPop is two to four times faster than on my Mac Mini with external fast Firewire drive - and this is on the MacBook's internal 5400 RPM drive! Though I'm not too keen on the el-cheapo LCD screen which goes blurry if you move your head slightly, nor on the IBM PCjr chiclet-style keyboard with tiny arrow keys. And I keep hitting that dratted 'Fn' key when I want Ctrl. (I live in 'vi'.) If my finances are shipshape after Christmas, I might even get a MacBook for myself... we live in hope, anyway.
  • CAPS LOCK key now toggles state of "Inline FinderPop Items into Main Contextual Menu when in Finder". Remember to turn it back off!
  • Fix a bug where filenames beginning with a minus '-' got turned into dividing lines in FinderPop menus. Seems like the CFString Menu Manager routines still grok the old 1984-vintage metachars!
  • Add support for multiple last-item-chosens.
  • Display proper help tag for apps. ('i' for info or press Command-Option while mousing over an application in FP.)
• 2.0.0rc2
  • No longer crash when attempting to move/copy/alias a multi-item Finder selection.
  • Can add CFM Classic apps to the "Excludes" panel.
  • Fixed a number of problems to do with control-free clicking.
  Command-click-and-hold is no longer a control-free click if you are extending a Finder selection.
  • Don't call SetFrontProcess to switch processes unless it's really needed. (Use LSOpenFSRef instead of the 1997-vintage FinderPop code to open items!)
  • Hold down the Option key when opening an item from a FinderPop menu to reveal it in the Finder prior to opening it.
  • (This is automatically done for you if you've selected an item from a FinderPop menu which is opened by either StuffIt Expander or BOMArchiveHelper: automagically reveal the item in the Finder before expanding/un-archiving.)
  • Even more Beer Quotes in the "About" tab
• 2.0.0rc1
  • Added GWorld cache for images in Preview tags; should zip along a bit faster now after the first time.
  • More beery quotes, updated AboutBox text
  • Fix QT scaling-quality parameter in FP Info Window
  • Get 'mbar!!!!' items working again
  • Update manual based on Francisco's feedback