Author Topic: FinderPop is a Universal Preference pane that extends Macintosh contextual menus  (Read 3839 times)

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Software Santa

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FinderPop is a Universal Preference pane that extends Macintosh contextual menus.

Software Santa has used this, in it's various incarnations, since the late 1990's! A Software Santa Pick!

A version is available for Mac OS 8/9: FinderPop 1.9.2 works on old "Classic Macs"

and an older version is available for Mac OS X 10.3 systems.

Not working on OS X 10.11 and above ...  :'(

Quote
INSTALLATION
    If the System Preferences application is running, please quit it. Strange things can happen otherwise.
    Double-click the FinderPop.prefpane icon you downloaded. System Preferences will open and ask if you want to install FinderPop for all users or just you.
    If you are using FileVault, you should choose 'All Users'. Otherwise you can choose either option, and the System will install the FinderPop Preference Pane.
    FinderPop may ask you for the admin password in order to set certain permissions on some FinderPop files. This is only done once at installation time.

    If you had an older version of FinderPop already installed, you will have to logout to begin using the new version.

USAGE
    After installation, open the FinderPop Preferences Pane. Click on the "Items" tab, then on the "Show FinderPop Items" button. You'll be switched to the Finder with a folder called "FinderPop Items" showing.
    Add aliases to your favourite apps/folders/disks/documents to this "FinderPop Items" folder.
    Next time you control-click, the items you added will be part of your contextual menu!

    Additionally, click a blank portion of the menubar anytime to have instant access to these items and more. While browsing FinderPop menus, pressing Command-Option will display a "Get Info" help tag, pressing Cmd-Opt-Control will allow you to move the selected item to the trash, and pressing Command while selecting an item will reveal that item in the Finder. Also, pressing 'i' will immediately show the Finder Info window for the item, 'r' will immediately reveal the item, 'q' will QuickLook it (Leopard only), 'g' will "grab" or "pick up" the item and allow you to drag it around (as with all Mac drags, dragging to the menubar and letting go aborts the drag.) Pressing Tab will bring up a "FinderPop Info" window on the item.

    Other features: Command-control-click a folder to get a Contents popup menu. Shift-click an unused portion of the menubar to see a Desktop menu with your mounted disks and items on your desktop. Command-click an unused portion of the menubar to see a Processes menu. If Control is down as well, background-only processes will also be shown in the Processes menu. Press Command-Option-Control to kill a process.

HELP
    Please use the FinderPop Help button in the preference pane; there are many features in FP that are not immediately obvious. I'm working on it :-) The FAQ in the Help is also worth a read. Most UI elements have fairly comprehensive help tags, so just hover the mouse over something if you're not sure. The 2.1 manual is also available online.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.

Any item ending in 'fsel!!!!' will only appear when you have control-clicked an item (ie., there is a file or folder selected).

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!

http://www.finderpop.com/
« Last Edit: December 01, 2019, 06:42:33 PM by Software Santa »

 

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