Users of earlier versions of Finder Windows: Please remove the Finder Windows 1.0 extension from your extensions folder or the Finder Windows 1.1 or 1.1.2 control panel from your control panels folder before installing Finder Windows 1.1.3. You may also wish to read the "Usage Notes" section of this Read Me file for information on the control panel.
Contents
•About Finder Windows
•System Requirements
•Usage Notes
•Price
•How to Register
•Legal Stuff
•How to Contact Me
•Questions and Answers
•Version History
•Other Programs
About Finder Windows
Finder Windows is a control panel that adds a "Window" menu to the Finder. The new "Window" menu gives a list of all the currently open windows in the Finder (including the quasi-window "Desktop"). If you choose a window name from the list in the menu, the corresponding window in the Finder is brought to the front. You can also stack windows by choosing "Stack" or typing command-S, and you can arrange windows (space them out) by choosing "Arrange" or typing command-T.
System Requirements
Finder Windows requires System 7 or higher. To see the About Box, you should have a color monitor although it isn't required.
Usage Notes
I have always wished that Apple's Finder had a simple Window menu like most other applications. Sometimes my desktop gets very cluttered and I want to find a window that's under a bunch of other windows without having to move them all around. That's why I wrote Finder Windows. If you have had similar problems, I hope you find that Finder Windows helps solve them.
I added the ability to "Stack" and "Arrange" windows to improve window organization. "Stack" puts all the windows in a nicely ordered stack, while "Arrange" spaces them out on the desktop as much as possible.
Some other extensions also add command-key equivalents for menu items to the Finder. If you find that Finder Windows command-S and command-T equivalents conflict with another extension, you can change them in the control panel. (Thanks to Landon Ross for alerting me to this situation.)
By opening the Finder Windows control panel, you can change what the command-key equivalents of "Stack" and "Arrange" are. By default, they are set to command-S for "Stack" and command-T for "Arrange". To turn off command-key equivalents altogether, uncheck the box next to the menu item name. To change the command-key equivalents, type the one you want next to the name and make sure the box is checked.
Price
I hope you like Finder Windows, find it useful, and will support my efforts to write more good software for the Macintosh by paying the shareware fee.
Finder Windows has the following pricing:
• Single User License: US$10
• Site License: US$150
• World-Wide License: US$750
A single user license applies to one person. A site license covers all locations for your organization within a 160 km (100 mile) radius of your site. With a site license you don't need to keep track of how many people at your site are using the software. A World-Wide license covers all locations for your organization on the planet.
How to Register
Payment is relatively painless. Open the Register program that accompanies Finder Windows. Enter your name, your e-mail address, and the number of single user licenses you desire (or site or world-wide licenses). Save or Copy or Print the data from the Register program and send the data and payment to Kagi Shareware. Kagi Shareware handles my payment processing.
If paying with Credit Card or First Virtual, you can email or fax the data to Kagi Shareware. Their email address is shareware@kagi.com and their fax number is +1 510 652-6589. You can either Copy the data from Register and paste into the body of an e-mail message or you can Save the data to a file and attach that file to an e-mail message. There is no need to compress the data file; it's already pretty small. If you have a fax modem, just Print the data to the Kagi fax number.
Payments sent via e-mail are processed within 3 to 4 days. You will receive an e-mail acknowledgment when it is processed. Payments sent via fax take up to 10 days and if you provide a correct internet e-mail address you will receive an e-mail acknowledgment.
If paying with Cash or US$ Check you should print the data using the Register application and send it to the address shown on the form, which is:
Kagi Shareware
1442-A Walnut Street #392-HG
Berkeley, California 94709-1405
USA
You can pay with a wide variety of cash from different countries but at present if you pay via check, it must be a check drawn in US Dollars. Kagi Shareware cannot accept checks in other currencies, the conversion rate for a non-US$ check is around US$15 per check and that's not practical considering that Finder Windows only costs US$10.
The Invoice option is for companies with purchasing departments. If that's you, then enter all the data, print three copies of the form, and send it to your accounts payable people. They must include a copy of the form with their payment.
Please do not fax or e-mail forms that indicate Cash, Check, or Invoice as the payment method. These need to be sent through the postal mail with payment. Payments sent via postal mail take time to reach Kagi Shareware and then up to 10 days for processing.
Legal Stuff
You may copy and distribute Finder Windows but you may not sell it for profit. If you want to include it in a shareware/freeware collection, contact me at the e-mail address below. If you distribute it in any way, you must include this "Read Me" file and the Register program along with it.
Use Finder Windows at your own risk. I make no warranties as to performance of merchantability or any other warranties whether expressed or implied. No warranty of fitness for a particular purpose is offered. If the program does something weird, like damages a file or disk, I am not legally responsible. However, if it does something weird, I'd like to know so I can try to fix it in future versions. Please send bug reports to the e-mail address below.
How to Contact Me
If you find a bug, have comments, or just want to say hi, my e-mail address is gherrick@kagi.com.
Questions and Answers
Why don't you have a "tiling" option?
Unfortunately, because of the way the Finder resizes its windows, it is exceedingly difficult to write an extension that properly changes the windows' sizes and thus I haven't been able to implement a window "tiling" option in the menu. I tried very hard to do this but it came down to a choice between buggy tiling and clean arranging. I thought users would rather have a clean and stable control panel rather than one which was infested by bugs. And the "arranging" option actually does most of the work of tiling anyway -- especially if you don't have lots of windows open.
Version History
May 1996
Finder Windows 1.1.3 fixes a couple more bugs having to do with dialog boxes that occurred on a few machines. Thanks to Ellen, G. Curt Fiedler, Robert Jagitsch, JeanaC, Sanders McNew, Tim Moore, and Scott Tregear for bug reports.
May 1996
Finder Windows 1.1.2 fixes a couple bugs that were found in previous versions. It is now compatible with Now Utilities and Novell Client software as well as solving an "unimplemented trap" error that sometimes happened at startup on some machines. Thanks to Erin Dalzell, Jim Isaac, Jim Richardson, and Bradley Yi for helpful bug reports.
April 1996
Finder Windows 1.1 is now a control panel (instead of an extension). It is now compatible with Glidel (versions 2.9 and above). It also allows you to change the command-key equivalents of the stack and arrange menu items. In addition, the "Window" menu no longer disappears when you restart the finder without restarting the computer and you can rename the control panel without any problems.
March 1996
Finder Windows 1.0 is the first public release of Finder Windows.
Other Programs
Here's a few of my other programs:
•KeyCommander: Don't you hate it when applications don't have command-key equivalents for some frequently-used menu items? KeyCommander is a control panel that lets you fix that problem by allowing you to add command-key equivalents to applications. And it does all of this in RAM without directly modifying the applications themselves. It features a snazzy user interface. Available at Info-Mac and other popular Macintosh shareware archives, the latest version (as of the writing of this ReadMe file) is 1.0.
•File Merger: This is a small drag-and-drop utility that merges together the data forks of files such as text files. It is useful if you download binhexed segments off of Usenet, work with large text-based data files, and other things. It is available at Info-Mac and other popular Macintosh shareware archives. The latest version (as of the writing of this ReadMe file) is 1.1.
•Addiction Manager: This is a program that helps people manage their addictions to computer games or other stuff (like the internet). It is available at Info-Mac and other popular Macintosh shareware archives. The latest version (as of the writing of this ReadMe file) is 1.0.1.
•Sokoban 3D: This computer game, based on the classic Sokoban game, puts you into a 3-D puzzle from the first-person point-of-view. It is available at Info-Mac and other popular Macintosh shareware archives. The latest version (as of the writing of this ReadMe file) is 1.0.
"Apple" and "Finder" are trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc.
