SpeedyFinder7 offers many useful improvements to the System 7 Finder™ in one inexpensive package. Speed up copying, no more delay when renaming files, fast emptying of the Trash, auto Alias resolving, opening documents from one application with a different application, and much more. See below for more details. It won the 1993 US MacUser award for Shareware utilities.
One of the safety features of this Control Panel is that the “Finder” file in your System Folder is not modified in any way. This means that if you don’t want to use SpeedyFinder7 then you can remove it without any damage or change to your System setup whatsoever - unlike other products that modify your Finder™ and then more or less force you to reinstall the whole System to remove their changes!
The other feature in favour of this Control Panel is that it’s configurable and some features can be turned on/off at will. Try doing that to an open Finder™! If you make your own changes to the Finder™, the changes are not saved in compressed form: this means your “Finder” file actually grows in size!
New users: please take the time to read this document. Previous users who have received this as an update would be wise to read the version history at the end of the document and then browse the relevant additions.
Remember that when you install new versions, always restart before opening the Control Panel. Internal data structures change between versions.
Note that the “Copying Options…” button is disabled on purpose. You must register to enable this button. It allows you to configure the backgrounder. See below for more information.
SpeedyFinder7 is released as Shareware. This is a system of software distribution that lets you try software for a period of time (4 weeks in SpeedyFinder7’s case) and if you decide to keep on using it then you are obliged to register the software.
Upon registration, I will send to you (preferably via e-mail if you have it) instructions on how to convert your SpeedyFinder7 into a registered version which activates the SpeedyFinder7 backgrounder. The backgrounder performs fast background copying and fast emptying of the trash. It is much faster than the Finder™ and allows you to continue to use the Finder™ while it does its job in the background. COPYright™ v1.0 does a similar thing but SpeedyFinder7 is much faster than COPYright™.
Please include an electronic mailing address for fast delivery of registration instructions. For more details, refer to the section on Shareware Fees below.
Please see the Read Me file in the package for information on how to install the software.
Copying:
• Use more MultiFinder memory this speeds up the Macintosh Finder™ when copying files by using more memory. I recommend the ‘75% available memory’ or ‘50% available memory’ options. If RAM Doubler is installed then using the setting of ‘25% available memory’ will help alleviate problems caused from memory shortages. “MultiFinder” memory is the memory in the largest unused block section in the About This Macintosh window (accessed from the Apple menu).
• Large data transfers reads and writes more data at a time. You can disable this feature for floppy disk, network or external file system transfers. When large data transfers are in progress for devices that are inherently slow (floppy disks and networks), the Finder™ will not respond to clicking on the “Stop” button and all background processing will stop (use the backgrounder instead for a more responsive Finder™).
Miscellaneous:
• Stop zoom rectangles eliminates those (subjectively) annoying zoom rectangles whenever the Finder™ opens a window—they’re nice but they make slow Macintosh models crawl.
• No Rename Delay eliminates the (subjectively) annoying delay before a file’s name can be changed.
• Empty trash in the background. If the Finder™ empties the trash, there is no visual feedback so that emptying with a lot of files causes your Macintosh to stop all other processing. SpeedyFinder7's backgrounder gives you visual feedback, empties the trash faster and lets you continue using the Finder™. This feature is only available by registering SpeedyFinder7.
• speed empty trash will delete the files in the trash faster than the Finder™ otherwise would. This currently ignores the “warn before emptying” option in the Finder™.
• delete locked files will remove the annoying "there are locked files which I cannot delete" dialog and delete them automagically.
• empty Trash on option-drag will automagically delete any files that are not locked when they are dragged into the Trash if you hold down the “option” key (or not, depending on this preference's setting) before dragging. Also, holding down the “control” (with or without "option") will additionally delete any locked files. You may be able to recover the files with applications like Norton Utilities, but you must have their recovery extensions on. Otherwise, recovery is very difficult and cannot be certain to be accurate. Therefore setting this option makes deleting theoretically irreversible and potentially dangerous.
• always keep the trash empty does as it says! When a file is placed in the Trash from ANY disk, it is DELETED IMMEDIATELY. This is an EXTREMELY dangerous feature and you can very easily lose files you want to keep with it. Don’t say you weren’t warned!
Floppy Icons:
• Colour disk icons displays color floppy disk icons instead of the boring old black and white icons.
• Show bad floppies adds a “band-aid” if the floppy disk required re-verifying when it was formatted.
• Show floppy types displays the “type” or “format” of the floppy disk. 400k means single sided disk, 800k means normal-formatted Mac double density disk, 720k means PC-formatted Mac double density disk, HD means Mac high-density disk and PC means MS–DOS formatted disk. High density disks also have the little “HD” and extra hole shown. Note that PC icons will only appear if Mac PC Exchange, AccessPC or DOS Mounter are installed (SpeedyFinder7 cannot read MS-DOS disks - these extensions do this job).
• Strap icon for locked disk always displays whether the floppy disk is locked with a little black dot over the hardware lock hole and by a strap icon over the disk icon (thanks to Ben Kremer for this).
Miscellaneous:
• Show presence in menu bar displays whether SpeedyFinder7 is installed by altering the Finder™’s application icon (top right corner) to that of SpeedyFinder7’s.
• No "Put Away" alert suppresses the alert that appears when unmounting a non-ejectable volume.
• Tolerance changes the size at which the Finder™ displays disk sizes in megabytes or kilobytes in the information part of a window.
Document Linking:
• Note: when Macintosh Easy Open is installed, SpeedyFinder7 will disable Document Linking. The options can be changed but none of your settings will work. When you open the Document Linking Dialog by clicking the “Document Linking…” button from the main control panel, a message will appear between the buttons informing you that Document Linking has been disabled. Note that you will need to restart your Mac to make it active after you turn off Macintosh Easy Open.
• Document linking launches documents whose creating application isn't available with a known application instead of letting the Finder™ put up its “the document ‘doc’ could not be opened because the application that created it could not be found” alert. The Finder™ has two pre-defined links for “TEXT” and “PICT” files to TeachText. With Document linking, you can add your own links, eg. MacWrite files to be opened by either MacWrite II or by ClarisWorks. If you choose a type that is pre-defined in the Finder™ then you will be alerted to this fact—and if you then choose an application to link that document type to, it will replace the pre-defined link in the Finder™. SpeedyFinder7 does not save the links that you add to it in the Finder™, but instead modifies itself. Note that you cannot remove links in the Finder™ by using SpeedyFinder7: you must use a resource editor to do that.
• document linking features are controlled from this dialog (on/off) but document links are added with the “Document Linking” dialog (see below).
• Remember “on-the-fly” links. SpeedyFinder7 is capable of “on the fly” document linking: when the Finder™ comes across a document that it cannot launch, it normally puts up an alert saying that the document can’t be launched. On-the-fly linking puts up a dialog asking you for an application with which to launch the file. Choosing “Cancel” will not launch any application, nor will it display the normal Finder™ alert. SpeedyFinder7 also remembers the folder in which the last application was launched (on the fly) and places you directly there. Setting this option makes SpeedyFinder7 automatically remember links created “on-the-fly”, except if the SpeedyFinder7 Control Panel is opened. This is an unfortunate limitation.
• Drag and drop linking SpeedyFinder7 can make applications which have links be “drag and droppable”. This takes advantage of the Finder™ 7.0 feature without having to manually add known file types to an application and then re-building the desktop to make the Finder “know” that the application supports the specified types. Changing this setting takes effect on quitting the Finder™ or restarting.
Aliases:
• Alias resolving/App finding. SpeedyFinder7 can find the originals of aliases directly, and can do likewise for the ‘Get Info’ window. It automatically resolves aliases to aliases until the absolute original is found. It can also find the creating application of the document.
• To find the original of an alias, select the alias(es) and hold down the “option” key when selecting the “Get Info…” or “Find…” commands. This will make them become “Get Original Info…” and “Find Original” respectively. This will also work for the keyboard shortcuts [International users: the keyboard shortcuts only work if you are using Roman script (selected from the keyboard menu); however, selecting the menu command with your mouse will always work].
• To find the creating application, select the alias(es) and hold down the “control” key when selecting the “Find…” command.
• Automatic alias resolving obviates the need to press the “option” key for “Get Info” but NOT for “Find”.
• Note: the Alias Resolving features may not work if certain extensions are installed, namely the Find File Extension which is part of System 7.5 and Find Pro II, and the Now QuickFiler component of Now Utilities 5.0. To ensure that Alias Resolving works, the SpeedyFinder7 Extension must be installed and active, and it must load before these other extensions (which it will normally do if you do not rename it - it ships with a space character preceding the name and this will force it to load ahead of the other extensions).
• Change Alias Suffix allows you to change the suffix added to aliases when they are created.
• Note: when Macintosh Easy Open is installed, SpeedyFinder7 will disable Document Linking. The options can be changed but none of your settings will work. When you open this dialog, a message will appear between the buttons informing you that Document Linking has been disabled. Note that you will need to restart your Mac to make it active after you turn off Macintosh Easy Open.
• SpeedyFinder7 will remember (separately) the folders in which the last selected document and application link was made with. It will place you in those folders the next time a link a asked for.
• Note: SpeedyFinder7 is not very intelligent about the type of documents that can be linked to applications. For instance, although you can set it, it’s no good opening a Claris Resolve document with TeachText as TeachText simply can’t open them.
• Power users: from the “Add…” dialog, click the “Enter” button to enter the 4-letter document and application creator types if you know them. You can add the type “****” to allow you to drag any file(s) to the application - but be warned that the document may not open if the application cannot understand its format!
Menu:
• Add “Quit” selection adds a “Quit” command to the Finder™’s File menu. This is useful if you need to rebuild your desktop without restarting (as long as the Finder™ is the only open application—otherwise you’ll have to quit all the other applications too). After you quit the Finder™, hold down the “option” and “command” keys to rebuild the desktop.
• The remaining check boxes turn the command key shortcuts on and off.
• New to version 1.5.9 is the addition of “Cmd-=” for Shut Down and “Cmd-`” for Sleep. These are controlled by the “Restart” option. Unfortunately, there is no way to uncouple these additional commands.
• New to version 1.5.9g is the ability to define your own command keys for these options. Warning: There is no check for duplicate command keys so define them with caution!
Balloon Help:
• Hide Balloon Help Menu removes the “Balloon Help” menu from the menu bar. This will give users of 9" screens a bit more menu bar real estate (but not that much really). Anyway, some people don’t like this menu there. This option can be changed back without restarting, but no guarantees are made when you do this. While the method it uses is sound and shouldn’t cause any problems, it’s not a documented method as you’re not supposed to be able to do this. If you hold down “command” before selecting a menu the “Balloon Help” menu will be placed back in the menu bar for the duration of that click in the menu and it will disappear when you release the mouse.
• Tip: you sometimes can avoid unknown crashing by turning off the Hide Balloon Help Menu option to make the Balloon Help Menu visible. Some applications crash with a hidden Balloon Help Menu (see the Known Conflicts section below). Currently, Microsoft Excel 3.0 and 4.0 can be crashed with the Balloon Help Menu hidden (this occurs with the Print Preview command and some charting options).
• Balloon Hot Keys active will cause the display of the Balloon Help associated with the object that the cursor is pointing at when you hold down the hot keys.
• these options are only available to registered users. They control the backgrounder application. See the separate document provided upon registration.
In general, changes take effect immediately, although some require redrawing to be seen. The changes that take effect at restart are:
• stop zoom rectangles
• no rename delay
• use more “MultiFinder” memory (this can be disabled without restart by setting the “Use:” option to 100k (standard).
• SpeedyFinder7’s replacement for the Finder™ application icon
• alias resolving (don’t hold down the “option” key)
These changes take effect either on quitting the Finder™ and re-launching it, or on restart:
• drag and drop document linking (immediate but reliably on re-launch)
• SpeedyFinder7 application icon
• tolerance before Megs are displayed instead of k (immediate but reliably on re-launch)
Although some of these changes can take effect immediately, it would require just a little more coding which I will do if the demand is there. Otherwise, it stays as is!
You should avoid using the force-quit feature (option-Cmd-esc) of System 7 to quit the Finder™. It should be reserved for emergency use only. This is because it can corrupt the Mac's memory. Use SpeedyFinder7 instead: the Mac's memory will then be guaranteed to be intact. Ensure that the “Add Quit Selection” option is checked. If you have a debugger installed then you can also learn how to use your debugger ExitToShell command (MacsBug's 'es' command - but use it wisely!). If you receive advice to force-quit the Finder™, don’t do it unless it’s an emergency. If you must use the force-quit feature then cross your fingers and restart as soon as possible, ie restart immediately or sooner! If not, you may suffer a possibly corrupt System heap.
SpeedyFinder7 is released as is. No guarantee is made about the safety or competence of the software to perform as claimed. No responsibility or liability is taken for any damage, destruction or loss of data caused by using this software.
SpeedyFinder7 is released as shareware. This is a system of software distribution that lets you try software for a period of time (4 weeks in SpeedyFinder7’s case) and if you decide to keep on using it then you are obliged to register the software.
The registration fee is US$25 cash or US$30 cheque/check drawn through a US bank. Canadians note that writing “US” on the check in front of the amount will not suffice. It must be drawn through a US bank (and is therefore in US dollars). Australian residents only can pay Aus$25 by cash or cheque.
Japanese users can register for Yen 2,500. US$ are still preferred but Yen are acceptable.
All other forms of payment including Canadian Postal Money order, travellers cheques, EuroCheques, MasterCard, Visa, etc are not acceptable. Sorry. Underpayments are not acceptable either.
Payment entitles you to register your own personalised copy (and your company if you so wish) and use of the Backgrounder. It is preferable to send me an e-mail address as I can register you very quickly. Note that I can send e-mail to the following services: Internet, AppleLink, CompuServe, America Online, NiftyServe, FidoNet, MCI mail, Genie, Calvacom (France) and to those BBSes that have an internet connection.
Users in North America can also have their registration instructions faxed to them on the condition that the fax number you specify is a dedicated fax number and your fax machine is on 24 hours. I may be able to fax to parts of Europe as well (again, it must be a dedicated fax number).
Site licenses at very competitive rates are also available. Please contact me for more information.
To register, fill out and print the information in the ‘Registration Form…’ dialog in the Control Panel. If you lack a printer, copy down the info onto a piece of paper.
Send your registration and letters to:
Victor Tan
42 Waratah Avenue
Randwick, NSW 2031
Australia
Here’s a “final check list” to check with before you send off your letter:
• don’t forget the Registration Form,
• double check your payment details (please check that any cheques/checks you send are signed),
• ensure your e-mail address is exactly correct and legible,
• be aware that international mail from Europe or the USA takes about 2 weeks to get to Australia (sometimes longer), and just as long to get back.
Please do not send payment as a postal money order. There are two problems with it:
1) it has an associated commission/fee of about Aus$10. You should therefore pay the post office a total of Aus$40 (Aus$10 post office commission + Aus$30 registration fee). If you only pay Aus$30 then I will receive a postal money order for about Aus$20 - much less than what is needed to fully register you. In the end, the postal money order costs you more money.
2) the money order arrives with no name or address. I therefore cannot send you any registration instructions because I do not know to whom nor to where I should send it. You will therefore need to send a separate letter stating your name and money order number.
The best way to pay is to send US dollars (cash) or Yen 2,500 for your convenience.
If you are a member of MuON (Macintosh Users' Group on Network), then contact Tadahiko Hagiwara or Toru Nishioka for details about payment.
If you are on NiftyServe, contact Toru Nishioka (PEE00205).
I welcome feedback (bug reports) and suggestions for enhancements. Send them to the aforementioned address or the following E-mail addresses (which may possibly but not likely change):
InterNet: victort@extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU
AppleLink: victort@extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU@INTERNET#
CompuServe: >INTERNET:victort@extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU
America Online: victort@extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU
Obsolete addresses are AUST0116@AppleLink.Apple.com and jasonh@extro.ucc.su.oz.au. Please DO NOT send mail to these addresses as it will not be answered.
First, please check the list below of known conflicts and also the Version History document for any known or fixed conflicts. Also, be sure you have the latest version before reporting an already fixed bug.
When reporting a bug, please state your SpeedyFinder7 version number, Macintosh Model, System software version, memory manager mode, active system extensions, what the problem is (take a photo if that helps), when the problem occurs and if the problem can be consistently reproduced (and in what circumstances). If you don’t understand any of the above, please find someone who can tell me those details. A MacsBug log is invaluable. If you cannot supply one then please find somebody who can generate one and send it to me. This is the fastest way to get a bug fixed.
Attention bug reporters: if there’s a bug you’ve reported that hasn’t been fixed in a new release, hassle me to let me know it still exists. I’ll keep looking into bugs, I just need reminding—I’m a scatter brain. Also, bugs reports have come from many people. I acknowledge them but apologise for not being able to individually name who reported what. There simply isn’t enough room!
SpeedyFinder7 is currently written with THINK Pascal 4.0.2 and MPW Assembler (about 75% to 25% of each respectively) running System 7 Pro with 32-Bit Addressing on. It has been tested on Macintoshes running System 7.0 (tuned) to System 7.5.
Some of these conflicts may not appear. It depends on your settings in SpeedyFinder7 as to whether or not you will expierence a problem with the software listed below.
• NoBalloonMenu: removing the “Balloon Help Menu” from the menu bar by another extension called “NoBalloonMenu” is not done correctly. It looks for the second last menu and moves its “left” position to 32700. This works fine under standard System 7.0. If you’re using different keyboard layouts then you’ll lose your “Keyboard Menu”. What’s worse is that it actually crashed under System 7.1. If you use both SpeedyFinder7 and NoBalloonMenu then you’ll lose the Finder™’s “Special” menu. Have fun trying to restart! :-)
• Now Compress will bring up the Inspector if “opt-cmd-I” is pressed instead of SpeedyFinder7’s Get Original Info. Install the SpeedyFinder7 Extension turn make this feature work.
• Microsoft Excel v3.0 and v4.0 will crash if the Balloon Help Menu is hidden. Unfortunately, Microsoft does not write standard code according to Apple’s guidelines (I heard a rumour that there is code in System 7.0 just so that Microsoft products will work). Currently, there is no fix for this. The work around is to disable the “hide balloon help menu” feature in the Menu Options dialog.
• WordPerfect 3.0 apparently crashes when the Balloon Help Menu is hidden on the Israeli system. Not confirmed but probably true.
• Freehand 4.0 apparently crashes when the Balloon Help Menu is hidden. Not confirmed but probably true.
• AutoDoubler Internal Compressor: Warning: Do NOT use the AutoDoubler Internal Compressor on registered versions of SpeedyFinder7. There remains an incompatibility between the two. (SpeedyFinder7 is resource compressed anyway, so the AIC will not be able to compress it much more).
• All other incompatibilities with AutoDoubler have been fixed and no longer apply.
• FileTyper: version 4.1 and earlier will conflict with SpeedyFinder7. Newer versions (that install a gestalt selector to inform programs that it is installed) are compatible and won’t conflict.
• SAM 3.0 and 3.5 have been reported to cause slow startups when used with SpeedyFinder7. The work-around is to change the order of extension loading so that SpeedyFinder7 loads before SAM.
• Snitch is an extension that allows you to modify extended information of files. It currently conflicts with SpeedyFinder7. There is no workaround that I am aware of.
• System 7.5’s Find File and Find Pro II come in two parts: an extension and an application. The extension takes control of the Finder’s “Find” menu command in the File menu. To allow SpeedyFinder7’s Alias Resolving features to work, make sure that the SpeedyFinder7 Extension loads before the Find File Extension (which it will normally do).
• Now QuickFiler Find suffers the same problem and the Find File in System 7.5. The work around here is for the SpeedyFinder7 Extension to load before the Now QuickFiler Extension.
• Now QuickFiler. It has been reported that the backgrounder does not copy files correctly when they are Now-Compressed and you turn on the “keep files compressed when copied” option in Now QuickFiler. This is currently under investigation. The work around is to either turn off this option or to let the Finder do the copying.
• EasySync 1.0.1 which is a component of Connectrix PowerBook Utilities and Connectrix Desktop Utilities has a conflict causing hanging on startup. It is being investigated.
• FinderXtender will not work when the Help Menu is hidden. Turn this feature off and it will work properly.
• FWB’s Hard Disk Toolkit, versions 1.3.0 and earlier, have problems with transferring large amounts of data in a single pass. This may cause data loss if you set SpeedyFinder7 to use large amounts of memory to transfer data (in the order of 32MB or greater). The recommended solution is to upgrade to v1.5.0 or later of the HDT software. Contact FWB for upgrade details or see the electronic periodical TidBITS, issue #247.
• Micronet’s Raven 8100 (striped) disk array has been reported to cause hanging when using the large data transfers option. Turning this option off makes the problem go away.
• CompuServe Mail for PowerTalk conflicts, causing a crash when you hit OK in the configuration dialogs. No work around known. I recommend not using the two together. This is under investigation.
• when the icon of a floppy disk in the Finder™’s Info window is selected and either copied or cut, the type of the disk is not included and neither is the color icon. This is due to the way my Control Panel works. It’s not fixable without a great deal of effort on my part. If you must copy the icons then open the Control Panel with ResEdit and copy from the “icl8”, “icl4”, “ICN#” and “ICON” resources whatever you want. You will also discover how this Control Panel does its magic!
• when you use the “Find Original” feature, sometimes the Finder™ selections may be altered or not appear as they seem. This is due to the way the Finder™ handles its icons. I do not know the entire Finder™ icon object structure—nor do I want to. I have attempted to make it more cosmetically acceptable but sometimes it just plain gets it wrong. There is no lack of functionality or danger. It is just cosmetically dirty.
• PowerTalk mail items that are dragged to the Trash are not emptied in any way by SpeedyFinder7 - foreground or background emptier. These files are handled internally by the Finder. You will need to use “control”-Empty Trash to delete these files.
Features are always being suggested or thought of by me. If you’ve added a suggestion that doesn’t appear in a new release then hassle me again.
Bulletin Board Services / Shareware CD–ROMs
This package may be distributed on BBSes or CD–ROMs as is (StuffIt archive format only). It must include all parts of the package and neither Control Panel nor documents may be modified in any way. Contact me for the latest version. Please also make a special note that purchasers are not automatically registered when they buy CD-ROMs and need to register their software. If you have previously been refused permission to distribute the package then this is hereby withdrawn.
This package may be freely distributed as long as it remains unaltered.
Redistribution
Unregistered and unmodified versions of SpeedyFinder7 may be freely distributed. You must distribute it in its entirety. You may not distribute modified, customised or registered versions of the software or any documentation.
SpeedyFinder7 should now work with localised Macintosh Systems. In fact, it is possible to totally localise the Control Panel as well as its additions to the Finder™. However, you are not permitted to modify this Control Panel without my permission. Should you wish to make a localised version, contact me and we’ll see what we can do. Do not translate this Control Panel without my permission.
French menu grammer correction in 1.5.9e courtesy of Thomas-Xavier Martin.
German menus courtesy of several German users.
Japanese menus courtesy of Toru Nishioka.
Norwegian, Danish, and Swedish menus courtesy of Bård Engen.
French-Canadian, French-Swiss and German-Swiss menus have been added to v1.5.9h.
I pride myself on attention to detail. No problem is too small to bring up. If you think this Control Panel doesn’t conform in any way to expected Macintosh User Interface guidelines or your liking then let me know. I’ll see what I can do to improve it. If you have any suggestions for further enhancements let me know by mail or E-mail.
