In the time-honoured tradition of using the previous manual as kindling for the next manual, we present...

The    Book of Words

Manual Updated (03 December 2000) Work In Progress -- latest versions always available at www.finderpop.com
If you think I've forgotten anything, mail me!

Contents

Introduction - what is this FinderPop thingy, anyway?

Installation and uninstallation

The Basics and A Quick Look at what FinderPop can do for you

The FinderPop Control Panel

     The Appearance, Options, AutoPopup, Behaviour, Keys, Items, and About subpanels.

Some FinderPop Enhancements

     Set File Creator/Type and File Open/Save Dialog enhancements.

FinderPoplets (or FinderPop Extensions)

Bugs & Troubleshooting

Things you probably didn't know about FinderPop and more you didn't want to know

FAQ me! Frequently Asked Questions (and some of their answers)

Colophon - legal niceties and contact info

What is FinderPop?

Hmmm. Good question. FinderPop is a control panel that extends Mac OS 8 or 9's contextual menus using a FinderPop Items Folder, much as the Apple Menu Items folder does for the Apple menu. Some people think of it as a launcher that takes up zero screen real estate, merely a click on any blank area of menubar away. Others see it as a handy filesystem browser, allowing quick and easy access to their files in the Finder, as well as enhancing navigation in the Standard File and Navigation Services dialogs, as well as in "Path Popups." Still others see it merely as a means to get a Windows menu in the Finder by option-clicking a blank area of menubar, or an Applications menu by command-clicking a blank menubar area. A few foolhardy souls claim that the FinderPoplets and the Set File Type mechanism are worth a mention. A few more think that control-free popup also works fairly well.

It's not quite a kitchen sink, but it's getting close. (In fact, certain unkind ex-users have suggested that it's like another -- less salubrious -- piece of household plumbing, which modesty forbids me to name.) Oh, did we mention that it does a nicer Hierarchical Apple Menu than Apple Menu Options?

Since the manual that ships with FinderPop is laughably out-of-date and filled with confusing though charming irrelevancies, we decided to rewrite it with lavish illustrations and in plain words of no more than three or four syllables. We hope you like it.
It is with a wry smile that I look upon the preceding paragraph (written over a year ago, by the way.) The road to hell really is paved with good intentions! But judge for yourselves...

FinderPop Installation

FinderPop requires a PowerMac running MacOS 8.x or MacOS 9.x. (Although, like most control panels, it's not going to work on MacOS X). FinderPop must load after the Contextual Menu Extension, which it should do on every MacOS 8 or 9 system, unless you've been naughty.

• Place FinderPop into the Control Panels folder
• Place the FinderPop Extensions folder into the System Folder
• Reboot. Open the FinderPop control panel. Click on the Show FinderPop Items folder button in the FinderPop Items subpanel. Add your favourite aliases to that folder (and ideally you should also place an alias of the FinderPop Extensions folder you copied to your System Folder earlier.) Now, every time you control-click, you get a few more options...

One of these days I'll get around to writing an installer. Then localisation becomes fun.

Note: If you use the Apple Menu Options control panel (which I don't recommend), FinderPop should also load after that; only people with localised Systems, e.g., French, where Apple Menu Options is known as Options Menu Pomme, need worry about that: renaming it to AOptions Menu Pomme, for example.

If FinderPop installs correctly, you should see its icon during the "icon parade" at startup. If the icon is displayed with a red X through it, FinderPop wasn't installed and attempts to use the control panel thereafter will tell you this. Check to make sure that the above conditions are satisfied.

For technical reasons too complex to go into here, there will never be a 68K version of FinderPop. (This is not -- as one disgruntled user memorably wrote me -- due to "my lazy ass." Well, not entirely.)

After installation, when you open the FinderPop control panel for the first time, it will [but not, sadly, just yet :] offer to set up some defaults for you. Unless you're a seasoned pro, you should probably accept. You can change them at any time.

FinderPop Uninstallation

Remove FinderPop from the Control Panels folder (and reboot.)

If you're having problems, see the Known Bugs section later in this document.

The Basics

The key to using FinderPop is the FinderPop Items Folder. Just as the Apple menu displays the contents of the Apple Menu Items folder, FinderPop displays the contents of its own special folder, the FinderPop Items Folder. Again, like the Apple menu, you can extend the FinderPop menu by adding items (documents, applications, compiled AppleScripts, folders, or aliases to anything) to the FinderPop Items Folder. The big difference between the FinderPop menu and the Apple menu is that by control-clicking an icon in the Finder and selecting a FinderPop item from the ensuing contextual menu, you achieve the same effect as if you'd dropped the Finder icon on the item you chose from the FinderPop menu! So, by having appropriate aliases in your FinderPop items folder, you can quickly and easily open any Finder icon using a particular application, or move it to another folder, or copy it, or make an alias of it...

Simply put, FinderPop will try to open whatever it is you select from any of its menu. If there is a Finder selection and you've chosen an application from the FinderPop menu, FP will ask the app you chose to open the 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.

Here's a look at my FinderPop Items Folder, along with the FinderPop menu I got by command-clicking in that folder:

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, as you can see.

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. Hence the folder named "tz)-***" corresponds to a dividing line in the popup menu positioned alphabetically between the "turly's sources archive.sit" and the folder named "Utilz".

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.

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!

A Quick Look at What FinderPop Can Do For You

Quite a bit...

The following sections show the FP control panel and discuss some other FinderPop enhancements.

A Quick Tour of the FinderPop Control Panel

On opening the FinderPop control panel, you are presented with a main On/Off switch and a series of tabs. The master On/Off switch turns FinderPop on or off, as you would expect. Clicking on the FinderPop logo takes you to the About Panel.
The contents of the rest of FinderPop's window depend on which tab you've selected. We'll go from left to right...

The Appearance subpanel controls the look and feel of FP menus.

• 1 and 2 control the font and size used for FinderPop's contextual menu. They default to "System Font" and "System Font Size".
• Checkbox 3, if set, gets FP to use this font for any submenus created by CM plugins. Note that FP doesn't change the font/size of submenus created by the app which is calling _ContextualMenuSelect, since they already exist by the time FP gets a look in (and since the Finder's Label menu looks funny in 9-pt. Geneva.)
• Checkbox 5 determines whether the items in your FinderPop Items Folder appear inlined into the contextual menu, or whether they should appear in a submenu (called, appropriately enough, FinderPop.)
• Menu 6 allows a choice of how detailed you want the icons in FinderPop menus to be. The choice ranges from None, which means no icons and which therefore means very compact menus and highest speeeeeed, to Custom Icons, which could mean that FinderPop has to open a file to extract and display its custom icon (which can be time-consuming on ancient machines.)
• Menu 7 allows you to customise how FinderPop menus will be sorted. This applies to all FinderPop submenus (including the Apple menu, if FinderPop is doing that.) By Name, By Mod. Date and By Label sort as their names suggest. Folders,Apps,Others sorts so that folders (which includes disks!) appear at the top of the menu, followed by apps, followed by all other files. I will eventually get around to adding a Sort By Finder View item, which sorts according to whatever 'View By...' has been selected in the Finder.
  (If you wish, you can override the default setting for a particular folder by creating a file or folder inside your folder called one of:
       '    Sort by Name'
     '    Sort by Date'
     '    Sort by Label'
     '    Sort Folders &Apps'
     '    Sort Apps &Folders'
which will set the sorting for that folder (and won't show up itself.) This file/folder must be the FIRST file/folder alphabetically speaking in the directory, hence the 4 spaces at the start of the name. Klunky, but it works :-) I routinely have a folder called '    Sort Folders & Apps' inside my Apple Menu Items folder. As I say, I will eventually get around to adding the option to sort via whatever "Icon View" method you've used in the Finder. Note that the FinderPop Items Folder sort order always defaults to 'Sort By Name' (unless you override it as described here.)
• Menus 8 and 9 allow you to customise how aliases and folders will be displayed in FinderPop submenus.
• Checkbox 10 determines whether a file/folder's label color is used as the color of its name when drawn in a FinderPop menu. (The item's icon, if any, will always be colorized to the item's label color.)

The Options subpanel allows you to choose some additional items you might like in your contextual menu.

• Checkboxes 1 and 2 do as their titles suggest. Background-only processes (aka faceless background apps) will appear with 'dimmed' icons.
• Item 3 will cause a Contents submenu to be added if you control-click a folder.
• Items 4, 5, and 6 are hardly rocket-science, either.
• Checkbox 7, if set, will cause an additional item to appear depending on whether the files you've control-clicked have a different Internet Config "owner" that their current owner (phew!). For example, say you control-click on a CodeWarrior .C file, but your Internet Config settings has MPW as the default app for C source files, then you'll get an extra menu item reading "Open with MPW Shell". If you select multiple files, then FinderPop will open all of them in their assigned IC apps. (This was not easy to figure out.) Despite my laboured attempt at explaining it here, you'll get used to this feature very quickly.
• Checkbox 8, if set, will cause FinderPop to check whether the item you've clicked on originally came from elsewhere, and will allow you to put it back to whereever it came from. Kind of like the Finder's Put Away command, except that it's active everywhere, not just on the Desktop. So be careful!
• Item 9 will add an Empty Trash Now! command if FinderPop determines that there the Trash needs emptying (i.e., that there are items in it.)
  Warning: FinderPop will NOT prompt you before asking the Finder to empty the Trash, and the Finder ignores the "Warn before Emptying" setting when under AppleScript control (as it is with FinderPop.)
  Warning 2: this might slow you down a small bit if you have lots of disks, as FP walks through each disk looking for items in the trash.
• Checkbox 10 allows you to select whether you get a Last: item, which allows you easy access to the last item you selected from any FinderPop contextual menu. This is very handy indeed; I find myself using it all the time.

The AutoPopup subpanel controls, errr, control-free popup of contextual menus.
Ya just click and hold, or, as they say, "Click Different!"

• Item 1, the main checkbox, is the master on/off switch for control-free popup.
• Checkbox 2 controls whether you get a Contents menu by clicking and holding on a folder (or a disk, or a StuffIt archive.) You can mouse around the contents and do all the usual FinderPop tricks. This is a handy way to quickly drill down into a hierarchy to retrieve a deeper item without the hassle of opening and closing multiple Finder windows.
• Checkbox 3, if set, will allow control-free popup in all apps, in addition to the Finder (where control-free popup is always allowed.) Generally, control-free popup works fine for most apps (e.g., Claris Emailer), but in some apps, possibly games or drawing programs, it may cause minor display glitches. You can turn control-free popup off for all non-Finder apps here, or you can go to the apps' Help menu and select the Turn Off FinderPop Control-Free CM Popup in ... item. (Which FinderPop adds, by the way.)
• Item 4 is a simple slider which controls how long you have to hold down the mouse button before control-free popup is invoked.

The Behaviour subpanel allows you to alter aspects of FinderPop's behaviour.

• Item 1, if checked, brings up a dialog box like the following anytime you try to do a non-explicit move or copy of the Finder selection. By way of a contrived example, suppose you control-clicked the FinderPop control panel in its original folder, and from the resulting contextual menu, you chose the Control Panels folder (supposing you have an alias to the Control Panels folder in your FinderPop Items Folder.) The following dialog will appear:

  

  ...and you get to choose which action you want to take.

  Note: As explained in the Modifier Keys section below, you can make a move or copy explicit by pressing various modifier keys as you make your menu selection.

• Checkbox 2 tries to position the popup menu so that the mouse is next to the menu item most likely to be picked.
  You have no idea how nasty the positioning stuff was to write.
• Item 3 turns on the "zero-real-estate launcher". Click in an unused bit of the menubar and you should get a FinderPop menu. If it doesn't work correctly, try turning on item 4, which uses a different algorithm to determine whether a bit of menubar is, in fact, unused.
• Turn off checkbox 5 if you prefer 'normal' contextual menus in non-Finder apps.
  Item 6 should be turned on unless you want huge contextual menus in other apps, too; in general, you shouldn't inline FP items in other apps unless you can control-click files and folders inside the other apps. I know of very few!
• Item 7 allows you to command-click (or click-and-hold) a folder or disk inside a File "Open/Save" dialog to get a Contents menu of that folder, from which you can select appropriately. See the FinderPop Enhancements section below, but basically, you get this kind of thing:

  

  Kewl! Item 8, by the way, will be going away real soon now.
• Item 9 allows you to command-control-click an archive (or click-and-hold if you have control-free popup enabled) to "see" into StuffIt archives. All the usual FinderPop Modifier keys (q.v.) apply. If you select an item in an archive, FinderPop will extract it and launch it. If you don't want to launch it, press Command when you're selecting the item to be expanded (Command means Reveal In Finder or Show; see the Modifier Keys section below.) Note that adding items to archives requires that you have the StuffIt Engine installed.
• Item 10 is the StuffIt archive version of item 1; basically, you'll get a dialog asking you if you're sure you want to add whatever Finder items are selected to the archive you chose from FinderPop.
• Checkbox 11, if checked, causes FinderPop to examine all menus that are being popped up to see if it could possibly be a Path Popup -- y'know the popup menus you get when you command-click in the title of a Finder window. If it is a Path Popup, FinderPop will add submenus to each of the path elements, allowing you to navigate and select from as per usual. As 1 PICT == 4KB, here's the before:

  

  ...and here's the after:

  

• Checkbox 12 will cause FP features to be added to Path Popups only if the Command key is down (as it would be in the Finder if you command-clicked in a Finder window's title.)
• Checkbox 13 allows FinderPop to "take over" the Apple Menu. I think it's a better choice than Apple Menu Options; it may not be as good as BeHierarchic, but hey, it's cheaper!
  All the usual FinderPop tricks now apply to the Apple Menu and its submenus (Get Info, Show/Reveal In Finder, Grab & Drag, etc. etc.)
  Note that you should have only one Apple-menu enhancer installed in your System. If you use BeHierarchic or Action Menus (née Now Menus) -- or any other extension that diddles with the Apple Menu -- you should turn this checkbox off!
  (Note that FinderPop is compatible with Apple Menu Options, but that's because FP turns off AMO's "Use Submenus" option.)

The Keys subpanel controls FinderPop's Modifier Key settings.

By pressing various modifier keys (Control, Command, Option and Shift) while traversing FinderPop menus, you can modify FinderPop's actions. The "table" 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.

Note that this subpanel only allows you to choose the 'normal' keys for this stuff; the modifiers are hardcoded, sorry.

• Command (or 'R') -- Reveal In Finder or Show -- cursor looks like :
  Shows the chosen menu item (process or FinderPop item) in the Finder.
• Command-Option (or 'I') -- Get Info --
  Displays a balloon help item for the currently selected item in the FinderPop menu which looks like the following:



Different balloon help text appears depending on whether the mouse is currently over a directory, an app, a currently 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.

If you let go of the mouse button when the cursor is in this state, FinderPop will tell the Finder to Get Info on the chosen menu item. If the chosen item is an alias to something, holding down the Shift key will Get Info or Show the alias, not the original item.

• Control-Command-Option-Shift (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) -- 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 quit background-only apps or even the Finder if you want to squeeze every last drop of memory. (Hint: to restart the Finder without quitting all other apps, simply choose it from a FinderPop menu. Note that it is possible, but not recommended, to choose a different Finder than the one you were running before!)
• 'G' -- Grab & Drag --
  The piece de resistance -- allows you to 'pick up' and drag around whatever it was you selected from the FinderPop menu. Just as if you'd picked it up in the Finder.
  Pressing Option while FinderPop's cursor is in 'grab' mode gives you a Happy Drag, where as soon as you select an item from the menu to begin dragging, FinderPop immediately switches to the Finder and does a 'Hide Others' so you have a completely uncluttered view of the Finder.
• ENTER -- Popup Again --
  Pops up a new contextual menu on whatever it was you selected from the FinderPop menu. Just as if you'd control-clicked it in the Finder.
  

If there is a Finder selection, you can change the behaviour of FinderPop when your mouse pointer moves over a menu item representing a folder while traversing a FinderPop related menu; sometimes the cursor changes automatically like the Finder's.

• (Command, or no modifier) -- Move --
  This is FinderPop's default behaviour; it means that the Finder selection will be moved to the folder chosen from the FinderPop submenu. This can be done only when the Finder selection and the chosen folder are on the same volume (disk.)
• Option -- Copy --
  This will copy the Finder selection to the chosen folder. This cursor will automatically appear if the chosen folder's volume and the Finder selection's volume are different. Just like the Finder.
• Command-Option -- Alias --
  This will create an alias of the Finder selection in the chosen folder. Again, just like the Finder.

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

The FinderPop Items subpanel, rather embarrassingly, doesn't do a whole lot.

• One of these days, I might even get around to writing a half-decent user interface for the FinderPop Items Folder. In the meantime, button 1 is a quick way to get at the FinderPop Items Folder. How embarrassing! :-/

The About subpanel, home of some links and amusing aphorisms.

• Clicking on Item 3 (the Heroes of the FinderPop Revolution Eternal List) or the beery aphorism box below it will display the next item in the list. You can shift-click to go backwards.

Well, there's the obvious enhancement of just clicking on a Finder item and seeing the FinderPop-enhanced contextual menu pop up without you having to press control. Additionally, you can command-control click on a folder, a StuffIt archive or a blank part of a Finder window and you'll get a Contents menu of whatever it was you clicked on. Choosing an item from a Contents menu does what you'd expect. As long as you expect what I expect, that is. :-)

Set File Creator/Type

In conjunction with a folder called Set File Types (normally this lives in the FinderPop Extensions folder inside the System Folder), FinderPop offers a fairly nifty type/creator-setting utility. This is where a really nifty animated GIF would look nice, but here's the sequence:

Step 1. Select the files whose type and creator you wish to change. In the above example, it's a bunch of UNIX text files having SimpleText as their creator. This is seriously inimical to gnarly text editing of the kind that Unix dweebs love so well, so we'll change 'em to CodeWarrior TEXT files.

Step 2. Control-click one of the files you've selected. From the ensuing contextual menu, look for the Set File Type submenu and choose the CodeWarrior Text item from it. Admire the white bits in my GIF while you're here.

Step 3. Voila!

You can add your own files to the Set File Types folder; FinderPop simply transfers the type and creator from the file you selected in the Set File Types folder to whatever files were in the Finder selection.
Holding down the Option key when setting a filetype now sets the filetype for the selected files and opens them in the app whose type you've just chosen.

File Open/Save Dialog Enhancements

You can just control-click (or click-and-hold if you have control-free popup enabled) a folder in a standard file Open or Save dialog and you'll get a popup menu listing the contents of that folder. From which you can choose whatever it is you want to be opened.

Kewl, huh? (I'm learning Californian by watching Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure.)

Selecting the rs6000.md file will open that file -- exactly as if you had navigated down through the gcc and FIXES folders and double-clicked it. Selecting a folder will cause the dialog to "hop" to that location. Additionally, selecting something from a FinderPop menu (which you can invoke by clicking in an unused portion of the menubar) will either open your selection, if it can be opened, or will cause the dialog to "hop" to the location of whatever it is you've selected. Even more additionally, option-clicking an unused spot on the menubar while a file open/save dialog is frontmost will show a menu of the Finder Windows instead of the app's windows, allowing you to select something from possibly obscured Finder windows.

Oh yeah, the path popups enhancements work in these dialogs too.

FinderPoplets

• SwitchToFinder/HideOthers, Hide Current Application, and Hide Other Applications do exactly what it says on the tin.
• Quit All Applications sends a quit AppleEvent to all apps other than the Finder. If you hold down Shift while this is being invoked, then background-only apps are also quit.
  Note that some apps won't quit unless you bring them to the front.
• Restart and Sleep do as you'd expect.
• That folder called sa)Files-*** is a menu dividing line between the two types of FinderPoplet.
• The Set File Type folder has been described above.
  Don't move it out of the FinderPop Extensions folder!
• Lock/Unlock toggles the LOCK state of every file in the Finder selection. I.e., if a file is currently unlocked, this will lock it, and vice-versa. This is actually an AppleScript program.
• Set Mod Date To Now (aka Touch) sets the modification date of the selected files/folders to "now". This can be useful if you want to "force" something to be backed up (you are backing up, aren't you?)
• Control-click a document in the Finder. Choose Reveal Creator Application from the FinderPop submenu. The window containing the document's creator (an application) is shown. Amazin'!
• Zap Data Forks and Zap Resource Forks are two gnarly but dangerous utilites to "empty" files. If you don't know why you'd need this, I ain't gonna tell ya!
• Get Pathname sets the clipboard to the full pathname(s) of all selected files/folders.

Known Bugs & Features -- not to mention Crashers :-/

• I think FinderPop is pretty stable at this stage. Before blaming FinderPop for crashes, slowdowns, weirdnesses, etc., you might like to read this section to see if your problem is described and solved here.
• If you use StuffCM and FinderPop's StuffIt features, you're out of luck. StuffCM will blithely keep open the StuffIt Engine: FinderPop, in order to prevent a crash, will disable its own StuffIt archive features which require the StuffIt Engine.
  This also applies with StuffIt Deluxe 6's True Finder Integration. I begin to wonder why I'm paying a licence fee to call the StuffIt Engine when Aladdin's own code prevents me from doing so :-/
• You should have only one Apple-menu enhancer installed in your System. If you use BeHierarchic or Action Menus (née Now Menus), you should turn off FinderPop's Hierarchical Apple Menu enhancement (in FP's Behaviour subpanel.) Note that you can continue to use Apple Menu Options as FinderPop turns it off (well, the SubMenu portion of it, anyway.)
• One of the most frequent causes of slowdown when using contextual menus are the Contextual Menu Plugins which live in the Contextual Menu Items folder in your System Folder. Each of these gets to look at whatever it is you've selected (for example, many CM plugins out there will open and read every file in the Finder selection to see if they should act on some of the files. If you have many such plugins, it's no wonder your CM popup is slow!)
  NB: Quite a few CM Plugins out there are not very robust and will eventually crash.
• You can't Grab and Drag an item from a StuffIt archive. I doubt if I'll ever add code for this.
• FinderPop maintains two caches: one for menus it has built up, and one for icons. If you ever need to flush these caches, simply open the control panel, turn FinderPop off and then back on again immediately. The next time you Control-click, all FinderPop's menus and icons will be rebuilt, as they are needed.
• FinderPop checks that its menu hierarchy caches are up-to-date by looking at the modification date of the folder being. Unfortunately, renaming an item in (for example) the FinderPop Items Folder doesn't affect the folder's modification date; you can force the enclosing folder's mod date to change by creating a new folder and then immediately deleting it (Command-N, Command-Delete.)
• The Mac Menu Manager will only display a maximum of 5 hierarchical menus at one time, so not all levels of a deep hierarchy can be displayed.
• QuicKeys 3.5.2 and FinderPop may not be 100% compatible. Jonathan Jacobs has narrowed this down to the QuicKeys Extension called Pop-up Menu. Removing this will fix the problem (but also means that any QK macros which use it will no longer work.)
• If you have a folder on your desktop whose name is the same as one of your mounted disks, control-clicking on it results in a "Contents" submenu which refers to the disk, not the folder you clicked on. This is a system software bug; in fact, if you have identically-named items on the desktop, the Finder gets confused when you control-click on one of them and can pass the wrong item to _ContextualMenuSelect. I've filed a bug report at Apple. In 1997. So don't hold your breath :-)
• Claris Emailer and the FinderPop Windows submenu: if you have the Claris Emailer Toolbar active, selecting a window from FinderPop's Windows submenu can sometimes cause Emailer to get temporarily confused. Click on the toolbar to re-enlighten Emailer.
• Corrupt Preferences. Sometimes, despite my best efforts, this happens. (It's very rare, I have never had it happen to me.) The thing to do in that case is to move the 'FinderPop Preferences' file from your Preferences folder to the Trash, and immediately reboot without invoking FinderPop in any way, as doing so could re-create the prefs file from a possibly-dodgy in-memory copy. Upon reboot, FP will create a default (but presumably working!) Prefs file.
• 27-October-98: Note that some people have problems when DataViz's MacLinkPlus CM plugin is installed. With or without FinderPop, but FinderPop may exacerbate it.

Things you probably didn't know about FinderPop

• Files in the Set File Type folder can be zero length; I normally use the Zap Data Forks and Zap Resource Forks FinderPoplets on files I place in there (aliases to other files are another matter, of course -- they need a resource fork to store the alias! :)
  Additionally, if the filetype or creator code is '????', then it won't be transferred to the Finder selection.
  
• For the Set File Type feature to work properly, the Set File Type folder should live inside the FinderPop Extensions folder, which should live inside your System Folder. If you start moving or renaming these, things will not work as advertised.
  
• You abort a drag you started in the same way as you would any other drag -- just drag to the menubar and let go...
  
• Clicking on the Heroes of the FinderPop Revolution Eternal List in FP's About Box advances on to the next entry. Shift clicking goes back one. Similarly for the beery aphorisms (more welcome!)
  
• The Turn Off FinderPop Control-Free CM Popup in ... item in various applications' Help menu allows you to turn control-free popup on or off for that app. Generally, control-free popup works fine for most apps (e.g., Claris Emailer), but in some apps, possibly games or drawing programs, it may cause minor display glitches. Turning it on or off on a per-application basis is handier than disabling it for all non-Finder apps (see the AutoPopup subpanel of the FinderPop control panel.)
  
• FYI, if anyone wants an "El Cheapo" mechanism whereby pressing SHIFT-DELETE generates a forward-delete sequence (very handy for my Powerbook), press Command and Option while clicking on the FinderPop logo in the control panel, and choose the appropriate option from the resulting "secret" dialog. I am not going to explain the other options on that dialog, since some of them will be going away real soon now. Use this 'feature' at your own risk: it can take some getting used to, but you can turn it off if you run into problems.
  
• Application-specific items: items ending in 'CRTR!!!!', where 'CRTR' is the 4-char code for the app, will only appear in FP menus when that app is frontmost. I use this to set up aliases to various source files for MPW, for example -- clicking in the menubar while MPW is frontmost brings up a FinderPop menu which lists these items, but they don't clutter up the FinderPop menus when I'm not using MPW. (For example, I have '00)Compiler Source MPS !!!!' in my FP Items folder -- the '00)' moves the item to the top of the menu and 'MPS ' is the creator code for MPW Shell.)
  
• Menubar-specific items: items ending in 'mbar!!!!' or 'MBAR!!!!' will only appear in FinderPop menus when you have clicked in an unused portion of the menubar. For example, I have an item called 'Claris Emailer mbar!!!!' in my FinderPop Items Folder, which means that Emailer doesn't clutter up my FP menu if I control-click a file. Thanks to Kageo Kageyama for the 'mbar' suggestion!
  I've extended it somewhat so items ending in 'fsel!!!!' or 'FSEL!!!!' will only appear in FinderPop menus if a Finder item (i.e., one or more files or folders) is selected when you control-click. This means you can have something like 'StuffIt Expander fsel!!!!' and that item will appear in FP menus only if you control-click a file or folder in the Finder.
• Alex Speller wrote with the following tip (which was news to me!):
  ...I have discovered a trick for FinderPop. If you use FP for Hierachical Apple menu, you can use it to have quick access to a secret folder. Simply create your apple menu using at least one folder as a divider [i.e., one whose name ends in "-***", see above]. Then click on that divider in the apple menu and the folder opens. I find it useful for quick access to hidden files...
• FinderPop can help you find lurrrve! We now have two recorded instances of this, neither of them, alas, involving me. One of 'em was some lucky chap who happened to be reading all the beery aphorisms in FinderPop when the object of his affections dropped by, and, emboldened by this virtual supply of Dutch courage, asked her out for a beer. She accepted; the rest, as they say, is history. The second, more recent, incident was a case of 'Mac user meets v. cute other Mac user and both turn out to be big FinderPop fans.' Hey, it breaks the ice, I suppose. Must try it meself sometime :-)
• Here are some items on the web which use FinderPop in weird and wonderful ways. Got any more? Mail me!
  • MailURL, by Sander Tekelenburg, "offers a quick and easy way to mail a friend about the page you're currently viewing in your web browser."

FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions -- and some of their answers

Will there be an OS X version of FinderPop?

• FinderPop, like most of today's INITs and control panels, will never run in its current form on OS X. I am planning something with similar basic functionality, but it will be rather difficult to achieve the level of integration of the OS 9 version.
  Look on the bright side -- because OS X doesn't allow nasty third-party extensions to the OS or the user experience, it will be very stable. All the power and stability of UNIX! All the usability of a VT100! :-)

Are you serious about not being able to drive? What kind of moron are you?

• Yes; a procrastinating moron. Managing to survive into your 30s without learning to drive is unusual even for a Corkman :) I always said I'd learn to drive when I could afford a Lamborghini. Sadly, that day is no nearer. But hey, I'm a good walker, and it means I can be the designated drinker in any mobile party!

Do you read and reply to all your email?

• I read all my email, and if it warrants a reply, I will try to reply. But if I'm anywhere near as busy as I've been over the last couple of months, there isn't really a whole lot I can do -- I'm afraid that while, to paraphrase Yeats, things might not exactly be falling apart, things are certainly likely to fall between the cracks. To continue this Yeatsian quiptation, my centre is holding up all too well due to American-sized meals and a life of indolence and lassitude.
  I am not likely to have a whole lot of spare time over the next few months, either.

  A quick aside: if you're a FinderPop user who wishes to email me but who can't read/write English, [I am assuming that this bit gets translated :-], you should cc: your FinderPop Localiser in addition to me. I can comprehend French and a little German -- but don't expect gramatically sound replies. Japanese is right out, I'm afraid. Hopefully the localiser, if he's got the time, can help out perhaps by translating your query and forwarding it to me.

Will you fix bugs?

• Yes, subject to my time constraints. If 1.8.9 proves to be too buggy for your use, you can always revert to the tried and relatively trusted 1.8.4, available at www.finderpop.com.

What about adding features?

• Unless it's real easy, probably not. If my days suddenly expand to 30 hours, I may reconsider it :)

So why did Norton AntiVirus and FinderPop 1.8.6 clash?

• Some people have such a low opinion of their fellow man they actually have AntiVirus software installed! Sheesh -- they'll be locking their front doors next.
• At any rate, FinderPop 1.8.6 tried to write this little 'FinderPop68KProxy.app' mini-application into the 'Application Support' folder on startup, since I didn't want to burden users with another file to install, and was too caught for time to write an installer (I still haven't). At any rate, Norton AntiVirus detects this 'underhand' creation of an app, and displays a dialog asking you for permission. Unfortunately, for some people on some systems, NAV crashes at this point (I'm not sure, but I think it's displaying its dialog when it shouldn't, or perhaps some previously loaded but badly-written INIT sees the dialog being displayed and assumes that the system is up and running -- which it isn't.) So, FP gets blamed for exposing other people's bugs! Again :-/
  
  Ross Barkman offered the following workaround, which is no longer needed with current versions of FinderPop, but which might be useful if you are afflicted with something similar in the future...: By the way, I have found a work-around for this by accident. I moved NAV 6 out of the Extensions folder and into the System folder ages ago because it slows the boot sequence dramatically if it scans all the extensions (I know that reduces the protection somewhat, but I'm relying on its download and install protection to prevent any virus installing itself as an extension in the first place). That means it loads last, so it doesn't clash with FinderPop 1.8.6 - they've been peacefully coexisting on my system for some time.

How do I localise FinderPop?

• You can contact me to make sure that there aren't two people doing the same localisation. I'll let you know what needs to be done.

What's with the bizarre "reviews" on http://www.versiontracker.com/moreinfo.fcgi?id=1640

• Dunno, but they're nothing if not entertaining. Since none of the 'reviewers' has seen fit to contact me with details of FP trashing their files, causing possession by demons, etc., I can only assume they've simply stopped using FP, are afraid to contact me because of their poor grasp of basic sentence structure, or perhaps it's just some people taking the mickey :)
  Intriguingly, a few of these "reviewers" left email addresses, one even claiming that I'm not happy with FP bcos until now I haven't had reply from him about my problems.Maybe,he's too busy with work or he thinks that FP is the Best advantages bcos he used to ex-Apple employee and know how the system works? What if Apple won't include Menu options in future MacOS?. Wow! (Even more amazing when you consider it was probably typed through a keyboard drool protector.) How could you possibly argue with that? It was in the interests of science, however, that I decided to at least try -- I emailed the person whose email address was tagged on to that message, pointing out that, at least in this universe, "sending me a request is normally a prerequisite to receiving a reply." I got a reply email within minutes stating that "there must of been a mistake" (sic): basically denying that they ever posted anything, which is fair enough, as VersionTracker is wide-open to that sort of abuse.
  My current fave, however, is the one where some anonymous user says:
  If we can't use it after we all [...] update to Mac OS X, then what's the point of using it now?
  to which I can only admit to being nonplussed. Methinks that chap is in for an absolutely spiffing time when he updates to OS X.
  Whatever. I rather suspect that troubles with FinderPop is the least of the problems affecting some of these reviewers :-)

  And if you want some more FinderPop-related entertainment (not to mention the origin of the phrase "bovine phlegmatism"), see this.

How do you pronounce 'Turlough'?

• 'Tur-lock' or 'Tur-loch'. Lough is the Irish equivalent (original?) of Scottish Loch (i.e., 'lough' means 'lake'.) One meaning of the name Turlough is that of Instigator, but it also means a seasonal lake -- generally at the top of a hill -- which is dry in summer.
  Completely unlike myself, I feel obliged to add.
  Someone just pointed out the following Weird Words link with my name.
• I have also been referred to as "That Irish Git". But most people call me "Turly".

Where do I get those Apple Data Detectors I heard so much about?

• Here: http://www.apple.com/applescript/data_detectors/.

Persons listed herein are hereby automagically "registered" (for all the good that does them!), (I.e., they can turn on the "I got turly a pint" checkbox and be dazzled by the bewildering array of flashing lights, rude noises and Macsbug crashes which result.) Their names are also added to the Heroes of the FinderPop Revolution Eternal List in the FinderPop control panel's About subpanel. So without further ado...

The Employees of Apple Computer, Inc. (well, some of 'em, anyway :), Cristiano Maggi, Rene Hedemyr,Markus Kahle, Osamu Satoh, Carlos Jaramillo, Fawzi Dormeyer, Dennis SCP, Ilkka Koski,Tamas Rell, Matthieu Baudoux, Richard Bensam, Jonathan Jacobs, Jan Skarbek, Phil Hudson, James Thomson, Frank O'Connor, KarlFranzW, Achim Haas, Horst Prillinger, Akira Rabelais, rohahn, Andrew Gara, Michel Touchot, Serge Horrent, bruce linde, Ken Bruseth, Doug Fairchild, Pat Lee, Michael D. Flaminio, Alexander Remington, Minoru Nakazato, Tom McKenna, Lawrence Guzzetta, Nathan Labhart, Kevin Roettger, Stéphane Cataldi, Graham Haultain, Tony Grzina, Timo Orre, Rem Plenzik, Kenneth Wahl, Peter Hartmann, Carlos Pérez (aka cgpipo), Leo Evershed, c.b.fabrizio, Hai Ng, Paul Tavernise, Henry Cline, Jefferson Le Blanc, Jon Gotow, Simon Lawson, Dave Polaschek, Eoin Norris, James Thomson, Pete Cassidy, Paul Barry, Will Cosgrove, luca siragusa, Brian Devendorf, Sam Caughron, Rainer Lanz, Norbert M. Doerner, Sergio Febo, Yves Anciant, the folks at Power On Software, the StuffIt Engine folks, Jeffrey Zeldman, Todd Matthews, David A. Muszynski, Laurent Poidevin, the folks at Kagi, the VersionTracker people, the SoftWatcher people, the Control-Click folks, Stefan Brech for having a handy copy of a disk utility thus enabling me to effect a Lazarus-style resurrection of my disks (and the FinderPop sources), Petri Kaivanto, Eric Belsley, Steve "Doc" Carl, the MacNN crew, Mac Plaza, Guillaume Gete, Dan Rubin, John Teti, Bare Bones Software, Jerry Kindall and the gang at Manual Labor, who sponsor the FinderPop web site, Christoph Sahm, Casper Strunge Andersen, Shinji Yagi, Francisco Baldo, Jerome "beasiteit" Foucher, Ammon Skidmore, Deb Mohan, Wade Cosgrove, the incroyable Osamu Satoh (again) for somehow finding The Golden Section CD, Yasushi Tsutsui who did all the legwork in actually locating it, Klaas Dijkhuizen, Tracy Valleau, Richard Cardona for "Click! There it is!", Michael Seufer, Randy McElligot, Sascha René Leib, Norman Franke for the incredible SoundApp, Martin Libich, Ryan Nielsen, the FinderPop Announce mailing list beta testers (sometimes unwittingly :-), Jon Gotow (again), Quinn "The Eskimo", Kevin Knopp, Ira Altschiller, Chris Hwang, Jean Devriendt, D.M. Procida, Daniel Jalkut, Klaas Dijkhuizen, Beamish Stout (yum!), Adam Radestock for the icons, Rainer "Prost!" Lindemuth for sending me delicious beers all the way from Germany, Jesper Oersted, Pedro Cristiani, Benoit Tandonnet for that very nice Bordeaux he sent, Dave Baum, Greg Munson, RandSE, Trond Jansen, Steve Lewis (who appears to have sponsored an entire weekend on the ran-tan-tan -- hey Steve, if you're out there, wanna go drinking sometime? I'm buying :-), Deborah Foss, Michel Tavir, Osamu Satoh (again) and his colleagues who happened to be in San Jose and very kindly invited me to a barbecue -- that Nekokatsu was great, lads :-), Christian Flintrup, Thomas Boelskifte, Cedrik LIME, Wayne Stewart, Brad Matter, Alex Speller, gam98 for the sheer entertainment value of his "bovine phlegmatism", the Connecticut Macintosh Connection, Chris Scurbecq in Gent for the v. nice "Anton Pieck", Kageo Kageyama for the 'mbar' suggestion,

Colophon

Let me emphasize again that you do not have to pay anything to use FinderPop. You're welcome!

Legal Niceties and Contact Information

Portions of this software are Copyright © 1990-99 Aladdin Systems Inc.

(The following text shamelessly stolen from one of Peter Lewis' programs; names have been changed to implicate the guilty. I'll get round to doing my own real soon now. But since I wrote the preceding sentence in 1997, don't hold your breath.)

This program should do what is described in this document. If it doesn't, you can simply stop using it. If you paid for the product, and find that it doesn't do what has been described here, then you can notify me -- Turlough O'Connor -- and your money will be refunded and your license cancelled. Turlough O'Connor hereby disclaims all warranties relating to this software, whether expressed or implied, including without limitation any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. Turlough O'Connor will not be liable for any special, incidental, consequential, indirect or similar damages due to loss of data or any other reason, even if Turlough O'Connor or an agent of his has been advised of the possibility of such damages. In no event shall Turlough O'Connor be liable for any damages, regardless of the form of the claim. The person using the software bears all risk as to the quality and performance of the software.

In short, you use this product at your own risk.

Note that use of FinderPop may, according to some theories, contribute to the heat death of the universe.

Contacting Me

If you're having problems using FinderPop, contact me and I will do what I can to fix them.

<mailto: (turly o'connor) turly@kagi.com>
http://www.finderpop.com

Snail Mail

I recently moved from Cork, Ireland to work for a well-known computer company here in Cupertino, California; I said I'd give life in California a lash for a couple of years. I work on low-level compiler issues for OS X, about as far removed from some of the UI-type issues in FinderPop as you can get.
It's entertaining enough, but every so often I ask myself if I even know what I really want to do, which is all very well in your typical angsty teenager but not so hot for a thirty-something. :-/

But enough of the existentialist crudola! I'll wrap up by thanking the www.finderpop.com website host and all-round good guy, Jerry Kindall of Manual Labor. Thanks muchly, Jerry: if ever we meet, I hope you'll have had the foresight to book your liver transplant well in advance :-)

Matthieu Baudoux has kindly set up a read-only mailing list, FinderPop Announce, to which you might like to subscribe in order to receive information about the availability of beta versions of FinderPop.

• Subscribing to FinderPop Announce: send an email to finderpop-on@lists.qwentes.be.
• Unsbscribing from FinderPop Announce: send an email to finderpop-off@lists.qwentes.be.

Please note that I don't control the mailing list. If you want to unsubscribe or change your email address, please follow the instructions above. Also note that I removed the mailto link for Matthieu because of the number of people emailing him instead of me with regard to FinderPop problems. The mind boggles! If you really want to contact Matthieu, you can do so at matthieub@skynet.be. Sorry about that, Matthieu.

I was going to have my snail mail address here, but chickened out at the last minute as I have a very shy nature and the notion of some gun-toting finderpop-maddened balm-pot arriving at my front door does not appeal :-) But they could just as easily run me over -- there can't be that many denizens of Cupertino who walk everywhere.
Note to gun-toting balm-pots: I am about 4'6" tall, bald, clean shaven, walk with a pronounced limp, and wear lederhosen. You will often hear me humming ditties from The Sound Of Music. Ignore the lanky bearded guy with the white legs running in the opposite direction.

Have Fun!

--turly

Version History

0.01 (09 May 1999) Initial Version in MS Word
0.10 (03 May 2000) Has it really been nearly a year? Down their carved names the raindrop ploughs, etc.
0.11 (14 May 2000) Added FAQ, Quick tidy-up.
0.12 (16 May 2000) Converted from MS WORD "HTML" (Hah!) to BBEdit. If ya wanna do anything properly, ya hafta do it yerself.
0.14 (20 May 2000) A few more picts and a few more smart comments.
0.15 (21 May 2000) Spelling mistales.
0.16 (28 May 2000) Add table of contents and FinderPop Announce info.
0.17 (29 May 2000) Fix docs for shift-clicking the menubar.
0.18 (04 June 2000) Mmmmm... Nekokatsu!
0.19 (28 July 2000) Tips, clarifications, etc.
0.20 (02 Sept 2000) Apple Data Detectors location, more clarifications, RePopup.
0.21 (19 Nov 2000) 'mbar!!!!', sort-by-label, other minor details.
0.22 (30 Nov 2000) 'fsel!!!!' hackery and more Manual tidy-ups.
0.23 (03 Dec 2000) Lock/Unlock poplet, and Be clearer about the FinderPop68KProxy.app file.