Mac OS 8.5 Technote: Part II Copyright 1998 by Apple Computer, Inc. All Rights Reserved. [Previous section] [Mac OS 8.5 Contents Page] [Next section]

Finder 8.5 Finder 8.5 offers improved window redraw performance, faster file copies, and several other new, improved, or extended user interface elements. Specific additions include: A new dialog allows users to repair broken aliases. Using contextual menus, an alias of any Finder object can be added to the "Favorites" folder. Using contextual menus, AppleScript scripts triggered by various Finder actions can be attached to any folder. Sounds now play in response to many user actions. Finder's resource fork is now read-only. In many cases, this will prevent accidental corruption of Finder. The system stability warning dialog box is now displayed when Finder is re-launched after a system error. It is now once again possible for an application to specify 'alis' as a file type in its bundle resources to indicate that unresolved alias files should be sent to its "open documents" Apple event handler. Developers can designate certain files as "busy" files. Busy files are files that are in the process of being created or copied, regardless of whether File Manager has them open. The Finder will treat any file whose type is set to zero or to a type within the range 'bzy ', 'bzy!', ..., 'bzy?' as a busy file and will not attempt to change its type or creator. The range 'bzy ', 'bzy!', ..., 'bzy?' is provided for developers wishing to animate a file's icon during its creation.

COMPATIBILITY NOTE Archive developers should store the entire contents of both the FInfo and FXinfo records and the DInfo and DXInfo records when archiving files and directories. All fields in these records should be preserved, including flags and fields marked as reserved (with the exception of the "inited" bit for files containing desktop database information).

COMPATIBILITY NOTE Although frFlags and fdFlags are located at the same offset in catalog records, some of the flags now have different meanings when the catalog record refers to a file versus when the catalog record refers to a directory. Developers should not assume flags that are only defined for files are unused when the catalog record refers to a directory. See the flag descriptions in <Finder.h> for more information about individual flags.

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