Do you like the time-wasting animation the Finder draws every time you open a window, close a window (or an application) or align an object to the grid? I sure don't. For the open and close window stuff I guess it's not so bad, but when I want to clean up a bunch of stuff, it can take seemingly forever. (About eight seconds for perhaps 50 items when viewed by large or small icon.) And Apple hasn't given us the option to turn off this little show.
This application, Kill FinderZooms, will hack a copy of your Finder to disable these zoom rectangles. I made the original hack by hand quite a while ago (June '94) on Finder 7.1.4 and have haven't seen anything really wonky happen as a result. Therefore I feel it's safe to release this to the world.
This will work on Finder 7.1.3, 7.1.4, 7.5.1 and 7.5.3. These versions are seen on the PowerMac, with System 7.5, with System 7.5 Update 1.0, or the new PCI Macs (System 7.5.2). The application will only modify a copy of the Finder (one that has the name locked bit turned off). This is for your protection. This practically forces you to keep a backup of the original file... just in case. There's no guarantee that there won't be some really obscure nastiness that might show up later, but I've run the modified Finder on many machines for many months and have lived to tell the tale.
This is being released "as is." I have been pretty good about fixing all reported bugs and have even cleaned up the logic a bit. That's because I've received some positive response from the Mac community (lots of e-mail, but only a few postcards... (and of course no money)).
Feel free to distribute this package to all the usual places as long as you do not modify the program or documentation. Oh, yes, this does NOT apply to any service that makes money beyond the costs of distribution of the media on which the program resides, without my written permission. (This means YOU, Educorp, unless you are willing to fork over some of those bucks.) If ZiffNet wants to post it, I'll happily exchange it for free access. If any publisher wishes to include this program on a
CD-ROM collection they may do so if I get a subscription and a copy of the CD.
Any bugs, praise or renumeration should be sent to:
Jonathan Jacobs
2374 Euclid Hts. Blvd. #407
Cleveland Hts., OH 44106-2745
jxj24@po.cwru.edu
Dept. of Biomedical Engineering
Wickenden Building
Case Western Reserve University
Cleveland, OH 44106
Enjoy.
!!! Please send postcards: I'm trying to impress my officemates... !!!
•••Version History•••
1.4 (December 17, 1995)
•Rewrote most of the hacking code from scratch due to a dumb move on my part:
for( i=1; i=1000; i++ )
printf( "I will _always_ make a backup, no matter what.\n" ); // ...what a schmuck...
•Incorporated the fix from 1.3.1.
•Kill FinderZooms is now a fat binary again. It turns out that I had left an old 'SIZE' resource in the resource file, and it caused the PPC version to abort upon launch with no clue as to why. Clearing this bad 'SIZE' resource allowed CodeWarrior to create an correct one. This was harder to track down than it should have been. ("Adopt, adapt, improve...")
1.3.1 (December 17, 1995)
<<This version may actually never have seen the light of day, as version 1.4 came out later that afternoon. >>
•Fixed a small bug that would sometimes cause windows to open in the background, rather than in front. This bug also seem to have caused problems with "Snitch," opening windows off screen. No other changes.
1.3 (December 5, 1995)
•Updated to work with the PCI Macs, which run Finder 7.5.3 which was changed just slightly from the older versions. Just enough to make me rewrite more of KFZ than I had originally planned. This version is for the almost 100 people who send e-mail or postcards. (Should I really have sympathy for someone with a 132 MHz PPC 604 who claims that the silly zoomrects are making his machine too slow?) Keep those postcards coming...
1.2 (April 1995)
•Added compatibility with Finder 7.5.1. Removed PPC code, because something seems to be very wrong with Codewarrior at the moment.
1.1 (December 1994)
•You can now re-enable the zoom rectangles. Alert messages may be a bit more informative, as well. And for fun, this is now a fat binary.
1.0 (November 1994)
•Fixed a problem where occasionally the Finder wouldn't load (error -41). This was due to my failure to reset the locked bit for CODE resource 2. I am extremely grateful to Michael Hecht, the creator of "ResCompare" for helping me find this problem. ResCompare is a fantastic program. Thanks, Mike!
0.99 (October 1994)
•Uh, oh! Found a little typing error that could kill your Finder. Sorry about that. Fortunately you all kept your unhacked version, right?
