Welcome the Balloon Popper, a simple utility which does something that no other program I am aware of does.
(This program is beta. Use at your own risk. Report bugs and suggestions for improvements to bobs@saintjoe.edu.)
First some background. Several years ago Apple introduced a technology called Balloon Help, a very neat and useful way to give users help in applications. Unfortunately, cheap tools to implement this help were never developed very well, and as a result, there are a great many applications which do not have balloon help. (My applications have almost no balloon help because I have never been able to figure out how to do it.)
The simplest sort of balloon help, and one that I have been able to figure out, is a balloon help for the Finder. If one has the Finder running, and turns on Balloon Help (under the question mark on the menu), and then points at applications, they will have little balloons drawn above them with a message. This message is very easily customized with the addition of a 'hfdr' resource. (If you do not program, this may not make any sense to you--but do not worry--the details are not important.) As a result, lots of applications, especially those written by people who know what they are doing, have a little message in them that tells what they do.
The normal way to get this little message is with Balloon Help. However, it seemed to me that presenting this message in a different form might be very useful in some cases. If I have 100 applications, I do not want to go through and point to each of them to see what it does. I would rather have a list of them with a description. And that is what Balloon Popper does. It goes through a folder or a drive (including CD drives), finds all the applications on it, and sees if they have a finder balloon. If one does, the program tries to read it. Then the name of the application and its description, if any, are put into a list which can be saved.
Obviously such a program is most useful when the applications have finder balloons. But even if they do not, you may get some information. Well-written apps are more likely to have finder balloons than poorly-written apps, and the absence of a finder balloon may tell you that it is likely the application is not worth your time.
The program is very simple since it has only one command. Under the File Menu, select the Tabulate-Balloons command. You get a dialog which asks you to select a folder. Select one, and the program does its simple task.
This program was written to help explore CD-ROMs, which can have hundreds or thousands of programs. I have written a number of other programs to help manage CDs, and they are described below. As a result, this program had many of its parts already done, but it still was a challenge to get to work right. That is, assuming it does work correctly. It may have bugs, and there may be files which will crash it. I would like to know what files give you problems, though there is no guarantee that I will be able to fix the problems.
The program displays what it finds in an edit field, and this field is limited to 32,000 bytes of information. If the program needs more room than this to hold what it finds, it stores it in invisible edit fields (up to about 100K). You can not see this from within the program, but you can see it from a word processor if you press the save button and save it as an external file.
There are dividers before and after applications with finder balloons. If you see a ---***--- before and entry, it has a finder balloon. If there is a --------- before an entry, then the previous entry had a finder balloon, but this one does not. If there are a series of applications found without finder balloons, they are simply listed with no dividers.
Now for some technical stuff. Finder Balloons can have their help messages hidden in a number of different places: in the hfdr resource itself as a string, as a PICT (which Balloon Popper will not be able to read--but that should be obvious), as a STR# resource, as a STR resource, or in a TEXT resource.
This program is free but not in the public domain. If you really like it, you can pay me by buying one of my Font CDs. They are Font Pro 2, Font Pro 3, and Font Pro 5, all published by Wayzata Technology of 21 Northeast Fourth Street, Grand Rapids Minnesota 55744. Call them at 218-326-0597, fax them at 218-326-0598, or e-mail them at info@Wayzata-Tech.com. You can visit them on the world-wide web at http://Wayzata-Tech.com.
Have fun.
Robert Schenk
Feb 1996
(bobs@saintjoe.edu)
(This program is copyrighted by Robert Schenk. It may be distributed freely by noncommercial means and on electronic networks. It also may be distributed on CD-ROM collections if the publisher will send me a free copy of any CD it appears on. If the publisher is not willing to do that, write for permission.)
Acknowledgements. Balloon Popper was written in FutureBASIC from Staz software. Icons were designed by Matthew Schenk. The font used in the title screen was designed by me and is available on Font Pro 5.
Here is a list other programs I have written and which are on Font Pro 5. I made this list using Balloon Popper, but I had to edit a few. If I had Balloon Popper when I had done the CD, I would have seen the problems and cleaned them up.
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Mac-BIZNES 1.0.1 MacBIZNES is intended to help students learn some basic economic theory.
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MacTykoon 1.1.2 MacTykoon is a game in which you hire and price trying to make a profit.
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Be Fruitful and Multiply 1.4 Be Fruitful and Multiply is a simple multiplication drill that ilustrates what the tables mean.
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Set Up Be Fruitful Be Fruitful Setup allows one to limit the types of questions Be Fruitful and Multiply asks.
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ChessEdit 1.00 ChesEdit allows one to easily draw chess boards for use with chess typefaces.
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ChesShow ChesShow illustrates ten chess fonts.
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The Great FrameUp 2.0 The Great Frame Up creates a variety of decorative borders using special fonts.
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KerningMaster 1.1 KerningMaster reads information about fonts from AFM files. It lets you compare kerning in two fonts.
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The FOND Lister FONDLister lists FONDs or fonts it finds.
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The Show Must Go FOND 1.0.1 ShowFonts illustrates fonts without having to find and open them.
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Let's Kill Some Trees 1.0.1 Kill Trees prints uninstalled fonts.
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CURSors on your Macintosh .62 CURSors on your Macintosh finds and shows CURS (cursor) resources in files.
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ICON Hardly Wait .81 This application finds and shows ICON resources in files.
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The Alert Player Alert Player finds and shows all Alerts in files.
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Census Taker Census Taker counts and lists files based on various attributes.
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The Last PICT Show 1.0.1 PICT Show finds and shows PICT resources in files.
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Snap Crack and Pop This program plays all the snd resources it can find.
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MazeFontSampler MFS prints uninstalled maze fonts.
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Maze Book Vol II d Virtual Maze Book (Vol II) generates a large assortment of different types of mazes which may be saved and printed.
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Virtual Maze Book I (3.5) Virtual Maze Book (Vol I) creates mazes of many types which may be saved and printed.
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FP5 Preview This Application previews the fonts on Font Pro 5, published by Wayzata Technology.
