New public beta of Default Folder X

Posted by Pierre Igot in: Macintosh
October 2nd, 2003 • 8:56 pm

The mark of truly great software is that it keeps improving, and that many improvements are brought to registered users free of charge through downloadable updates.

St. Clair Software’s Default Folder X is one of those products. It is one of these software enhancements that I really could not do without. And it keeps getting better.

The product’s developer is very responsive and a ton of new features and improvements have been added since the last time I paid for an upgrade.

The new 1.9 version (free for registered users) brings two major improvements: hierarchical folders for easy file browsing via Default Folder X’s menus — and an enhanced “Recent Folders” feature that also takes into account folders used when you double-click on a file in the Finder to open it. (Previous versions of Default Folder X wouldn’t include the folder containing the double-clicked file in the “Recent Folders” menu.) It also brings Panther compatibility, for those who already have the new system.

(The new version is still only in beta, but it’s already much more stable and reliable than the final versions of many software titles out there.)

Even before this latest enhancement, Default Folder X’s “Recent Folders” feature was already miles ahead of Mac OS X’s own built-in “Recent Folders” command (in the “Go” menu in the Finder and in Open/Save dialog boxes). I’ve been asking for a decent “Recent” feature in Mac OS X for years. Apple seems to be uninterested. St. Clair Software delivers.

If you regularly work on projects involving several applications, you owe it to yourself to purchase Default Folder X. For example, say you create a new document in Word and save it in a given folder. Then you go to Mail and want to send that particular Word document as an attachment. You go to Mail’s “Attach” feature, and you are presented with a dialog box to locate the desired attachment. Instead of HAVING to locate the folder containing the attachment manually, you just go to Default Folder X’s “Recent” menu, and the appropriate folder will be the first one listed there, because it was the last one used. Bingo!

Default Folder X brings folder/document-centric computing to Mac OS X. What matters is not the application in which you are. It’s the most recent file/folder you worked on.

Think about it — and vote with your wallet.


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