Posted by JohnnyAppleseed | Under Software
Friday Apr 11, 2008
Some Mac users are perfectly happy with Finder, which admittedly is all you need for file-moving applications most of the time. That’s especially true when you consider that by clicking the second view button (one of the group of three or four buttons usually found at the top of a Finder window) you can show all the files in list mode, which makes it easier to display a large number of files. And under Leopard, Cover View (the fourth button of the group in Finder) is far superior to the thumbnail view you may find in some other programs.
However, there are those of us that have come to know and love the dual-pane style of file manager interface, first introduced long ago by the old DOS Norton Commander program. Modern Commander-style programs often do dual duty as a file manager and file transfer program, using FTP, SFTP, or some other protocol(s) for file transfers to and/or from remote systems.
Naturally, in the Apple world, there is a program you can buy that will provide you with dual-pane file management. But if you find that Finder works for you most of the time, but occasionally you just need to see the old familiar Commander-style interface, here are three FREE options that won’t disturb the moths inside your wallet.
muCommander
The first is muCommander - this is our favorite because it best emulates the Commander-style interface, and it’s also cross-platform, which means it will run on any operating system with Java support (Mac OS X, Windows, Linux, *BSD, Solaris…). The list of features is as follows:
- Virtual filesystem with local volumes, FTP, SFTP, SMB, NFS, HTTP and Bonjour support
- Quickly copy, move, rename files, create directories, email files…
- Browse, create and uncompress ZIP, TAR, GZip, BZip2, ISO/NRG, AR/Deb and LST archives
- ZIP files can be modified on-the-fly, without having to recompress the whole archive
- Universal bookmarks and credentials manager
- Multiple windows support
- Full keyboard access
- Highly configurable
- Free Software
- Available in 18 languages : American & British English, French, German, Spanish, Czech, Simplified & Traditional Chinese, Polish, Hungarian, Russian, Slovenian, Romanian, Italian, Korean, Brazilian Portuguese, Dutch and Slovak
The only real drawback we have found with muCommander is that it can be a bit balky to respond if you have been using other applications. We suspect it may be doing some memory swapping or something of that nature, but occasionally you’ll see the infuriating spinning beachball of death for a few seconds when you switch back to an open muCommander session. There’s supposed to be a new version out soon that we hope will fix that. The other problem is that the interface is a bit Spartan, and the unlabeled buttons at the top which aren’t as intuitive as we’d like, although mousing over a button does reveal its function.
The one thing we’d really wish for is that placing the marker over a file and hitting the spacebar would reveal the contents of the file in Quick Look, instead of simply marking the file (for a multiple copy/move/delete operation), but that might be too much to expect given that it’s a cross-platform program, and Quick Look is very Mac specific.
Xfolders
Our next free dual pane file manager is Xfolders. This is a native Mac application but surprisingly doesn’t have a couple of the basic features we have come to expect in such programs. Here’s the Xfolders feature list:
- Completely for Tiger re-written cocoa application.
- Uses the new technology of Mac OS X Tiger.
- Full integration of the Finder, thus support of all file operations from and to the Finder.
- Drag & Drop between both filelists and the Finder.
- Support for all important file operations.
- Info dialog for simply changing the file and folder attributes.
- Intelligent path navigators for both file lists.
- Bookmarks & manager for folders.
- Direct access to important system utilities.
- Navigation with the keyboard ala Norton Commander.
- Integrated, detailed Spotlight search.
- Integrated image browser.
- Integrated terminal.
- Versatile search and compare possibilities.
- Zip archive support.
- Flat or 3D Unified look.
- Supports the following languages: English, German, Italian, French, Spanish
- Optimized for the PowerPC G5 processor, but remains compatible to G3 and G4 processors!
- Universal binary: Compatible with Intel based Macs!
- Xfolders is freeware!
The first thing you notice about Xfolders is that it was last updated for Tiger, though it seems to work well enough under Leopard. But the second thing is that the “View” and “Edit” buttons are missing - that’s right, there’s no built-in text editor or viewer, and you aren’t even given the option to shell out to an external editor or viewer. Worse yet, when you try to use the program, you find that you can’t double-click a directory to change to that directory - you must either right-click and select open (which only works when going downward in a directory tree), or you must hit the Enter key, which means that you can’t keep your hand on the mouse and move around in the same way that you can with most programs of this type. And there’s no way to transfer files using FTP, or any similar file transfer protocol. There are just too many things missing from Xfolders for us to consider it really useful for much of anything more than copying, moving, or deleting files, but we admit that it integrates with the Mac a bit better than muCommander. For a heavy session of (re)organizing files on your Mac, Xfolders might be just the ticket.
Midnight Commander via Rudix
Midnight Commander is a dual-pane file manager that is popular in the Linux world. It is invoked from the command line, which may make it quite useful in an emergency situation when your Mac won’t boot in the normal manner, but you can boot to a command prompt. It is also quite useable from a terminal window or from iTerm, and we recommend the latter because it will pass mouse clicks through to Midnight Commander whereas the standard Mac Terminal application does not.
Midnight Commander doesn’t even pretend to be a native Mac application (because it isn’t!), but there may be times when you don’t care about that and simply want to get things done. And if you have any past experience with Unix or Linux, you may prefer Midnight Commander, especially when transferring files to and/or from a remote *nix system. I couldn’t find a feature list for the program, but if you just navigate the menus you’ll see what’s available.
In the past, installing Midnight Commander on a Mac required a certain level of geekiness that was probably beyond the ability of many Mac users. Thankfully, that is not so much the case now, following the introduction of a package called Rudix that makes it almost drop-dead simple to install many common Unix utilities. And thanks to our friends at the Michigan Telephone, VoIP and Broadband blog there are now some instructions for installing Midnight Commander that make the process as easy as following a recipe in a cookbook.
Our recommendation? Install all three of these file managers! They are all free, and all are useful for different types of jobs. But if we had to pick just one, it would be muCommander, hands down.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This article is an example of how we will tend to bypass the commercial software that other Mac sites promote (heavily, I might add) and show you where to find the freeware gems that others won’t tell you about. We have no objection to you buying the commercial software if you actually use it frequently and find it worth the money, but honestly, how often do you need to use something other than Finder for file management? We just don’t need to go into a dual-pane file manager often enough on the Mac to justify paying for one (such is not the case when we are forced to use a Windows machine - the limitations of Windows Explorer usually induce us to install Total Commander right away - and by the way, users of Wine or Crossover on the Mac could probably also install Total Commander, but its usefulness is rather limited because it doesn’t know anything about Unix-style file permissions and ownership on the local system).
Related posts
Posted by JohnnyAppleseed | Under Crabapple, Software
Friday Apr 11, 2008
One of the “myths of Apple” is that Safari is a better web browser. The Apple folks must believe it; they are pushing it out even to Windows users that simply want to upgrade iTunes. Many of those hard cider drinkin’ boys (our name for the Apple fanboys) seem to believe it also. And we have no problem with anyone choosing a favorite browser from among the many choices available, but we think that such choices should be made with good information. In other words, just because you own a Mac, you should should not be pushed toward Apple software unless it’s genuinely better software.
Now, we will be the first to admit that Firefox 2 was not a sterling example of great programming. It had memory leaks, and crashed a bit too frequently for our liking, but we put up with it for one reason only: Extensions (a.k.a. Add-ons). No other browser has such a vast library of extensions, many of which are genuinely useful. The extensions let us tweak the little things about Firefox, things that are either untweakable in Safari, or that can only be tweaked by using a NON-free plugin. Only in the Apple world would people pay for a browser plugin, but we won’t - however, that’s another crab for another time.
For example, we happen to like the Firefox Tab Mix Plus extension. It gives us much more control over the circumstances under which new tabs are opened (basically we like to have almost everything open in a new tab, so that we don’t inadvertently navigate away from a page we aren’t finished with yet. Try getting that functionality in Safari). Another new plugin we like is Taboo, which lets us save thumbnails of pages we aren’t quite finished with yet, but don’t want to add to our permanent bookmarks.
Those of us brave enough to try the beta versions Firefox 3 have been finding that, starting with about beta version 3, Firefox really is giving Safari a run for its money. It is much faster and more stable. Okay, we hate the new Mac theme that is provided in the Mac version of Firefox 3 (”hate” may be a bit too strong a word, but we sure hope we’re not stuck with it for long - it’s just too dark for our liking), and a few of our favorite add-ons haven’t been updated by their authors yet, but overall it is a much better and more stable browser than Firefox 2.
However, the above might be considered just our subjective opinion - and indeed it is to some degree - but now it turns out that the folks at ZDnet used the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark test to run an actual test to see which was faster. Not only did they report that Firefox 3.0 Beta 5 holds a 7% lead over Safari 3.1, but it also leaves Firefox 2.0.0.12 in the dust.
Now, we will grant that 7% isn’t much of a difference, but then again, it means we can get faster performance AND still use the extensions we love (and did we mention that nearly all Firefox extensions are free?). So tell me, where is the advantage to using Safari? To be fair, we’ve found only ONE, and it’s a somewhat dubious advantage - in Safari, if you highlight a portion of a web page and drag it to the mail icon, it opens a new message that includes the formatted text, plus any images included in the selection. Do the same thing in Firefox and you get just plain text and no images. There used to be an easy solution for that, a Firefox extension called Safari View, but so far it’s not been “officially” updated for Firefox 3 beta 5 (though you can still make it work if you know how). Of course, some people would prefer to only send the plain text of an article, so that may actually be an advantage of Firefox in the eyes of some readers.
We know everyone has an opinion about which is the best browser, so feel free to leave a comment. Comments are moderated and we don’t allow comment spam, so if your comment is more self-promotion than actual comment you’ll probably be wasting your time if you try to leave it here. Otherwise, we welcome comments, even if you disagree with us (as long as you’re reasonably polite about it).
Related posts
Posted by JohnnyAppleseed | Under Hardware, Opinion, Software
Friday Apr 11, 2008
Does the world need another Macintosh Blog? I suppose that depends on who you ask. What we have found is that their are two rather indistinct groups of Macintosh users. The first is the long-time Mac user, who’s been using a Mac since before the days of OS X. That user is probably a Mac devotee, the type that thinks that the Mac is the greatest computer ever. That user is the type to try and convince all their friends and relatives to switch to the Mac. They are, in short, the convincers - if it weren’t for them, there would be far fewer Mac users today.
Then there is the other group - the “switchers”, a.k.a. the “recently convinced.” They’ve never known anything other than OS X on a Mac, but they may have struggled with several versions of Windows prior to finally getting a Mac. Now, some of them may be wondering if they made the right choice. For the first month or so after switching from Windows, they will probably experience much wonder and doubt - wondering what they’ve gotten themselves into, and occasionally doubting that the “convincer” friend or family member steered them on the right track.
The problem is that things are done differently on a Mac than on other platforms, and it’s not always in a manner that’s agreeable to everyone.
For example, let’s say that you are having a problem with your computer. Let’s suppose that in some application, or maybe all applications, the characters don’t always appear on the screen immediately as you type them. Let’s suppose that you are asking for help in an online forum devoted to your particular computer/operating system. What do you suppose the most frequent (though not necessarily correct) response would be?
In a group of Windows users, I would expect it to be something like this: “Your computer is probably loaded with spyware and adware, or maybe you have picked up a virus or a trojan horse program that is logging your keystrokes. Go install this and that anti-spyware/anti-adware/antivirus program. If that doesn’t work, reformat your hard drive and reinstall Windows.”
Okay, what about in a group of Linux users? “You are probably having a driver issue - type (some magical incantation) at the command line and that might tell you where the problem is …” (I will pause here to note that if you actually do this, you will probably get a screenful of information that would only mean something to a true Linux geek) “… and failing that you may want to run (some other incomprehensible command) or try recompiling the driver.” If you have just switched from Windows to Linux, this will all be about as clear as mud to you, and the geeks will think they are doing you a favor by not just telling you the solution to your problem in plain English (or whatever your native language might be), but instead sending you off on a Google quest or to read “man” pages, often without even giving you any hints about what search terms you should be using, or what “man” page would contain the answer.
So what about on a Mac group? Here’s the advice I’d expect to see: “Go down to the Apple store and buy a new Apple keyboard. If that doesn’t work, take your Mac into the Genius Bar and let them figure it out.”
And that brings me to my first crab about the Mac: Far too often, when you are looking for a solution to a Mac-related problem, the advice that you will be offered can be expressed simply as “Buy Something.” And if that something is computer hardware, well of course it will be strongly suggested that you should buy it from Apple.
That may sound like fine advice to long-time Mac users, but it doesn’t always sit well with the switchers who have just come from the world of “Windows and Gates”, and expect that most problems can be solved with software, and that most of that software is available somewhere out on the Internet as freeware or, at worst (or if you are too lazy to search beyond the first page of Google results), low-cost shareware. If, by chance, you do need new hardware, you can get it from a multitude of suppliers, and if you search the ‘net (or watch the local sale circulars) it will be very reasonably priced.
It would be easy to dismiss the Mac as being a machine designed for high-end users, like an expensive automobile. But that would not always be a correct assumption. In particular, the Mac Mini is a very reasonably-priced machine when you compare the specifications to available Windows boxes, and realize that the Mac Mini includes the latest version of the Mac OS X operating system. And many Windows users have found that a “pre-owned” desktop Mac gives reasonable performance at a fair price. Even if someone splurges for a brand-new desktop Mac, or whatever happens to be the latest and greatest Mac laptop, that doesn’t always imply that they have money to burn.
One of the things we hope to do here at CrabApple Forest is tell you about some of the great Mac Freeware that is out there, that doesn’t always get the recognition it deserves. But beyond that, we want to try and help people who have switched from Windows fairly recently, and are not long-time Mac fanatics. You really will enjoy using the Mac once you’ve had it for a while, but some things are done differently, and maybe we can help you with the transition.
Personally, I think that the biggest reason the world may need another Mac-related blog is because of this: We didn’t drink the hard Apple Cider - what I mean is, you’ll never catch us standing outside an Apple store in the chilly night air so we can be among the first to get our hands on some new Apple product. We want to put our Macs to use, not dress them up in expensive accessories and brag about them to our friends that still use Windows (well, maybe just a little, but only when the Mac really does do something better than Windows).
So if you are looking for a hard-nosed blog that’s not written by a bunch of Mac fanboys, maybe you’ve found it! When there’s something about the Mac we don’t like, we’ll crab about it. But when we find some delightful new freeware program, or some helpful hint or tip that makes it more of a joy to use a Mac, we’ll pass that along.
Oh, and don’t worry, most of the articles should be more concise than this one - we know you are busy and don’t have much time to read, and my editor has said he’ll chop off my articles if I let them get too long, and start to ramble on…..
Related posts
Posted by BigCrab | Under Hardware, Opinion, Software
Friday Apr 11, 2008
BigCrab here - There are two of us involved with this project at the moment. I’m the practical, down-to-earth guy. But the person who started this blog, and who will be doing 99.9% of the writing is, shall we say, a bit more open to flights of fancy. He writes, I proofread (and then yell at him for misusing and abusing apostrophes). I can try to make his writing more grammatically correct, but I can’t improve upon the content. Thus you may, from time to time, see the sort of perversity that follows. I’d like to know where he’s getting whatever Apple Juice he’s drinking when he writes this stuff, because I want some!!! Oh, he starts out okay (if you don’t mind be talked to like a child), but by the time he gets to talking about me in the third and fourth paragraphs, I know he’s been hitting the hard cider. Trust me, I am NOTHING AT ALL like the way he describes me. And, I live in the real world, not some enchanted orchard. But I do come and visit him every so often, and the men in the clean white coats are kind enough to pass along the crumpled slips of paper containing his notes and ideas, some of which are expressed herewith…..
JohhnyAppleseed here announcing the Orchard of Wisdom is now open… The seeds of knowledge have been sown. With the help of my partner BigCrab, we have nurtured the seeds of an idea to where we are today. Welcome to Orchard of Wisdom here in CrabApple Forest!
We decided to open the Orchard of Wisdom because we believe that the tree of knowledge belongs to everyone. But, here in the real world of CrabApple Forest we know that every good Apple comes with a price. You must carefully pick the good fruit to fully enjoy the sweetest Apple of them all, the Macintosh.
We have a whole orchard of Apples but unless you know how to pick and choose the right ones you may take a bite and get a VERY sour, bitter mouthful. Trust and believe I get an earful from BigCrab every time he takes a bite and gets a sour one! He gets so crabby that he storms around the forest making sure EVERYONE know where the bitter ones are. Many people who don’t know BigCrab think that he is just mad at the world all the time. But, that’s not true. Not everything is as it seems here in CrabApple Forest.
The truth is that even though I run the Orchard of Wisdom day in and day out, BigCrab started eating the fruit first! When he took his first big juicy bite of that sweet Macintosh. and tasted the pure perfection of the Apple, he was hooked for life. The next day was a different story. You see, that time he got a nasty bitter taste in his mouth. From that day forward he was committed to let all the newcomers to the forest know where all the bad Apples were. So, if you see or hear BigCrab during your visit here to the Orchard of Wisdom and he is yelling and waving his arms don’t be afraid. BigCrab is just trying to keep you on the path to the Tree of Knowledge. He may seem a bit gruff or odd but really he’s just trying to help you so you don’t have to suffer that bitter taste in your mouth from getting a bad Apple.
I will share with you at a later date how my partner BigCrab and I ended up here in the CrabApple Forest. It’s been a long jorney and it is far from over.
Related posts
Subscribe to CAF
