Hello Beta People,
This is what we hope the to be the last beta release before we can say ForkLift 1.5 is ready for release on March 1st.
There has been a noticeable drop in the number of bugreports received after the second beta was released – we can only interpret this as a proof of our superior coding skills in getting the core app to run great.
Still there were a few things that had to be fixed or improved, and we’ve even added a few features, which are now released in this third beta.
(see changes at the end of this post)
We want to thank all beta testers for their feedback, and would like to ask all of you to be very rigorous and critical in this final round of testing. You probably understand how this is the most important beta, so don’t be shy to send in your reports, even if you’ve already submitted a similar bug or request before.
Being the last beta release also means that no new stuff will be added to the final 1.5 release – we will come back to discussing new feature recommendations and requests later, for our future releases.
But we want to concentrate on getting all existing features to perfection for the grand release of this Leopard version.
We are of course looking for any remaining bugs, but as I said, there has been significantly fewer reports of crashes, hangs and other mayhem since the second beta.
The bug with ‘move to’ between two volumes resulting in a simple ‘copy to’ operation is a bug in Leopard. We will post news when a fix for the bug is released by Apple.
So what we’re mostly looking for are your comments on the feel you get working with FL, any workflow/interface issues, fine tuning recommendations, opinions.
OK, let’s hear what you have to say:
CHANGES IN FORKLIFT 1.5b3
- FIXED: bug causing error in creating Amazon S3 directories
- NEW FEATURE: It is now possible to create new buckets on european S3 accounts.
- FIX: Select… panel bugs
- FIX: occasional crashes when main application window was closed (related to QuickLook)
- FIX: the icons in the Connection Panel were upside down. I swear, none of us noticed a thing 
- FIX: login controls on SHARED computers (now connects to most Samba servers)
- FIX: keychain support
- FIX: possible ftp crash on disconnect
- CHANGE: user permissions on the Info.plist file. Now all users of a computer will be able to start the ForkLift installed under another user account
- FIX: several WebDAV bugs
- NEW FEATURE: font selection is now available in the main panels
- NEW FEATURE: progress bar and badge is displayed on ForkLift’s dock icon
- FIX: text ‘Registered User’ in Connect As… screen
- CHANGE: ‘bold’ font setting for folders removed
- FIX: AFP shares could not be added to the FAVORITES
- FIX: bug in opening aliased folders in the sidebar FAVORITES
- FIX: the activity viewer will not disappear if ForkLift looses focus
- FIX: the activity viewer will now appear in Exposé.
- CHANGE: keyboard control on the activity viewer and its dialogues
- FIX: false error messages during local copy of symlinks pointing to non-existent files
- FIX: creating aliases with drag-and-drop caused FL to crash
- FIX: FL crashed if more than one item was dragged to the sidebar FAVORITES
- and a number of smaller fixes and code optimizations
Great, glad this is out. I am sad to set hat there is no file/folder sync or even a simple comparison between the 2 panes. Oh well. I still hope this will come into next release. I am happy with Lucida 12 points, looks great on my big imac24 screen. Wish you could also change font sizes in the side panels or the folder tabs. Personally would like folder names to be bold and file names to be regular. Used for a few hours now, no crashes or glitches. The move bug (Leopard you say) is still a MAJOR annoyance. Strange it did not get fixed in the 10.5.2 release last week, it was a big update…. maybe is not Leopard?
I wish also that the preview pane could be switched to one of the lateral big panes so one could actually read a spreadsheet, or a letter, or se a pdf file by just previewing.
@Manuel
Wow, that was fast
There is a very basic way to compare the directories in the two panes using the Select… dialogue in the Edit menu (note, only compare by filename is available)
The move bug is a bug in the OSX API that ForkLift uses. We’re not the only developers to have run into the problem.
I use the preview for the same purpose – viewing text files and pdfs straight from ForkLift. So I set the preview window to a rather large size, and just keep it closed for most of the time, and open it only when I need it.
I’d like to see a new preference, that allows you to use Forklift as the Finder replacement. I believe Path Finder can do this already?
Separate tabs, pleaaase!
the keyboard controls in the Activity Viewer are pretty odd. i can hit space/return to confirm Replace, which is great, but i can’t tab to other choices or hit escape to close the Activity Viewer, which would be the default OSX behavior.
the new progress bar on the icon is nice!
Hm, why remove the bold for folders, I miss that!
I’ve set my font to Frutiger-linotype 10 and I get more items in each panel (more vertical space efficiency) and nice legibility, thanks for the font options. Shame the Info panel still doesn’t scale the fonts as the panel is resized for us Laptop users… And a way to toggle the favorites sidebar (used to be possible pre-1.5) would be nice too…
Progress bar on icon rocks!
And the fixed crashers are always welcome
How to access SMB shares which are visible on the Desktop?
In Finder, I can display my own computer under Devices, and then I can access all HDDs, DVD and shares. No such option in ForkLift.
The only way is to add (drag&drop) the share into Favorites group, but that’s lame – as many of those shares are temporary and I don’t need them after I use them. When I use Mac in the Windows network, this is a serious productivity slow-down.
Favorites are completely broken for me. I click on one to connect, and from that point forward, clicking on any other favorite (which is meant to take me to a different location on the same server as the first) simply reloads the first one I clicked.
Hopefully Time Machine still has my copy of b2 somewhere.
Need a “Duplicate File” Command.
Copy from STFP is broken for me. Its starts the copy, but dies after 20% of the data copied.
Forklift 1.2: No error, all ok in sftp copy
Forklift 1.5b2: No error, all ok in sftp copy
Forklift 1.5b3: Hangs after 20% of the data copied
Please fix this, I’m stuck on 1.2 with this error..
Best Regards!
Is Forklift 1.5 planned to work only on OSX 10.5 ? I’ve tried to test the application on its beta state, but it refuses to start (I am running Tiger)
I know it’s been said that there is a problem with the way that moves are performed within Forklift, something related to a Mac OS X API that Forklift uses. What is the difference between Forklift and muCommander, which performs moves as actual moves and not copies between folders/directories?
Thanks for the new release.
However I regret that none of suggested keyboard shortcuts (http://www.binarynights.com/blog/?p=38#comment-661) appeared in the new release. Is there a chance for them in final release? They’re just shortcuts for existing functionality, so they require minimum coding… but they would be great time-savers.
Can font & size setting also affect left “light blue” and quick-look panels?
Well, as I haven’t tested previous betas well, here are some bugs I’ve noticed in 1.5b3 only (that doesn’t mean they don’t exist in previous betas
1. The main problem are Samba shares: I have a windows PC with some files there and I can’t connect to it’s shares at all, though in Finder everything works great. It just gives me “Failed to connect to server” error and nothing works.
Dropping a link to a share to Favorites menu doesn’t work either – I just cannot follow the link
2 clues for bug-hunting: it’s a winxp share and i need to enter correct credentials to get access (e.g. username/password, not a public share).
2. Calculating folder sizes doesn’t work (at least on my external firewire drive). Again, in Finder everything is ok
The next two are more feature requests then actual bugs:
as a total commander switcher i really really really miss 2 things:
– 2 dots at the top of each child folder to go to parent and…
– switching between connected drives using alt-f1/f2 (or any other shortcut). i’ve searched the preferences thoroughly, but failed…
and adding shortcut (Esc, not cmd-w) to close file info dialog would also be greatly appreciated.
nevertheless, it’s a great app, never missed my money spent to it
and interface changes in 1.5 is just what was greatly needed!
PS may be adding a forum to the site would be nice, since it’ll allow users to help each other, instead of hampering developers…
Update to my previous post:
1. Entering RAR archives doesn’t work
I enter the archive’ but I can’t see it’s contents 
2. Unable to connect to smb share using standard connect to dialog. There aren’t any controls to connect to smb volumes – only to ftp, webdav etc…
Keep it up guys! I can’t wait till the final version is released! ForkLift is a must-have application for all of my Macs.
Hello Everyone,
It’s great to see you’ve been busy over the weekend
Thanks for the surge in reports these last three days.
@Wim
Yeah, this is an important question – no, there will be no option in ForkLift to replace Finder. On one hand, Finder can do stuff that is very tricky to imitate (see Samba issues below). Also, we think FL is a sort of a toolbox, that you don’t necessarily use every day, unless you’re a professional.
@M
We hear you. We’ll come back to this after the 1.5 is released.
@an
We’ll check on the info panel font handling to see how we could improve it for smaller screens, thanks for the input. We’ve removed the bold option of folders because it didn’t work with some fonts.
@Aleksandar and Oleg
Yeah. Truth is, ForkLift doesn’t have a proper implementation for samba and some other protocols that Finder can handle. Accessing samba shares will work well in 80% of the cases seamlessly. In the remaining 20% there is a workaround we recommend. ForkLift will be able to work with the shares once they are mounted in Finder.
This is an area where we can definitely improve things after 1.5
@Nathan
This seems to be a unique incident. Send in a bugreport, if you haven’t sent one yet.
@Patrick
Cmd-C and Cmd-V work great for me.
@ImreSz
Hm. Yes. It seems we did mess up something here. Did you send in a bugreport?
@Pato
Yeah, 1.5 is the Leopard version. 1.2 is the last Tiger version.
@jdguilty
To the best of our knowledge, muCommander uses a different method for handling files, not the mac API
@Adam
I promise we will get on this at one point.
@Oleg
non-public shares on samba volumes does not work currently. we’re working on it. as to the shortcuts, I repeat what I said to Adam, we will take a look at keyboard at one point.
Also, the RAR seems to work fine. Could you check this with another file, and file a bugreport, please?
thanks for the active support guys. we’ll be waiting for your reports
Good night for now
BinaryNights crew
Hi there, and congrats for the great release.
Still, we’re not able to connect into a Windows domain or use a connection set up in Finder. Example:
1. Connect to smb://servername/d in Finder (credentials are store in Keychain, enabled for all programs
2. (With a little luck) the connection appear under “Shares” in ForkLift.
3. Click on the share. Tab says “connected as guest”, does not display anything.
4. Click on “connect as”, try all variations of credentials, but we always get “Failed to connect to server”
What we tried:
- username
- username@dns-windows-domain-name
- NETBIOS-DOMAIN-NAME\username (in caps)
- netbios-domain-name\username
- dns-windows-domain-name\username
…and all of the above with / instead of \ (slash instead of backslash).
Any ideas? Is this expected behaviour?
Thanks for your comments…
david
@David
Yeah, this is kind of expected behavior – but only because there is no proper Samba implementation yet. We were not sure this would fit into 1.5, and believed the workaround actually worked.
BUT we really want to have it – so Attila volunteered to go through the implementation, and get it right for the final release.
BinaryNights
Hi guys,
great to hear that! Cheers to Attila.
Why the preview window can only be enlarge only to a point about 3 inches from bottom, and enlarging it further does not increase the size of the thumbnail preview of the file. Text is almot nor readabe for doc or xls files, would be nice to get a little bigger!!
Great product! Would sure like to see saveable tabs and navigator button for each pane.
Regarding the Finder “replacement”: I think he meant the “Reveal in Finder” option in PathFinder:
‘You can now set Path Finder as your “Default File viewer”! See the Path Finder Reveal preferences for this preference. Activating this will redirect all “Reveal in Finder” calls from other applications to Path Finder.’
I would really like to see this for Forklift too.
btw, a great reference for how the Batch Renaming UI could be improved is Many Trick’s (fantastic) app Name Mangler:
http://www.manytricks.com/namemangler/
incredibly well thought out UI.
maybe it’s just me, but i can’t think of an instance where i’d need to stack operations for a batch rename (like y’all are doing with the (+) interface) to do all at once. it’s pretty, but awkward to achieve simple tasks.
A HUGE request – for Delete App can you prompt the user to “Check” the apps they wish to delete?
Currently it asks me to “uncheck” Apps I want to keep. Having over 100 apps installed – this feature is unusable.
More often than not I suspect users will be deleting less apps than keeping.
Keep up the great improvements!
Ack.. nevermind. I just realized it filters by the folder/app you’re on. I had run the “Delete App” while my “Applications” folder was selected.
*shamed*