FileUtilsCM X 1.7.3

Reviewed by Harry {doc} Babad © 2008

Aracode, Inc http://free.abracode.com/cmworkshop/ Released: November 4, 2007 Freeware, Donations requested   System Requirements: Mac OS X 10.4 or later including Leopard; Universal binary.   Strengths: Easy to install use to give faster access to some finder actions via you contextual menus.

Weaknesses: Information about some of the modules is sparse unless you are a user of non-Macintosh operating systems.   Previous Reviews: links to previous macCompanion reviews on the same product.   For a demo of this product: >Demo download page   Copyright Notice: Product and company names and logos in this review may be registered trademarks of their respective companies.   Reviews were carried out on my iMac 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 2 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM running Mac OS X version 10.5.3.   Disclaimer: When briefly reviewing share-freeware I will often use the developer’s product, functions and features descriptions. All other comments are strictly my own and based on testing. Why need I rewrite the developer’s narratives, if they are clearly written?

 

Introduction Including Publisher’s Summary

Over my years as a Macintosh user both of the Classic and the newer Macintosh OS X version, I have sought out applications to add functionality to the OS’s interface. For the most part I’ve found individual applications and more recently Contextual Menu Items that I individually installed — something I found more esthetically cluttered then I’d like.

 

So when I discovered that FileUtilsCM installed tools which included the ability to:

• Copy a document or folder path to clipboard
• Toggle a file or folder into lock/unlock
• Set file type and creator from extension
• Occasionally, remove file type and creator, and
• Refresh the look of an object in Finder

I thought, "Why not?" — the result is this review. Although the program has other attributes, see its features, these were the tools I use, having installed individual application/CM to handle the specific tasks.

 

Getting Started

Installing the program was easy using Install FileUtilsCM, a script. It was also simple to set up its attributes (features) using the program’s FileUtilsSetup application. Should I want to try something else there is also a deinstaller script.

 

 

Once installed, you may deactivate any module you do not need via the software’s preferences which are accessed directly from the contextual menu.

 

Accessing and using the products features is trivially easy. Any selected plugin is activated when you click on any object in Finder. By either control clicking (one-button mouse) of using the right hand button on three-button (or more) mouse brings up a contextual menu appropriate to the format of the selected item. There are different actions/choice available for document, folder and/or applications.

 

 

As illustrated below, when you open a contextual menu, an item called “more” is found at the bottom of the window. Access “more” brings up a second CM window that lists the available actions or leads to further nested utilities. Because it has so many features, FileUtilsCM places its options in two submenus, one listing actions it can perform and another showing detailed information about the selected Finder item.

 

File and Folder Actions - Note these, to my surprise your choices are identical for documents and folder but I’m not sure why.

 

 

Folder and File Information (Submenus are aligned to save space.)

 

I’ve used FileUtilsCM for several weeks, in anticipation of this review. It's saved me both time (minutes) when bringing up finder info and refreshing finder objects. I also have used it to occasionally tweak file type and creator to access orphan files to extract their content. The later use is on recipes from downloaded recipe collections for which I don’t own the software. It even works on occasion and is more fun then the alternative. The alternative, of course is to do Google searches on each in individual recipe based on its

file name — aren’t thousands of hits wonderful.

 

Complete Feature List — FileUtilsCM is a contextual menu plug-in for setting different file or folder attributes. It is a set of several utilities, which can:

 

• Refresh the look of an object in Finder,
• Copy path to clipboard,
• Touch (reset) creation and modification dates,
• Toggle document/file/application lock,
• Set write/read-only Unix attribute — Untested, have no need
• Toggle extension visibility,
• Set file type and creator from extension (by consulting internetconfig preferences),
• Remove file type and creator — Untested, have no need
• Remove resource fork — Untested, have no need since my email program deals with sending email from my Macintosh to users using other platforms like Linux.
• Clear "execute" Unix attribute — Untested, have no need.
• Obtain file information in "File Info" submenu.

 

Discomforts

There are a number of limitations to the program of that I’d like added at the next major update.

• Alas, a folder or disk size is not calculated (nor are bundled applications.)
• Neither are aliases resolved, but you can set properties or view information about alias file itself. (I have no idea why I would do the later.)
• Although I checked both the product’s readme files and information on the website, I had a bit of trouble understanding what the individual modules did, once I stepped outside the standard /Finder/OS — vocabulary; please add longer definitions please to the readme file.

The former would be useful, but I’m not sure whether I’d use a more robust alias tool.

 

Conclusions and Recommendation

Abracode’s FileUtilsCM 1.7.2 is a contextual-menu plugin that provides a number of options for working with file attributes in the Finder. I found many of the freeware the FileUtilsCM useful, other not so much or not at all. However the price is right — Free. So try the product, and if you find it eases your daily repetitive file associated chores by using conceptual menu, go for it. Despite I only found half of its modules useful, I have not yet deinstalled CM utilities such as the Path Finder CM <http://www.cocoatech.com/>; but there’s no conflict between the two CM’s. Never the less, I cannot deny it 4.5 macCs.

 

I also recommend you check out the developers QuickAccessCM which I will review next month. It is CM tool for getting easy access to frequently used folders, documents and applications.

 

Note

"Touch" is a Unix command that updates the modification date of a file, changing it to the current date and time. So, "touch modification date" means to update the modification date of the target file. As noted elsewhere, alas no reference, better names for the menu item might be "touch file" or "Update modification date."