Yes, FruitMenu is brilliant. Far better than Classic Menu, and even better than the Apple Menu in 9. I've added a couple of drive partitions, the Applications and Favorites folders, and a folder of aliases to oft-used programs (subset of Applications), plus weeded out some of the standard dross (Get Mac OS X Software? Gee, I hope I don't miss that one too much...). Its only shortcoming: the 5-level path limit lives on.

Togs? One more than ASM.

Hi Loren,

So far with FruitMenu, I have added my Applications' folders, a volumes folder containing aliases to all my mounted disks and hard drives, Sherlock and a separate utilities folder to the OSX Apple Menu. All folders are now hierarchical up to 5 levels deep. I have combined the Sleep, Restart, Shutdown and Logout functions into one folder. System Preferences can now be opened as an application and it will also act as a folder for direct access an individual Preference Pane. I have removed the Dock and Location functions. There is more you can do, and Unsanity is open to suggestions.

I encourage you to give it a try. It lets you do all of what Classic menu allows you to do and more, and is much faster at accessing things in folders. I am very impressed with this hack, but saddened that all of this is available in OSX yet Apple has not enabled it themselves. Don't know if they ever will, so the $7 for this "haxie" is more than worth it.

Tried FruitMenu. Everything said here is true, as far as I can see. Except, when I launch Illustrator 10, the menu reverts to default "Apple Menu." Quit Illustrator, FruitMenu returns. Open Netscape, FruitMenu disappears. Nice try. Needs work. Unless there's some setting I'm missing, but there aren't many. Or am I missing the point? It only works in Finder? Must be me. I'll keep checking. That can't be right.

I saw similar behavior intermittantly until the next reboot. Now my menu is 100% fruity.

Folks-

Please post any info on RUMI products on display or in use at MWSF- shareware, freeware, betaware, commercial, whatever, so we may continue to Take Back The Mac and have our OSX cake too.

Wouldn't this be a great idea for a User Conference?

- Loren
www.neotrondesign.com
The Final Cut Pro 3.0 KeyGuide premieres at MacWorld!
See you there!

I use the trio of ASM, FruitMenu, and WindowShade X; the first is freeware and the latter two are shareware utilities for which I have gladly paid ($13 for the pair). Of course, it should be noted that Apple itself should take care of the interface shortcomings of Mac OS X.

I also renamed Dock.app to NODock.app so that the Dock never launches.

I would like to find a good Trash-on-the-Desktop solution. I have tried Trash X and found it lacking. I currently use keyboard shortcuts for moving items to the Trash and for emptying the Trash. Many times, however, I must open the Terminal to delete items in the Trash due to permissions problems and such, a very un-Macintosh behavior.

I use mostly Carbon applications (AppleWorks, iCab, Eudora, etc.). They seem to have the Mac feel down much better than the Next-ish Cocoa applications. They also generally support Macintosh technologies like metadata and AppleScript *much* better.

I hope that spring-loaded folders return. The rumors are that they will. I also wish that I could organize my entire disk the way I want it to be organized, or at least be able to change the view settings for the entire disk. Currently many things are immutable without resorting to Unix-y bit twiddling, and then many things break because paths and such are hard-coded, another non-Mac behavior. View settings are kept for items in the user's home directory only, again due to permissions problems. Before anyone starts defending file permissions and Unix traditions, please note that I am well versed in Solaris, Linux, HP-UX, etc. I know why things are the way they are (big server iron that is not user-focused) in that world. I also know why things are the way they are in the Macintosh world (user-centered workstations that are generally not shared by many people), and I want that world to stay true to its glorious heritage.

I know that this will not be popular with a certain contingent, but I feel that Thalo usually writes quite accurate summations of Mac OS X's current shortcomings. There is an interesting Usenet discussion that makes many of Thalo's assertions from a programmer's point of view.

Edited to fix window-stretching URL

Hi Phil - thanks for that link. I missed when that was posted originally. Coela is the answer to my prayers! Spring loaded column view navigating :-D
Now, you mention that there is a customisable toolbar....how would one do that? I notice in the 'instructions' that the guy has added folders and things to the toolbar at the bottom, but I can't seem to do it. My Japanese is a little rusty.

Also, preview column - would this be like in finder that when you click on an image for example, column view expands one more to show you a preview of the picture? If so, how do I enable this, as it is invaluable to me.

Again, many thanks for the link - finder is pretty much defunct now for me...well except when I have to 'connect to server'

That was just poor writing on my part, inputsprocket1.

What I wrote was "Having used the X Finder for a few months before crarko referred us to Coela, I've grown accustomed to some of its niceties like the configurable toolbar, preview column, copying files, and a few other things. "

I was referring to the niceties of the X Finder. Sorry for the confusion.

Craig Arko deserves the credit for brining Coela to our attention.

Phil

darn, I too have grown accustomed to the menu bar and it's ease - I like Coela's menu bar though as it's small and unobtrusive.
Just discovered you can't eject disks either :(
ho hum... and I was just contemplating whether it was worth not having a desktop pattern for the functionality of replacing the real Finder.app with Coella!

I wrote-
>>Wouldn't this be a great idea for a User Conference?<<

I spoke to David Pogue about it and he thought the concept was a terrific idea! I told him to get his butt into this thread when time pernmits, because this is a sensible thread.

So, there!

3 Togs to David!