Nasty Finder Bug in 10.2
Comments: 2
…or Night of the Living Desktop
Back in April I stopped using the Desktop based on a tip that turning it off provides something of a speed boost. Things did get snappier, and despite my initial hesitation I grew to like not having a ton of files cluttering the background of my work space. Keeping ~/Desktop available in column view quickly became a neat replacement.
That is until Jaguar came along. TinkerTool enables you to change a Finder setting that hides or enables the Dektop. If you open com.apple.finder.plist in your home Preferences directory, the key looks like this:
<key>CreateDesktop</key>
<true/>
Changing that “true” to “false” either with TinkerTool or a text editor like BBEdit upsets the Finder terribly, provoking random crashes when moving files, using spring-loaded folders, or changing the view of a window. I can crash the Finder 100% of the time by choosing Show View Options (Cmd-J) from the View menu. Leave that setting the hell alone, however, and all is well.
DeskShade Plus is an interesting little utility that allows you to hide the Desktop (that’s not all it does) but while the return to neatness is certainly worth the $7 asking price, the speed boost that was my original intention remains trapped on the other side of this bug: the Finder is still running the Desktop, albeit hidden behind a ‘screen’ and the computer now has another process running (admittedly a very low overhead one).
Update: [Following day] MacOSXHints.com has a post about this bug this morning. The author associates it with TinkerTool but, as I discovered by editing the plist manually, it’s not TinkerTool’s fault.
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Posted to Computers • 2002.09.01 (Sun) • 21:01
Comments
Posted by fsb 2002.10.02, 03:17
one alternative is to use photostickies. open a solid color and enlarge it to cover the whole desktop then “window:all to back level”. now you can show or hide the desktop by hiding and unhiding photostickies. i don’t know if it speeds things up but i sure like being able to hide all my desktop clutter when i’m working in photoshop or whatnot.
Posted by fsb 2002.10.02, 03:28
one alternative is to use photostickies. open a solid color and enlarge it to cover the whole desktop then “window:all to back level”. now you can show or hide the desktop by hiding and unhiding photostickies. i don’t know if it speeds things up but i sure like being able to hide all my desktop clutter when i’m working in photoshop or whatnot.
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