Product Reviews

Utilities

ACTION Files 1.5.1 [MacUser]
COMPANY: Power On Software	PRICE: $29.95 online; Ł32.28 (Ł44.99 inc VAT)
RATING:	ISSUE: 16 3 DATE: Feb 00

Verdict: Enhancements to the Mac OS's Open and Save dialog boxes that quickly become indispensable.

As good as the Mac OS is, its Open and Save dialog boxes are firmly stuck in aretro-chic timewarp, making a mockery of today's multi-gigabyte file systems. ACTION Files from PowerON software is an enhancement to the standard dialog box which has proved to be everything Apple's woeful Navigation Services should have been, and more. It does this by adding file management utilities to the standard File dialog.

The real power of ACTION Files lies in the dialog box's menu bar. There are items for File, Edit, View Folders, Documents and Finder. File enables you to rename, delete, duplicate, make aliases, empty the Wastebasket and so on from the dialog box. It also contains an incredibly powerful Find routine which lets you chain together up to 14 separate search criteria.

The Edit menu incorporates the standard Cut, Copy and Paste functions. But, most importantly, there are commands to Add As Favourite and Add As Recent, which work with the Folder and Document menus.

The Folder menu lists the most recent folders you've used in the current application up to a user-defined



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limit, so hopping around between current work folders is a moment's work. What's more, you can define certain folders to be Favourites, so they appear permanently at the head of the menu, tagged by a bullet, and are always available in any application. The Documents menu simply does the same for documents, with the added advantage that choosing one from the list will open it. The Finder menu allows you to open the current folder in the Finder, and gives a list of all open Finder windows. Selecting one opens it in the dialog window, and clicking on any item on the desktop will display it as the current file or folder in the dialog pane.

Version 1.5.1 adds a few significant changes. There are now named separators in all menus, and the ability to update a database so it can be shared by the new ACTION Menus, which also provide most-recent lists in the File menus of all applications.

The main improvement is the ability to work with Apple's own Navigation Services. Previously, a Navigation Services dialog box would override an ACTION Files dialog box, leaving you stranded. Now Navigation Services dialog boxes display all the benefits of ACTION Files, with one exception: in the standard ACTION Files Save dialog box, you can double-click on the greyed-out file name, and ACTION Files will copy its name to the name field. But you can't in Save dialog boxes derived from Navigation Services, which is a pity, and the option to override Navigation Services has been removed from the control panel.

This glitch aside, ACTION Files is one of the few utilities that can be called indispensable, making everyday use of the Mac OS as simple as it should be.

By Tim Danaher