Product Reviews

Mac OS 8 effectively saw off one of the most powerful and popular utilities of all time - Now Utilities. More than a single tool, Now Utilities was a complete suite that burrowed deep into the system software in several ways. With Mac OS 8, the work involved in upgrading the utilities proved too much for Now Software, the developers, and a buyout by Qualcomm (of Eudora fame) hasn't produced a new Mac OS 8-compatible version.

But there is hope for the many stranded Now Utilities users for whom upgrading to Mac OS 8 meant reduced versatility. Power On Software, where many of the programmers responsible for Now Utilities have moved to since the buyout, has rolled out beta versions of a suite of utilities that encompasses most of the functions carried out by Now Utilities.

ACTION Files takes over from Now SuperBoomerang, which is probably the utility missed most by users, and certainly one of the elements of Now Utilities which gave most power. Operating mainly within the Open and Save dialog boxes, Now SuperBoomerang allowed exact control over where files were placed or found on your hard disk.

ACTION Files incorporates similar features to Now SuperBoomerang, but in a cleaner way. Any Open or Save dialog box gets a menu bar full of new commands, and files and folders visible in the dialog box list are displayed with the standard Finder attributes of size, date, label and kind. In addition, an application with Open or Save as a menu choice gains hierarchical choices of recent and favourite documents or folders from the respective menu, as long as the application uses Apple's standard menu code.

ACTION menu commands range from the mundane - New Folder, Open, Cancel - to the downright clever, such as Get Info, Make Alias, Move to Trash, and Open Window in Finder. By selecting

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a folder or file as a favourite (from the Edit menu), it's listed permanently in the respective ACTION menu. You can navigate the dialog box to folders already open in the Finder by choosing the folder in the Finder menu, or simply by clicking on the Finder window itself - both these options work for Mac OS 8 tabbed windows as well as standard open windows. The rebound feature is useful for those people with loads of consecutively named files, because it automatically selects the previously accessed item on return to the folder.

The document list window is drag-resizable. Folders and documents can be sorted by attribute, merely by clicking on the attribute heading. Attributes displayed are selected and deselected from the View menu, and you can view by attribute even when the attribute itself isn't displayed in the list. Sort order can be ascending or descending, and display font and size are also selectable.

Coupled with the ACTION Files system extension is an associated control panel called ACTION Utilities. This is the central home base from where you configure all the utilities you choose to install from the forthcoming suite. This is a nice touch, as just the utilities you need have to be installed, and a central control makes set-up easy. Main controls within the control panel affect the number of recently opened folders or documents listed within applications, and how items in the Folder and Document menus are sorted. You can also disable ACTION Files or turn off its dialog box list resize feature for any specific applications from here.

ACTION Files is an option for ex-Now SuperBoomerang users who've upgraded to Mac OS 8 and miss the power that Now SuperBoomerang used to give. However, a couple of glitches surfaced under testing. A folder alias which was made favourite became a document rather than a folder from the ACTION menu, with the result that an Open dialog box couldn't open it from the menu, and a Save dialog box couldn't see it from the menu. Also, clicking on files in a Save dialog box list made file names disappear. Hopefully, these problems will be sorted out in the final release, which ideally will also add a keyboard shortcut for accessing favourite folders.

The only other drawback is cost. If each ACTION utility costs the same as the proposed price of ACTION Files, most users will not be able to afford the entire suite.