Pref Setter 1.2 review

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Pref Setter is an application to view/edit Mac OS X's preference files.

License: Freeware
OS: Mac OS X
File size: 617K
Developer: Night Productions
Price: $0.00
Updated: 29 Aug 2006
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Pref Setter is an application to view/edit Mac OS X's preference files. Very useful for many things, including enabling options not available via an application's preferences.

How do I use it?
The application is rather simple to use. When you launch it, it will display a floating window on the left of the screen. This window will display all of the preference files that could be found. Double click (or use the menu option File -> Open Quickly or keyboard shortcut Shift-Command-O (??O) or the contextual menu) to open any of these preference files. Here, you'll see the contents of the preference file, and can edit them if you so wish.

Pref Setter has full undo/redo support. Anything that you add/delete/modify can be undone or redone. There is also cut/copy/paste/drag & drop support.

Pref Setter also has a find feature, that will search through your preference files looking for occurrences of the search term you give it. You can double click on any returned results to open that preference file up, or select multiple results and use the menu option "Open Quickly" (keyboard shortcut Shift-Command-O (??O) ) or use the contextual menu.

There is help available via Pref Setter's Help menu if you need more specific help.

How much will it cost me?
Nothing. Nada. Zilch. In other words, completely free. I'm committed to keeping all of my applications free, both now and in the future.

What's New:
New Features:
You can now drag/paste a “defaults write....” string into Pref Setter.
Drag & Drop on tabs
You can now drag a plist file from the Finder onto a document window or tab and have the contents added to that plist file.
Column sizes in lists are now saved
You can now reorder the columns in lists
Find panel now has a column showing the values
Find panel will now display the number of results found
You can now double click on the “disabled” items in the Find panel to open up that plist file. You can also Get Info on these items.
New alert dialog that will display if you try to paste/drag an item with a name that already exists in the document you're pasting/dragging to.
New crash reporter dialog. If it detects a crash since the last time it ran, a dialog will open up your default email client and send the crash report to me (if you so choose).
New “Send Feedback…” menu item, which opens up your default email client to send me feedback
New setting controlling whether or not custom colors are used in the lists. This is off by default — if you want any custom colors you may have set, you'll need to enable this setting (found in the Fonts & Colors portion of the Preferences window).
Can now set a custom font for the lists and tabs.
If you are using tabs, document position & settings are saved/restored when you switch between tabs (Note: starting a search resets these settings).
You can now undo past a save
Selections are now drawn shaded
“Open Domain Quickly” window can now be set to always be visible, even when in the background
The print output now has colored syntax.

Changed Features:
Changed Pref Setter's identifier from com.dreamstatic.prefSetter to net.nightproductions.prefSetter. The values are transferred to the new domain, and the com.dreamstatic.prefSetter.plist file is deleted from the Preferences folder.
Changed the way dragging/pasting as text works
Got rid of the prefSetter.... string; now an XML property list string is used.
Dragging multiple items to a text document now coalesces all the defaults and XML strings together
Removed custom toolbar showing the search bars; “Open Domain Quickly” and document windows now have a normal toolbar
Preferences window redesigned
Minor tweaks to the tabs
Get Info window has been updated, and added entries for the owner/group and access permissions of the file being viewed
Find panel has been slightly rearranged
About window slightly changed
Help documentation updated

Bug Fixes:
Fixed a bug where undo/redo could stop working
Fixed the “crashing on window close” bug on multiprocessor machines
Fixed an issue where dragging/pasting in an item that already exists would create a second item of the same name. When saving a document that had such duplicate names, it was undefined as to which one was actually saved.
Fixed an issue where you would be allowed to name a new key or rename a key to have the same name as another existing key.
Fixed a bug where dragging an array or dictionary to another document window could cause items in them to not be able to be deleted
Fixed a bug when adding new items while in a search. These items would only exist while in the search and disappear when it was done.
Fixed the issue where pressing the “Don't ask me again” check box in the delete warning dialogs wouldn't actually set that option (i.e. it would still ask again)
Fixed the issue where closing a tabbed window with unsaved changes could display the dialog asking if you want to save your changes more than once for any given document.

Pref Setter 1.2 keywords