Version 8.5410th March 2010 The new release allows droplets to be locked so that they cannot be edited by double clicking them. This can be useful for system administrators who need to distribute droplets to end-user and want to avoid them being edited by mistake. Version 8.533rd March 2010 This release adds a new action that removes all diacritical marks (accents, umlauts, etc) from file names. Version 8.5224th February 2010 This release further improves the handling of international character sets and fixes a minor bug. Version 8.512nd February 2010 This release adds a new "Replace using regular expressions" action to the "Advanced & Special" category that acts in a way familiar to most software developers and unix geeks. The action that was formerly known under that name is still available as "Re-arrange using regular expressions" and continues to work as before. You should not have any problems with your existing droplets or presets. Please note that regular expressions are an advanced feature, that may be completely unsuitable for casual computer users. They are very powerful, but basically also represent a particularly cryptic programming language in their own right and have a big learning curve. The documentation links to external resources for learning about regular expressions. Version 8.5029th January 2010 This new release fixes a problem introduced by the additional safety checks in version 8.49 released two days ago. The problem occured only when you were attempting to change the case of a file name (e.g. convert to uppercase, lowercase, sentence case). In this scenario version 8.49 would refuse to rename the file because a file of the same name already existed (HFS+ is case preserving but not case sensitive). Version 8.4927th January 2010 This is a recommended update for all 8.x users. It fixes an extremely rare but potentially serious bug. Version 8.4820th January 2010 This is a minor update that removes the current restriction of the step value in the sequence number actions having to be no greater than 255. Version 8.476th January 2010 This new version replaces the old RegExLib regular expression library with its modern RegExLibLite counterpart that uses the ICU library that is built into Leopard and Snow Leopard. This should result in faster regular expressions processing and more elegant international character set handling, as well as cutting down on the application size. The next version of A Better Finder Rename 8 will deliver further enhancements based on this new library. There are detailed differences between the old and the new libraries, but this should not have much effect on run-of-the-mill regular expressions use. Please consult the "Help" menu for more information. The new version also makes the accurate but very slow calculation of folder sizes introduced in 8.43 optional and switches it off by default. If you need accurate folder and bundle sizes you can switch this feature on in the preferences. Calculating the size of a folder involves calculating the size of all the files and sub-folders that it contains and can thus be very slow (try Get Info... in the Finder). This speed penality can't be justified if like most people you never use the "sort by file size" feature. Version 8.4621st December 2009The new version fixes a minor bug that could cause the preset description not to be saved correctly. Version 8.459th December 2009The new version fixes two minor bugs:
Version 8.442nd December 2009The new version adds support for using roman numerals in file names. You can produce a roman numeral list (e.g. Chapter I, Chapter II, etc.) or insert roman numerals at the beginning or end of the file name. Version 8.4330th November 2009The new version now correctly calculates the size of bundle files. Version 8.4224th November 2009Improves unicode support for better international character set support. Version 8.4119th November 2009This bug fix release is a recommended upgrade for all users of versions 8.39 and 8.40. Version 8.39 introduced a regression that broke the handling of case sensitive file names. Version 8.4018th November 2009This release makes signifcant improvements to the "rename from file list" feature. It introduces a new simplified way of specifying current name/ new name pairs in tab delimited text files to complement the existing full path/ new name format. It also features several minor improvements in error reporting, saving file lists, updates the documentation regarding these features, etc. Version 8.3916th November 2009This release addresses a potentially serious bug and is a recommended upgrade for all A Better Finder Rename 8 users. Version 8.3811th November 2009This releases fixes a bug affecting fast typists only. Version 8.379th November 2009The new release dramatically speeds up the file comments (aka spotlight comments) protection feature introduced in the previous version. Version 8.3628th October 2009The new release is a recommended upgrade for all A Better Finder Rename 8 users with an up-to-date Leopard or Snow Leopard installation. It prevents file comment comment loss by explictly copying the file comments from the old file to the "new" file. This behaviour can be switchd off in the preferences but is switched on by default. Apple's file comment (aka Spotlight comment) implementation is notoriously fragile with file comments disappearing for all kinds of reasons, including moving files to non HFS+ volumes, deleting .DS_Store files, moving files outside of the Finder (e.g. via the terminal), saving documents to new locations, archiving and un-archiving files, putting them under version control, etc, etc. For that reason, we strongly advise against using file comments to keep track of important data. It appears that after taking several years to (recently) fix file comment loss for many standard API calls, Apple have managed to "break" file comments again with recent updates to Leopard and Snow Leopard (worked on 10.6.0). It is thus possible that you will lose file comments if you use previous versions of A Better Finder Rename. Version 8.3526th October 2009This release fixes a cosmetic issue on Snow Leopard and enables Command-W closing of the application. Earlier today, version 8.34 was posted with a minor display bug. If you have downloaded that version please update it. Version 8.3321st October 2009This release contains significant improvements to the handling of unlock codes and should make unlocking the product significantly less error prone. Version 8.325th October 2009Fixes a rare problem with composed unicode characters affecting the "rename from file list" feature. Version 8.311st October 2009The new release allows A Better Finder Rename to be used as part of your ImageCapture workflow on Snow Leopard. Version 8.3023rd September 2009The new release includes a new version of the preferences pane that handles system with a legacy A Better Finder Launcher installation more gracefully. It also fixes a minor bug where the number of renamed files was reported incorrectly under particular circumstances. Version 8.2916th September 2009Addresses a problem when trying to rename files containing a forward slash on Snow Leopard. Version 8.289th September 2009Snow Leopard specific changes only:
Version 8.2712th August 2009This release adds an "A Better Finder Rename 8..." menu item to the services menu and allows A Better Finder Rename to be started by selecting files in the Finder or other applications via the "Services" menu. This also means that the new release is now Snow Leopard compatible. Version 8.2629th July 2009This release contains a number of enhancements:
Version 8.2523rd July 2009This release contains multiple bug fixes for rare multi-threading issues:
The new release also improves the regular expression matching algorithm to more elegantly deal with unicode composed character sequences (e.g. French accents, umlauts, etc). Version 8.2412th July 2009Fixes a bug affecting 8.23. Version 8.238th July 2009The new release adds new ways of using MP3/AAC tags to rename rename music files:
Other changes:
Version 8.2225th June 2009This release fixes a display issue with file names that contain forward slashes. Version 8.2110th June 2009This release delivers significant performance improvements and focuses on optimizing the renaming and file name computation.
This is the last of our performance and scalability related releases for a while and most users should notice dramatic speed improvements, especially on large renaming jobs. Version 8.2028th May 2009The new version provides easy all-in-one error reporting and fixes compatibility with some G5-based systems. Version 8.1927th May 2009 This new version delivers an order of magnitude speed improvement for the conflict resolution feature. Further improvements:
Version 8.186th May 2009 The new version features an improved renaming engine that is faster, uses less memory and can process larger rename jobs. It also resolves a crashing issue that affected some Mac OS X configurations under version 8.17. Version 8.1724th April 2009 This release fixes problems on older Macs equipped with 64-bit PowerPC G5 processors. Version 8.1623rd April 2009 This release cleans up some problems with yesterday's 8.15 release. The move to 64-bit did not go as well with "The Big Mean Folder Machine" a few months ago and some bugs crept in that this releases fixes.
Version 8.1522nd April 2009 This release takes A Better Finder Rename 8 to a 64-bit garbage collected architecture and prepares the ground for important scalability and performance improvements that we hope to deliver in the next two releases. A direct link to our brand-new support forums has been added to the "Help" menu and minor updates to the optional contextual menu plugin, hot key and system preferences modules are included. Note also that our version numbering scheme has changed. Instead of the 8.x.x numbering we now use a 8.x scheme, where the "x" is simply the release number. This gives us more room for more frequent updates now that we have the automatic update feature firmly in place. Sorry if this causes any confusion for long term users; it's new but once you get used to the idea it's a win-win. Version 8.1.41st April 2009 This is the latest stable release and the release you'll get by downloading directly from the website. The new 64-bit version is still plagued by a crashing bug on some systems. We hope to have solved the problem within the next few days. This release fixes a bug affecting file name conflict resolution resolution. Version 8.1.327th March 2009 This release fixes a bug affecting the conversion to legal Windows NTFS/SMB and Mac OS 9 file names. Version 8.1.218th March 2009 The new version protects iPhoto and iTunes libraries from accidental damage. You should never directly rename files that are under the control of management application such as iPhoto and iTunes because you risk damaging meta-data held by such applications, such as albums, play lists, etc. You should first export the files you want to rename before changing their names. A Better Finder Rename 8 now brings up a warning dialog when you attempt to make such a modification. Version 8.1.118th February 2009 This release improves the usability of the "Remove specific characters" and "Replace specific characters" actions to avoid confusion with similar text-based features. Version 8.19th February 2009 This release focuses on performance and memory utilization. The conflict resolution stage is now much faster for large jobs and the performance of all stages of the renaming pipeline has been improved. Version 8.0.927th January 2009 This fixes a problem with the new preview list refresh feature introduced in 8.0.8. The preview is now correctly refreshed when the renaming operation is cancelled. Version 8.0.814th January 2009 This release makes a long requested change to the behavior of the program.
This enables you to perform multiple renames one step at a time, but in general you should still prefer using the multi-step renaming feature, because this only resolves file name conflicts once and not multiple times giving you a cleaner result if intermediary steps cause file name conflicts. The new behavior is switched on by default, so if you prefer the old behavior you need to switch it off in the "Preferences..." dialog box. Version 8.0.722nd December 2008 In a recent Mac OS X update, Apple have corrected a long standing bug that affected the renaming of files containing the forward slash character. This has made the workaround used by A Better Finder Rename to remedy this bug obsolete and prevented it from renaming such files correctly itself. This new release removes the workaround and restores A Better Finder Rename's ability to rename to file names containing forward slashes. Version 8.0.617th December 2008 This release fixes a bug in the preference pane component. Version 8.0.510th December 2008 This new release adds the ability to remove blocks of numbers from existing file names. Version 8.0.425th November 2008 The new release adds new renaming actions to the Date & Time category:
It also contains a number of minor improvements and fixes. Version 8.0.33rd November 2008 The new release provides the option of switching off the automatic file name conflict resolution feature during the preview. When handling large numbers of files this can dramatically speed up the previewing speed of the application since the conflict resolution is the most time-consuming part of the preview computation. You can switch the conflict resolution on or off in the little "gear" menu under preview table at any moment. By default it is switched off, so you'll need to switch it on explicitly to preview conflict resolution results. Whatever the preview settings, conflict resolution is always performed before any files are renamed. In addition, the new version also adds a few new conflict resolution schemes. Version 8.0.227th October 2008 The new version fixes a date sorting bug affecting only dates before the 1st of January 2000. Version 8.0.114th October 2008 This new version adds three new ways of adding image dimensions to the file names. Version 8.017th September 2008 Three years, 48 point releases and 7 betas after version 7 was released in 2005, A Better Finder Rename 8 is finally shipping. This type of development effort is only made possible by the support of a dedicated team of alpha testers, who ensure that by the time the first public beta is released, the new version has already undergone extensive fault and acceptance testing. Special Thanks to:
Extra special thanks to John Spannenburg who's managed to keep me up until late at night for the past few weeks :-) Version 8.0 beta 79th September 2008 This is the first release candidate for version 8.0.
Version 8.0 beta 627th August 2008
Version 8.0 beta 519th August 2008 In this release:
Version 8.0 beta 411th August 2008 In this release:
Version 8 is a major upgrade and free to customers who have purchased the product after the 1st of January 2007 or who own a forever license. Other users will need to purchase an upgrade. Version 8.0 beta 37th August 2008 This release fixes a crashing bug introduced in yesterday's second beta. Version 8.0 beta 26th August 2008 This is the second public beta of A Better Finder Rename 8. Version 8 is a major upgrade and free to customers who have purchased the product after the 1st of January 2007 or who own a forever license. Other users will need to purchase an upgrade. This second beta:
You can download the new beta release from the download page, or via the automatic update feature ("Check for Update..." in the "A Better Finder Rename 8" menu). Version 8.0 beta 14th August 2008 This is the first public beta of A Better Finder Rename 8. Version 8 is a major upgrade and free to customers who have purchased the product after the 1st of January 2007 or who own a forever license. Other users will need to purchase an upgrade. Here are some of the highlights of the new version:
The major missing feature from this first beta are save-able presets, a much requested feature that will definitely make it into the final release. You can download the beta release from the download page. Version 7.9.9.331st July 2008 Like the last minor release this one was prompted by an alpha tester finding a bug in the forthcoming version 8 (beta 1 probably out next week!) that also affects version 7. The new release fixes a memory leak in the "Add Image Dimensions" rename action. Version 7.9.9.216th July 2008 While development on version 8 is fast approaching the public beta stage, my alpha testers have discovered some bugs that go back to version 7..
Version 7.9.9.17th July 2008 Minor bug fix release: fixes contextual menu problems. Version 7.9.925th June 2008 The new release adds support for UTF-16 ID3 tags in MP3 music files. Version 7.9.821st May 2008 This is a minor update that improves the unlock procedure. Version 7.9.7.12nd April 2008 Improved support for site licensing. Version 7.9.720th February 2008 Adds a new "convert to sentence case" rename action. Version 7.9.6.17th February 2008 Two minor bug fixes:
Version 7.9.616th January 2008 It is now possible to add files to the preview using the Finder context menu while the programming is running. Version 7.9.5.62nd January 2008 This is a minor bug fix update. Version 7.9.5.519th December 2007 This version uses a more robust way of identifying and correctly ignoring invisible files during renames. Version 7.9.5.110th December 2007 This is a very minor update that simply improves consistency between the program and the on-site screencast. In the screencast the demonstrated action is called "Produce sequence number list" whereas we renamed this to "Create sequence number list" in the 7.9.5 release. This apparently has caught out a lot of people. Sorry about that. The name is back to the original now. Version 7.9.528th November 2007
adds the ability to include an image's dimensions to the file name, re-organizes the action menu and fixes a minor bug. Version 7.9.4.511th November 2007 This is a recommend update for all A Better Finder Rename users on Leopard. It sets the correct default renaming mode appropriate for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. Version 7.9.423rd October 2007 Improves the default sorting of the preview window and delivers full Leopard compatibility. Version 7.9.3.518th October 2007 Fixes a bug affecting the "Rename from file list" feature. Version 7.9.326th September 2007 Updates the preview window with an iTunes-like layout, tweaks the user interface for the multi-step rename feature and contains other minor refinements. Version 7.9.229th August 2007 Makes further improvements to the multi-step rename feature:
Version 7.9.18th August 2007 This is a minor bug fix release resolving a launch problem on Mac OS X 10.4.0 only. Version 7.925th July 2007 Introduces a second sorting order for all renaming actions that use ordering. The second sorting order will be used in situations where the first sorting order assigns the same rank to two or more items. Up to now the order in which items with identical rank appeared in the sort was essentially random. Such situations are rare in normal operation, but with the advent of sub-second continuous shooting modes on modern SLR and SLR-like digital cameras, digital photos with identical EXIF timestamps are becoming more common. Setting the first sorting order to "By EXIF digital camera date" and the second sorting order to "By name and sequence number" will allow you to maintain the proper ordering of continuous shooting mode pictures when creating new sequence numbers from the original file names. Version 7.8.616th July 2007 Fixes a crashing bug introduced by a recent QuickTime update that affects only droplets. Version 7.8.526th June 2007 This releases introduces "silent" droplets that are capable of being used in fully automated workflows without human supervision. More information is available in the manual. The are also various minor bug fixes and improvements especially in the confirmation dialog. Version 7.8.111th June 2007 The new release fixes a bug affecting the "Add folder name to beginning" and "Add folder name to end" rename actions. Version 7.823rd May 2007 The new version adds a few additional renaming actions to make the interface more easily understandable:
The new release also updates the preferences pane component to correctly reflect the fact that all users who have purchased version 7 after the 1st of January 2007 will be given free upgrades to version 8 (including minor updates up to, but not including version 9.0) Version 7.7.714th May 2007 This releases fixes two problems:
Version 7.7.623rd April 2007 This release adds the "ultra-fast, ultra-safe" renaming mode, which uses the same renaming procedure as the Finder thus optimizing both speed and safety. This is now the default renaming mode. A minor problem with the conflict resolution dialog is also solved. Version 7.7.518th April 2007 The new release upgrades the mp3/mp4 tag reading code:
and introduces new mp3 renaming options:
Version 7.714th March 2007 The new release
Version 7.6.57th February 2007 The new release makes substantial improvements to the preview list:
Version 7.6.15th February 2007 This bug fix releases resolves a problem affecting the ability to edit droplets. Version 7.610th January 2007 The new version improves support for EXIF digital picture format to include the following:
Version 7.5.68th December 2006 This new release is a recommend update for all 7.5.5 users. It fixes a startup problem. Version 7.5.56th December 2006 The new version substantially improves the preview window, allowing it to be docked to the top, bottom or the right hand side and assisting with smart resizing and dragging. The preview drawer is still available but the separate preview window now becomes the default. The new release also adds new options for the date and time-based renaming actions. This is the first release that requires Mac OS X 10.4 or later! Version 7.5.11st December 2006 Fixes a minor menu error, where the positions of "Add sequence number to beginning" was accidentally swapped with "Add sequence number to end". Version 7.58th November 2006
Version 7.4.714th October 2006 The new version fixes the droplet editing feature that was accidentally broken in version 7.4.5. Version 7.4.630th September 2006 The new version updates the optional program components: the systems preferences pane, hot key and contextual menu plugin. Version 7.4.527th September 2006
Version 7.430th August 2006
Version 7.3.512th July 2006 Version 7.3.5 makes it easier than ever to use regular expressions to manipulate the file names through its new expression group preview. Version 7.37th June 2006 The new adds version adds an "Apply" button, which performs a rename without closing the application. You can vote to change the standard behavior of the tool by participating in our online poll. Version 7.2.53rd May 2006 The new release focuses on improving performance on large rename batches of more than a few hundred files. Other changes:
Version 7.2.219th April 2006 The new version updates the System Preferences Pane and the Hot Key Component to address a minor installation bug. Version 7.2.122nd March 2006 This release fixes a problem with case changes introduced in version 7.2 and is a recommend update for 7.2 users. Version 7.222nd March 2006 The new version improves the way in which file name conflicts are handled. It already marks potential name conflicts with warning signs inside the preview and offers a conflict resolution dialog during renaming. Version 7.1.515th February 2006 The new version adds improved RAW photo file handling:
The new version also adds more date formats and fixes a startup bug. Version 7.118th January 2006 The new release adds the ability to remove files from the preview window and further refines the preview feature. It is also the first Universal binary release of the product, meaning that it will run at native speeds on both PowerPC and Intel-based Macintoshes. Version 7.0.514th December 2005 The new version corrects teething problems with the entirely rewritten 7.0 release. In particular the tool now supports file names that contain forward slashes or composed unicode characters correctly, the hotkey component (if previously installed) is now upgraded automatically, minor UI glitches were fixed, etc. The new version is a recommend upgrade for 7.0 users. Version 716th November 2005 A Better Finder Rename 7 is the result of a complete 10-month rewrite of the 70,000+ lines of code that made up the version 6.9.5 release. Version 7 was engineered from ground-up to take advantage of Mac OS X's Cocoa application frameworks to offer a best-of-breed Macintosh user experience. We have taken the opportunity to improve nearly all aspects of A Better Finder Rename and there are countless small and not-so-small improvements. Amongst other features, version 7 adds the long-awaited ability to combine a number of different rename action in a single rename. Version 6.9.56th July 2005 The new release updates the hot key and preference pane components to provide an improved user experience:
Version 6.9.425th May 2005 This bug fix release correcting a sorting-related problem when you rename more than 1500 files at a time. Version 6.9.313th May 2005 Fixes problems under Mac OS 10.3. Version 6.9.212th May 2005 Fixes an installer bug. Version 6.9.111th May 2005 This a bug fix release fixing the "Change Number" feature that allows you to pad numbers embedded in your file names (image1.gif) with additional zeros (image001.gif) or add and subtract values (image005.gif). Version 6.913th April 2005 Version 6.9 now allows you not only to convert Macintosh files names to legal Windows NTFS file names, but also into account limitations of the SMB Windows file sharing service. Version 6.8.523rd March 2005 The new version provides sentence and title case conversion for MP3 and AAC tags. Version 6.823rd FEBRUARY 2005 A Better Finder Rename 6.8 provides a smart truncating feature which preserves file extensions wherever possible. Version 6.7.526th January 2005 Allows the current date and time to be exploited for renaming files. Version 6.71st December 2004 This update provides more advanced options for renaming MP3/AAC-encoded music files. More information in the manual. Version 6.6.617th November 2004 This minor update contains the new version of the System Preferences pane shared with the other A Better Finder series tools. The System Preference Pane update:
Version 6.6.54th NOVEMBER 2004 A Better Finder Rename now handles Apple iTunes AAC-encoded audio files as well as MP3 files. Version 6.613th OCTOBER 2004 A Better Finder Rename can now read MP3 music tags, including:
The new "Rename to MP3 information" action allows you to combine this information in a variety of ways. The new feature uses Quicktime extensively and this means that the renaming may not be quite as fast as usual. We have provided a first level MP3 Tag cache to speed up interactive previewing. Version 6.5.515th SEPTEMEBR 2004 The EXIF digital photo metadata support based on QuickTime technology introduced in version 6.4.5 proved to be accurate, but also slow. Something that became particularly obvious when dealing with large numbers of files. This new release thus focuses on EXIF performance improvements:
This has resulted in dramatically faster preview and rename performance for all EXIF or date-based actions. Version 6.518th AUGUST 2004 The new version improves compatibility with FileVault and some third-party file systems and external or remote devices. You can now choose between a "safe" mode which preserves file comments under Mac OS X but may not work on some third-party file systems, and the "fast" mode which will work with FileVault and under other non-standard configurations. Version 6.4.514th JULY 2004 This is the second release that focuses on EXIF digital photo metadata. It adds supports for EXIF data in TIFF and Canon Raw (.CRW & .THM) format files; both formats are used by some professional grade digital cameras for loss-less image capture. Version 6.416th JUNE 2004 The new version can use the date and time at which a digital camera picture was taken rather than relying on the picture's file creation date. This information is extracted from the EXIF metadata embedded in the picture files produced by most leading camera manufacturers. Version 6.3.519th MAY 2004 The new version allows the name of the enclosing folder to be added to the file name. Version 6.3.124th APRIL 2004 This point release fixes a startup bug affecting first-time users. It is a recommended upgrade for all 6.3 users. Version 6.321st APRIL 2004 The new version introduces regular expression substitution. This advanced renaming technique will be familiar to BBEdit users, UNIX veterans and most programmers. It may prove inappropriate for novice computer users. The A Better Finder Rename implementation covers:
The new version also improves the error reporting and handling. |
Download the combined A Better Finder Rename/ A Better Finder Attributes disk image or older versions for existing users. A Better Finder Rename costs only $19.95 on its own, and $34.95 bundled with A Better Finder Attributes and the Big Mean Folder Machine. Version 8 is a free upgrade for customers who purchased after the 1st of January 2007 or own a forever upgrade.
Reviews "Arguably the best file renaming utility on the market" Mac OS X Power Tools " About this Particular Macintosh "A utility that is as discreet as it is effective." Recommended by MacDigit.Com 10th March 2010 Version 8.54 allows droplets to be locked before being distributed to end users. Our Better File Rename for Windows product offers similar functionality for Windows users. Pro Tutorials
This is the first place you should look for solutions to common problems, including how to un-install.
File collections beware.. the Big Mean Folder Machine is coming for you.. Questions? Suggestions? Visit our support forums or drop us a mail at support@publicspace.net Get this or any other tool on this site for free by linking from your website or blog! |
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