GANNET  My best guess would be that your download is corrupted/incomplete. See if you can find out what the size of the zip archive is supposed to be (from the website) and compare it to the size of the file you have. If it's smaller than it should be, try downloading it again.  
(Version 13.0.3)

GANNET  OS X can read toast images (maybe nero too?) so if you want to convert toast to ISO, just open it with Disk Utility and convert to "CD/DVD Master" (which is equivalent to ISO).  
(Version 1.1.2)

GANNET  The Safari 4 beta is available with free registration at connect.apple.com. Anyone can grab it.  
(Version 3.2)

GANNET  This is a really nice little program, however it doesn't support special characters in the type/creator codes. I believe Mac OS Roman encoding is supposed to be used.  
(Version 3.0)

GANNET  I've been looking for a replacement for GraphicConverter for some time now but there's one specific feature I need that I haven't been able to find anywhere else: The ability to easily edit an image's mask in files like PNGs. Can Acorn do this? If not, is there any chance of this feature being added?  
(Version 1.2.1)

GANNET  7-zip is a modern *free* archive format with great compression and features. It has taken StuffIt a long time to add this basic support to Expander. But yes, there are of course freeware OS X products to create and expand 7z archives, such as 7zX.

The backup and integration features you mention are only available with Deluxe.  
(Version 13.0)

GANNET  I had initially thought they were going for good presentation in this release but the new DropStuff really sucks (in terms of interface/presentation) and the QuickLook plug-in is using pre-Leopard style folders, despite a nice Leopard folder for the app.  
(Version 13.0)

GANNET  Couple of things new in v13 that aren't mentioned:

- MacFUSE plug-in, allowing you to browse archives as if they were disk images (read and write).

- 7z support finally! Limited to expansion only (can't browse). Also LZMA compressed tar.

My opinion of StuffIt has not changed though and is just the same as all the other comments here. They have the mindset of a Windows developer. They would be wise to drop their Mac line and focus entirely on Windows where they will fit right in along with the zillions of other malware products.  
(Version 13.0)

GANNET  Small addition to that: Have an alias to the apps folder already included in the correct position on the templates.

Also, why does it use ADC compression? Zlib (UDZO) is the standard and is a bit better.  
(Version 1.5)

GANNET  The grid functionality is a neat idea. It got me thinking though. Two similar features would be really nice:

- Alignment guides (like in iWork) allowing you to easily align icons with each other or with the center of the window.

- Drop zones in the templates, allowing you to drop an icon into straight into the right position.

Also, the icon size should probably default to 128x128, seeing as all the templates are set up for icons that size.  
(Version 1.5)

GANNET  Except that RAR *isn't* state of the art/ tighter than other archive compression schemes. Just like DivX isn't state of the art for video compression, people only use it because other people are doing it and it's easy.

7-zip offers very competitive compression in comparison with RAR and is entirely free. If you want a nice, full-featured compression program for OS X you can get BetterZip (not free), which can compress to a variety of formats including 7-zip and RAR (RAR licence must be purchased separately).  
(Version 3.8b4)

GANNET  QuickTime *was* able to play swf files up to version 5 (Flash is up to version 10 now). As of QuickTime 7.3.1 Flash support has been completely locked out though.  
(Version 3.7.15.6198)

GANNET  Would it be possible to make an SWF QuickTime component? It would be great to be able to watch SWF files in Front Row.  
(Version 3.6.13.6160)

GANNET  Nah that's okay, I'm sure there's nothing you can do.  
(Version 1.5.6)

GANNET  Curious, I've been getting no response for at least a week. However I can ping it so I have no idea what the problem might be.  
(Version 1.5.6)

GANNET  The developer's site seems to be down. Hope everything's alright...  
(Version 1.5.6)

GANNET  That's up to the websites to recognise the browser and display the more featured version if it thinks the browser is capable of it. That's not gonna happen though so the workaround is to tell iCab to report as some other browser, like Firefox (if iCab has such a feature).  
(Version 4.0)

GANNET  Ah, a Leopard update at last :-)

I have a small bug report though: If a hazard is played on you and then a limit is played on you, you can immediately play the safety for the original hazard and still be granted a Coup-Fourré.  
(Version 1.0)

GANNET  That's not the point though. Why the heck would you pay for this? It even tags its own spam on the bottom of the quicklook window.  
(Version 1.0)

GANNET  Eh? The Tiger menu bar is quite different, with a glossy finish rather than a grey gradient.  
(Version 1.2.1)

GANNET  Can you make the value adjustable with a slider or something? Also, since you have to restart with every change, could you show a pic or two of what the opaque menu bar looks like?  
(Version 1.1)

GANNET  The ulterior motives are to discourage people from using this product so that we the consumers don't have to put up with horrible apps created by it.  
(Version R5)

GANNET  Links also work. Only doesn't work for text that is not a link.  
(Version 0.7b3)

GANNET  My context menu is killed only for text. Right-clicking on images or other stuff works fine. No crashing either.  
(Version 0.7b3)

GANNET  I can't get it to work either. Latest SIMBL. Stand loads but the quick search does not work.  
(Version 3.0L149)

GANNET  Btw, it says this works for DMGs too. Does that apply to all types of DMG or just uncompressed ones?  
(Version 2.5)

GANNET  Just have to say, Open URL is the coolest thing ever. No more downloading large zip archives when you only want one file from inside it!  
(Version 2.5)

GANNET  An excellent program for fast, simple tar archiving. Features such as optional AppleDouble encoding and file omissions make it useful for all purposes.  
(Version 1.3)

GANNET  As of QuickTime 7.2, the pro version is no longer required to play movies in full screen.  
(Version 7.4.2)

GANNET  Can someone tell us what's *really* new in 1.4b? The changes listed there (and on the Apple page) are exactly the same as what 1.3b said.  
(Version 1.4b)

GANNET  Yeah, I was just thinking if the user didn't have the relevant codecs installed but I guess it wouldn't really matter.  
(Version 2.2)

GANNET  Bug: If an app has no "Get Info String", AppHack will display the info string from a previously opened app.  
(Version 1.1)

GANNET  Depends if the update updates QT Player or just QT. Hm, maybe a helper app wouldn't be so bad. But I'd want it to be just one app, ie include WMV and anything else that might be useful. Perhaps opening the app could display preferences allowing you to enable/disable individual file types.  
(Version 2.2)

GANNET  Because then you have to keep this stupid little extra app sitting around. Nothing wrong with patching QT in this way, it's completely harmless and much nicer.  
(Version 2.1)

GANNET  Right, but having a separate app is pretty retarded - I always trash it.  
(Version 2.1)

GANNET  Can you add a WMV one? (Flip4Mac)  
(Version 2.1)

GANNET  No, I think you're missing what the hack is actually doing. It has nothing to do with the QuickTime engine, only QuickTime Player.app. It's main purpose is simply to allow file types such as flv to show a nice QuickTime flv icon on them which it otherwise can't do because the icons don't exist. Yeah, it also let's the files be associated with QuickTime easily but you can do that anyway.  
(Version 1.0.5)

GANNET  Release notes from the 2.0.2 Installer:

• Fixed a problem with multi-key combos and the 'A' key on the keyboard.

• VSYNC flag now enabled correctly at game start.  
(Version 2.0.2)

GANNET  Not surprisingly. Hacking it so that SIMBL will load it just makes Safari crash.  
(Version 0.62)

GANNET  Looking great on my mac, no problems yet. Love the new tab features plus the warning when you close multiple tabs. One thing missing: while it allows you to re-open last closed window it does not allow you to re-open last close tab.

Anyway, for those complaining about some sites not working, try enabling the debug menu and telling it to report as Firefox. This allows things like gmail chat to work :-)  
(Version 3.0b)

GANNET  This entire thing appears to be a trial - isn't the decompressor supposed to be free?  
(Version 5.0)

GANNET  Ah, a great program - this is so useful. Always wondered why OS X can't normally write to FTP volumes.

One request though: can you make it so that you can drag it around the way you can with other menu extras? (or why not make it an actual menu extra instead of an app?)  
(Version 1.1)

GANNET  Don't suppose it would be possible to make it so that tabs may be moved around (re-ordered)?  
(Version 0.3.1)

GANNET  While I hate StuffIt just as much as the next guy and agree with practically everything said here I'll just note that AFAIK, RAR is not free either. 7z typically provides the best compression ratio out of all the free compressors I know of but the absolute best compression ratios can only be found with proprietary formats. For practically everything, bzip2 suits me just fine though - almost as good as 7z and much faster.  
(Version 11.0.2)

GANNET  Hey, there's a fix for that? It's been well over two months since 11.0.2 was released, why isn't the fix public instead of hidden away like that?  
(Version 11.0.2)

GANNET  Okay, I tried on another computer and it does indeed work fine. So it's just my Safari then. Stink.  
(Version 1.1.1)

GANNET  Hm, tried it in Firefox and it's working fine. Guess Safari doesn't like it for some reason.  
(Version 1.1.1)

GANNET  This looks like a useful app but the archive seems to be corrupted or something. I can't extract it properly and if I manage to get the dmg file out of it it won't mount.  
(Version 1.1.1)

GANNET  I didn't quite follow what you're saying there but Icon files can cause problems because the filename actually ends with a line break.  
(Version 1.6)

GANNET  The menu problem I was having seems to have gone in the release, even though it isn't mentioned anywhere in the fixes :)

I'm still looking for a feature to show available buddies in the Adium menu though.  
(Version 1.0.1)

GANNET  Correction: It happens whenever any popup menu is displayed including the emoticon menu, encyption menu, status menu (in the Contacts window) and context menu.  
(Version 1.0)

GANNET  Got it: It happens whenever I click the smiley popup button in the toolbar.  
(Version 1.0)

GANNET  Sometimes I suddenly find all the menus are showing two of every item and there are two Adium menus. I haven't been able to work out the circumstances which trigger this though.  
(Version 1.0)

GANNET  My buddies aren't showing up in the Adium menu and I can't see a preference to enable this anywhere. Does Adium allow this?  
(Version 1.0)

GANNET  Heh, no nothing against you or Java either really, though I'd far prefer a pure cocoa app over Java any day.

I realise it may not have been developed on Windows initially (hence my 'correction') and it may use the cocoa framework but it is still very un-mac-like in many ways. I see now drag-n-drop does work but only for files, not folders. The folder structure down the left with folder contents on the right is very windows-like and can easily confuse mac users (I don't like it). Also, if you extract something somewhere down inside the archive structure it for some reason creates the entire folder structure above it too. Very odd and very wrong.

Sure the speed is very nice and the previews are pretty cool too but people generally expect extraction-only software to be free regardless. BetterZip allows creating and modifying of archives and saving them in a few different formats with various settings. This is the key difference and is well worth the $20, which is really not a lot of money. OS X can create zip archives (with no adjustable settings) and for some people this is enough but others demand much more functionality. Also, I think you'll find BetterZip is capable of reading even more formats than Zipeg.  
(Version 1.4)

GANNET  Correction: It is Java, designed with windows in mind and cannot support basic functionality mac users expect of it, like drag-n-drop.  
(Version 1.4)

GANNET  Zippeg seems reasonable but it is a cheap mac port of a windows program and isn't half as nice to use nor as featured as BetterZip.  
(Version 1.4)

GANNET  Seconded.

(actually, as of Mac OS 10.4, Expander does not come preloaded with new macs)  
(Version 11.0)

GANNET  Very nice little extension. The "stop when opening another sound" option doesn't seem to work for me though.  
(Version 5.0u)

GANNET  It's Smith Micro now :P  
(Version 11.0)

GANNET  I seriously hope that was sarcasm.  
(Version 11.0)

GANNET  I'd prefer the latter :-)  
(Version 1.1)

GANNET  A similar problem to what HERB mentioned below, I can't set codes using characters requiring the option key (non-ASCII).

Does the developer read these comments or should I go somewhere to see if this will get fixed?  
(Version 2.5.7)

GANNET  Wow, this is amazing. So simple. So fast.

I'm having problems with resource forks though: While zip and tar work fine, it doesn't seem to work properly for compressed tar and sit.

Just one feature request: An option to continue extracting any archived/encoded files within the initial archive.  
(Version 1.0)

GANNET  I tried the same thing and it worked for me. Did you rename it properly (from the Get Info window) or just hide the .cdr extension?  
(Version 1.4.2)

GANNET  Hidden files will show the resource files? Okay, that's cool. Thanks for the reply :-).

I'm keeping tabs on both this and Springy - I think BetterZip is a much nicer desgin but Springy's CM plugin is oh-so-tempting.  
(Version 1.2.1)

GANNET  Oh, and some feature requests :-)

1. Slider to adjust compression instead of just the three settings.

2. Remember last settings used.  
(Version 1.2.1)

GANNET  Seems like a reasonable program so far but I've just got a few problems:

1. If there is a space in the path to BetterZip's current location then 7zip doesn't work.

2. Size column only shows size of data fork.

3. When first launched the preferences window must be activated twice before it appears.

4. Crashes when saving as tar or 7zip and the user is not the owner of all files in the archive (even if the user has write access to all files).

5. Zip doesn't allow you to change the compression setting but uncompressed tar does.1  
(Version 1.2.1)

GANNET  No, the point was that the user might not know if the files have resource forks or not. They might be wanting to share the files with a PC user, unaware of the resource forks that make such sharing impossible. I think a warning if it detects resource forks when not using safe would be much nicer than it silently destroying them leaving the user to find this out sometime later when they try to unarchive it.

Out of interest, how exactly does the safe method preserve them?  
(Version 1.4.2r2)

GANNET  Just a suggestion: maybe you could make it so the program detects resource forks and either automatically uses safe compression or gives you a warning to the fact?  
(Version 1.4.2r2)

GANNET  I put 7zX into a folder called "Archive Software" and now when I compress stuff it shows these messages:

/tmp/pltpsTmpSecureScptFile: line 1: /Applications/Archive/Contents/Resources/CocoaKeys.app/Contents/MacOS/CocoaKeys: No such file or directory

/tmp/pltpsTmpSecureScptFile: line 1: /Applications/Archive/Contents/Resources/CocoaKeys.app/Contents/MacOS/CocoaKeys: No such file or directory

I guess it doesn't like spaces in the path to itself?? Seems to work okay regardless though.

Also, it doesn't seem to preserve the icon of the root folder (the Icon file is preserved but the folder flag isn't).  
(Version 1.4.1)

GANNET  Works fine for me. Maybe you should read the instructions properly next time.  
(Version 0.0.9w)

GANNET  This is an unfortunate problem that happens with any such workflow (which do run on applescript). When the workflow is created it stores a path to where the application currently is and that's where it will look every time you run it. Making it work anywhere is much more difficult and would be better off making a proper CM plugin instead. In the meantime you can either keep it in your apps folder or change the workflow (very easy - just open it in automator and point it to the right place).  
(Version 1.4)

GANNET  You're looking at this the wrong way. 7zX uses the 7z compression format which is not supported by BOM Archiver Helper, not the other way around. It would be awesome if BOM Archive Helper did support 7z but that's something you need to take up with Apple.  
(Version 1.4)