REOWEN  I agree completely. The application does an excellent job of setting levels and I really appreciate the ability to set the volume for a whole album.

However, the GUI needs to work. Thank you for the instructions for removing the hideous and intrusive earphones.  
(Version 3.5)

REOWEN  Failed to start for me (in demo mode). The Console shows:

8/14/09 6:57:01 PM [0x0-0x74074].com.jalada.textual[2436] QObject::connect: Cannot connect TextualApp::fileOpenRequest(QString) to (null)::openDoc(QString)  
(Version 1.5)

REOWEN  I wanted something that could quickly make a zip a folder in a platform-neutral way (stripping out resource forks and such). I used DropZip for this for years but was becoming very disenchanted with the StuffIt line. A simple task, I thought; surely there are many alternatives. But I tried many programs and none offered easy drag-and-drop to create a zip archive. Most work well for viewing and altering the contents of a zip archive, but are very clumsy for creating the archive in the first place.

Finally I found Springy and I love it. The contextual menu does exactly what I wanted. The program does many other useful tasks such as creating disk images. And the application (of course) allows one to view and edit the contents of archives.

The program is also well supported.

I've not found anything that comes close to Springy and heartily recommend it.

Even so, I have a few minor complaints:

- The contextual menu entries for acting without asking questions are clumsy and confusing, e.g. "Click and Create ZIP". Huh? Click what? I don't want it to do two things (as implied by the and) I just want it to create the archive. As I say, this is no big deal -- once you learn what it means it's fine.

- The as-shipped behavior for the contextual menu is to ask questions before creating the archive. The menu may ZIP but it really means ZIP.... Fortunately it is easy to change this in a preference.

- After installing the contextual menu doesn't always show up (this just happened to me yesterday when I upgraded to 1.5.2). Even after logging out and back in! I had to double-click the installed contextual menu item (which bizarrely opened something completely irrelevant) and then the contextual menu started working. I'm hoping that 1.5.5 will fix that, especially if I toggle the setting to move the contextual menu back under More along with the others.  
(Version 1.5.5)

REOWEN  This is a very nice sftp client and was my first choice for many years. I found it to be robust and with excellent technical support. However, I switched to Yummy FTP several years ago due to two issues, which are still present in Fetch 5.5:

* I only remotely edit text documents. Unfortunately I can't tell Fetch that. As a result whenever I try to edit a document of unknown type it asks me whether I want to use a text editor, graphic editor or other app. This drives me nuts.

* Fetch requires a dummy password when used with ssh agent. Admittedly only a minor annoyance (you can save the dummy password in the keychain to avoid being asked for it every time) but I dislike cluttering up my keychain with nonsense.

* Fetch offers many useful settings for tuning behavior with different hosts. Unfortunately these settings are global; you cannot set them differently for different hosts, which renders them nearly useless. Fortunately you probably won't need the settings anyway since most modern hosts work fine with the defaults.

Note that I submitted change requests to Fetch tech support. They were quite polite, but clearly were not convinced that these issues are worth fixing.

I encourage you to give Fetch a try (especially if the issues above do not bother you) but also give Yummy FTP a look.  
(Version 5.5)