StuffIt Expander and expanding files downloaded from Explorer: Expander modifies Internet Preferences; more follow-ups
StuffIt Expander and expanding files downloaded from Explorer: Expander modifies Internet Preferences; more follow-ups
Expander modifies Internet Preferences It's true. As suggested last time, Expander 5.1 will modify your Internet Preferences settings, even "overwriting" changes that you have made. Aladdin writes: "StuffIt Expander 5.1 is the first version of Expander to reset the Internet Config settings when you quit the application. With 5.0.1 of Expander we modified these settings on installation, but if you changed them they stayed changed." Several readers independently confirmed this as well (thanks, Joel Sass, Jeff Moss and Joshua Ochs.)
Changing settings adds duplicates to Internet Preferences Further, if you modify the items that Expander changes (such as by changing the application from StuffIt Deluxe to StuffIt Expander, as I did), launching Expander does not actually overwrite the modified items. What I now confirm is that Expander simply adds new items, while letting your modified items remain. This will happen again if you repeat the process. This is how the increasing number of duplicate items started to appear in my Internet File Mapping settings (as I described last time).
All of this may lead to corruption of the Internet Preferences, which would then precipitate some of the other odd symptoms I reported last time. Or there may be a bug in the Internet control panel software itself. This is still not clear.
Explorer post-processing bug It is clear that, as Aladdin reported, Explorer does not handle post-processing switching as it should. This is the origin of why StuffIt Deluxe is used instead of Expander when trying to expand some downloaded files. As pointed out by Mitch Crane, you might also see this happen when downloading a .hqx file; the file may open in BBEdit rather than Expander.
This implies that the post-processing problem should occur even if you are still using Expander 4.5. Aladdin asserts this is so, clearly placing the blame on the Explorer bug. However, several users (including myself) contend that they never had this problem until after upgrading to Expander 5.x. I still have no explanation for this.
Work-arounds? The work-around suggested by Aladdin (as described in the Extra) has so far worked for me. Readers have suggested other work-arounds (try them at your own risk, as I have not confirmed them as yet!):
Ryan Tanaka suggested that changing Expander's creator (SITx) to the creator for StuffIt Deluxe (SIT!) should work-around the problem (especially so if you do not have StuffIt Deluxe on your drive).Jeff Moss claims that using ResEdit to delete Expander's "ICdt" resource (which contains the translation info) eliminated the problem for him. However, when I tried it, it simply led to Expander crashing.
Nick D'Amato claims: "Open the File Exchange control panel, go to File Translation, select all, and then click to Remove. This will fix the problem. The list will rebuild as needed and you won't have unneeded translation types (which should give you more speed)."
If the files are not 5.x-compressed, shifting to MindExpander should work.
MacFixIt Extra updated Aladdin's Matthew Covington wrote a detailed reply on this matter. I have now appended it to the MacFixIt Extra.
Related issue? Alarik Skarstrom found that "If I create a StuffIt archive using DropStuff 5.1, I am not able to double-click on it and have Stuffit Expander 5.1 open it. I can open it if I drop the archive on StuffIt Expander 5.1 but, if I double click, I get a message that says the application StuffIt Deluxe cannot be found." Mike Lee and Brent Davis confirm this. Rebuilding the desktop did not help.
Brent notes: "Unlike DropStuff 4.5.x, in which the resulting stuffed file was a Stuffit Deluxe archive (SITD/SIT!) that could be unstuffed simply by double-clicking on the file, the new file is a Stuffit Document (SIT5/SIT!) that must be dragged and dropped (or opened) by the Stuffit Expander application."