Quick Look Plug-ins: Save More Time

With the release of Leopard came over 300 new features. Some of these new features includes Time Machine, Screen Sharing, and Quick Look. I find Quick Look to be the most useful addition to Mac OS X. Upon installing Leopard, Mac users had one gripe — they complained that Quick Look could not handle all of the file extensions that they used in their daily lives. To solve this problem, developers created plug-ins for Quick Look in order to make it more compatible with different file extensions.

My favorite three plug-ins save me much time in addition to the time that I already save with Quick Look alone. Suspicious Package, BetterZipQL, and Folder View can all be installed easily to help you use your time more effectively. All one needs to do in order to install a plug-in is to drag the qlgenerator plug-in folder to /Library/QuickLook/ or ~/Library/QuickLook/. Upon a computer reboot, one can use these plug-ins to their advantage.

Suspicious Package can be very useful when dealing with .pkg installer packages. Before clicking any buttons in the window one can see a basic overview of what will occur upon installing the package. For example, you see the size of the package, if it needs administrator privileges, if it needs a restart upon installation, and even the amount of installer scripts the package contains. If one wants to get into more detail, they can press the Show Contents button, and the window will then expand and display all the files the package will install and where. This can be useful if one installs a package and then later wishes to delete it off the computer. When Quick Look is equipped with Suspicious Package, it can be used to detect Trojan installation packages.

Folder View is a plug-in that puts a neat idea into action quite well. This addition to QuickLook does exactly what one might guess: it allows the user to see the contents of a folder when activating QuickLook instead of just the folder’s icon. This can be handy when one would like to know what documents are in his Documents folder, their file kind, creation date, size, and even the folder’s creation date! Folder View is a great addition to QuickLook because it adds to QuickLook’s main purpose, allowing the user to view files quicker more effectively.

Macitbetter, the creators if the Mac program BetterZip, have outdone themselves by creating a free Quick Look plug-in called BetterZipQL with abilities similar to BetterZip.app. This add-on works with many different archiving formats including ZIP, TAR, RAR, and SIT. Upon activation, Quick Look will show the contents of the compressed file, and then one can see the archived file’s properties, kind, size, and date created. There is only one problem with my favorite free Quick Look plug-in — it displays hidden files. This clutters the window making it less efficient as it would be without this flaw. While I do have this small problem with BetterZipQL, it is still my favorite addition to Quick Look.

QuickLook’s entry into the Mac OS X system has been great in terms of saving time. These three free plug-ins, Suspicious Package, BetterZipQL, and Folder View, make a great addition to any Mac, and I truly suggest installing them today. If you know of any other great, time saving plug-ins, please comment on this review