Making the most of QuickLook
July 3, 2008 by David Alison
It was only a month ago that I really discovered the QuickLook feature - arguably one of the most popular features in Leopard, especially if yesterday's informal poll was any indication. It's hard for Windows users like me that have switched to adopt all of the newer features and QuickLook was one that took me a while.
I decided to follow the advice of several folks here and look around at the various plugins that are available for QuickLook to see if they would help my experience even more. There appears to be two web sites dedicated to cataloging QuickLook Plugins:
Both sites contain mostly the same content but provide slightly different value - both have RSS feeds which makes it easy to stay on top of new plugins as they are discovered. I scanned through the lists and found 3 plugins that I'm already enjoying:
BetterZip QuickLook Generator
I'm rather surprised that Apple didn't include this one in OS X, especially given the way ZIP files are natively handled (auto-expanded when opening). This version is free and allows you to navigate down into folders within a ZIP file without having to open it or use a utility like Zipeg to get inside. It handles all the usual file types: ZIP, TAR, GZip, BZip2, ARJ, LZH, ISO, CHM, CAB, CPIO, RAR, 7-Zip, DEB, RPM, StuffIt's SIT, DiskDoubler, BinHex, and MacBinary.
You can download BetterZip from their web site.
Suspicious Package
Coming from the Windows world, where viruses and Malware are a possibility in any download I have a heightened sense of suspicion about anything I find on the Interwebs. I was drawn to this plugin on name alone.
It's a free tool that will inspect the contents of any package, displaying not only the contents but a quick view of the installation script as well.
This package is made by Mother's Ruin Software and can be downloaded directly from their web site.
XDD Folder
Though not a highly useful plugin because you can't navigate into folders, XDD's Folder plugin is nice when you are in that "QuickLook Zone" and want to see what's inside a folder without popping it open.
The Folder plugin is available for download from XDD's Mac page. Version .03 appears to be the latest as of right now.
Installation Notes
Place the *.qlgenerator file you get in your /Library/QuickLook folder. Once it's there open a terminal window and enter the following command:
qlmanage -r
This will reload all of the plugins.
So there you have it - some handy little Quicklook plugins and a couple of plugin resources to help keep an eye on them. Thanks to Welles for the link that got me started down this path!
What I'm missing is a QuickLook Plugin for DMG files - I'd love to see the contents without having to mount that DMG file on to the desktop. If anyone has a lead on that please shout it out!
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