Super Boomerang

Crashed when I tried to configure it. Of course, you idiot, you forgot to remove the original files from Boomerang 2.0 from your System Folder. After I removed those (and reinstalled, just for the fun of it) Super Boomerang worked fine. The new interface (up from Boomerang 2.0) is indeed far better. Super Boomerang makes any application’s Open… menu into a hierarchical menu with the appropriate documents listed, and has abandoned the pop-up boomerang button in favor of a menu bar at the top of its dialog box.

Despite the interface change, the menus remain basically the same. The first looks like a boomerang and holds the About Super Boomerang… information and the Help. The next five menus are Folder, File, Disk, Options, and Group. Folder, File, and Disk hold the names of the most recent folders, files, and disks that you’ve visited. The choices in Options haven’t changed much, which means that you can still create new folders, make files and folders permanent in the menu (this is extremely handy if you find yourself wanting to use a file or folder regularly, but not regularly enough for it to always be one of the last thirty used). My only irritation with Super Boomerang’s interface is the Edit… item in the Options menu. It allows you delete, rename, and duplicate the files in the current folder. One person who responded to the survey agrees with me – those three items should be moved out to exist as items in the Options menu, rather than be buried in the Edit choice. I’m still unsure of the utility of Super Boomerang’s Group feature, which allows you to define groups of applications that will have their own set of temporary and permanent files and folders. I think the rationale behind it is that you might have a number of graphics applications, say, that all open the same sort of files and which you use in the same set of folders. By creating a group of graphics applications, you are unlikely to have spreadsheet files cluttering up your temporary files menu. One positive part of the Groups feature, though, is that you can set up an Exclude group of applications, which Super Boomerang won’t load. I haven’t run across any applications that dislike Super Boomerang, but it’s nice to know that zeta soft and Now Software are being realistic about the possibility of a conflict. If only more INITs did this.

I like Super Boomerang, and I like it even more than Boomerang 2.0. The main change other than the interface is the incredible Find feature that Hirokai Yamamoto added to Super Boomerang. Boomerang 2.0 could find files but wasn’t all that fast. Super Boomerang can indeed search an entire CD-ROM in under 15 seconds (yes, we tried it), and for many actions, it’s easier to have Super Boomerang find the file than it is to search for it yourself. It found all the instances of the word "sun" in filenames on my 60 meg partition in about 4 seconds, and it’s even faster when it can eliminate files that aren’t appropriate to whatever application you’re in. If you don’t already own Boomerang ($30 shareware), then it’s worth buying the Now Utilities solely for Super Boomerang. Several people commented that Super Boomerang’s presence alone caused them to rate the Now Utilities highly.

The next version of Boomerang is likely to be even nicer, as it will have the ability to rename and delete files from the dialog box (rather than from the Edit item in the Options menu) and the ability to sort the file list by date or kind, which only the Norton Utilities’ Directory Assistance can do currently. Stay tuned – Hiro Yamamoto has already produced two updaters for Super Boomerang to correct small bugs (none of which I’ve run into) so he’s certainly working on Boomerang and version 3.0 promises to be even more impressive. My only suggestion would be to include the ability to search for text within files as well, since I’ve started to use that more frequently and haven’t found anything that is both quick and easy to use (GOfer and Locate both lost points on ease of use).