This applies to software distributed on compressed disk images, which includes most indie software. It excludes software distributed on disk images that are then compressed, only because this annoying behavior is thankfully uncommon. I’m talking here about things that I see frequently.

Finder’s toolbar is hidden

The most convenient access to the Applications folder is almost always going to be the toolbar or the sidebar. The user is usually going to want to put your app somewhere, and most of the time, the disk image has a background image telling you to put it in your Applications folder. Which the software vendor has conveniently not given you access to. The most obvious workaround to this is to show the toolbar, which leads us to…

Window looks like crap with sidebar

Finder only stores one window size; the with- size. If a window doesn’t have a with- size, Finder guesses what you want — and if your Finder has the sidebar, and mine has for some time now, it guesses wrong. It adds the sidebar to whatever you’ve already got, throwing out whatever doesn’t fit. This blows the careful layout of the disk image, frequently hiding the damned application. The one I’m still trying to drag to my Applications folder.

I guess one is forgivable, but not both. Sure, I might be one of the eleven users with a convenient alias to the Applications folder, or think dragging the application, whacking my _show desktop_ Exposé key, hovering on my hard drive icon, waiting for its window to spring open, and then finally dropping on the actual Applications folder is easier…but I’m not, and I don’t think that’s unusual. Plus, if someone is horrified by the sidebar and instantly hides it, Finder obviously gets that right.

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