DropDMG is part of the Give Good Food to your Mac “Special Developers Edition” promotion:

“Give Good Food to your Mac” is a community action where independent Mac developers come together and build exciting promotions: for a limited time, every Mac user will be able to download and taste cool Mac applications and enjoy great discounts.

No junk food, just healthy, tasty and innovative products. And because we are speaking “haute cuisine” everybody gets to create their own combination of titles matching their own and unique taste.

From June 9–23, you can get discounts from 20–50% on a variety of great tools for Mac development. In fact, many of the applications (including DropDMG) are also useful for non-developers.

DropDMG 2.8.5 is now available. This is a free update that includes the following bug fixes:

• Fixed bug where saved Automator workflows didn’t use the proper configuration when running on Mac OS X 10.5.2.
• Fixed bug where certain disk images of application files created on Mac OS X 10.5.2 would mount on 10.3, but the Finder would refuse to open them. (The contents were intact and accessible from other applications.)

DropDMG 2.8.4 is now available. This is a free update that includes the following bug fix:

• Fixed a regression in version 2.8.3 where DropDMG would delete the source file/folder if you were creating a segmented disk image next to the source and there was not enough disk space.

DropDMG 2.8.3 is now available. This is a free update that includes the following enhancements:

• Fixed bug where a .dmg file would not mount on Mac OS X 10.3 and earlier if you created it on an Intel-based Mac running Mac OS X 10.5 and the image contained just a single package file (e.g. an application).
• Fixed bug where Append Current Date didn’t work properly when the original file/folder had a very long name.
• Fixed bug where images converted from Zip archives were owned by root.
• Faster at creating images of packages when running on Mac OS X 10.5.
• Fixed bug restoring the selected row after editing a configuration name.
• Carriage returns are no longer allowed in configuration names.
• Fixed bug where some preferences items were incorrectly enabled when showing a temporary preferences sheet for a conversion operation.
• More detailed logging of burn errors.
• The software updater is better at handling invalid downloads folders.
• Updated Spanish localization.

1. Create a folder with the name that you want for your disc, and move or copy your files into it.
2. Choose File ‣ Convert Graphic to “.VolumeIcon.icns”…. First select the image file that you want to use as the icon, then choose the folder that you just created.
3. Make sure that Use custom icon for mounted image is checked in DropDMG’s preferences.
4. Drag the folder onto DropDMG to create a .dmg file with the custom icon.
5. Choose File ‣ Burn Image… and select the .dmg file (or Shift-drag the file onto DropDMG) to burn the image.

DropDMG 2.8.2 is now available. This is a free update that includes the following enhancements:

• Fixed bug where the Apple Help didn’t work on Mac OS X 10.5.
• Added high-resolution version of the application icon.
• Fixed bug where DropDMG could crash when canceling an operation.
• Fixed bug where DropDMG would sometimes return an incorrect destination path back to a script.

If you are using SpamSieve with Apple Mail, you may find that the first time Mail launches it disables the SpamSieve bundle. Older versions of plug-ins can cause crashes or other problems, and Mail doesn’t know which are compatible so (as with Tiger) it plays it safe and disables them all. While the SpamSieve plug-in is disabled, Mail will move all incoming messages to the Spam mailbox. Since SpamSieve’s plug-in does work with the new version of Mail, all you need to do is re-install it. First, launch SpamSieve by double-clicking its icon in the Applications folder. Then, choose Install Apple Mail Plug-In from the SpamSieve menu. (If you’ve hidden SpamSieve’s Dock icon you’ll need to show it again in order to access this command.) After re-launching Mail, you can verify that the plug-in is loaded by checking for the SpamSieve commands in the Message menu.

Update (October 26): The help viewer may report an error when displaying the Apple Help under Leopard. As a workaround, you can view the PDF manual, which is also available in the Help menu. The content is the same. The Apple Help is also available on the Web.

Update (October 31): Make sure that you’ve named your spam mailbox “Spam” rather than “SPAM” or “spam”; otherwise training a message as spam might not work.

Update (November 2): Leopard has different performance characteristics than previous versions of Mac OS X, with some operations taking 10–50 times longer than before. For some users, this can make SpamSieve slow to launch (many bounces in the Dock) and slow to respond thereafter. Most users will not notice a difference, however. If you are affected, you can make SpamSieve much faster by pruning your corpus. Choose Show Corpus from the Filter menu, sort by Last Used, and delete the words that haven’t been used within the last year. I am working with Apple to find a better solution to this problem.

Update (November 14): BBAutoComplete 1.5.1, DropDMG 2.8.2, EagleFiler 1.2.7, and SpamSieve 2.6.5 include fixes for the Apple Help issue.

Update (January 23): SpamSieve 2.6.6 works around the Leopard performance bug so that it’s faster at launching and filtering messages.

DropDMG 2.8.1 is now available. This is a free update that includes the following enhancements:

• If the destination folder is inside the source folder, DropDMG will now report an error and ask you to pick a different folder, rather than silently using Next To Source.
• Fixed bug that could cause a crash after verifying or mounting an image.
• DropDMG now accepts .ISO images (uppercase extension from the Windows world) and treats them as .iso.
• Fixed bug where DropDMG wouldn’t let you quit after certain types of burn failures.
• The Software Update feature now checks whether the updated version can run on your installed version of Mac OS X.
• Fixed bug where the Software Update checker didn’t always re-check for new updates.
• Modernized the crash reporter code.
• Updated Dutch and Italian localizations.
• Fixed help book icon.

• Improved compatibility with pre-release versions of Mac OS X 10.5.
• Passphrases are now set in a separate dialog rather than directly in the preferences window, and this has been combined with the old Confirm Passphrase feature. This makes it easier to verify a passphrase when you enter it.
• DropDMG now accesses the keychain only when necessary, so it won’t prompt you to unlock the keychain if you’re creating an image that doesn’t have a passphrase.
• The Software Update checker now works behind an HTTP proxy, and the auto-updater is compatible with FileVault.
• Reorganized the manual and added Burning Backups of CDs/DVDs and Transferring Files Securely sections.
• When creating an image of an application or installer package, DropDMG no longer includes file extension in the image name.
• Worked around -39 error from hdiutil when converting very large images with lots of files.
• Auto-open is now off by default, since it slows down image creation, and on Mac OS X 10.4 and later the OS will auto-mount images automatically, anyway.
• Fixed bug where Burn Folder/File… treated packages as folders rather than as files.
• Better recovery from -35 errors when doing image post-processing.
• Fixed bugs in enabling and disabling Always Run With Root Access menu command.
• Fixed bug where the Services menu commands could appear in French if you were using a British English system.
• Fixed bug remembering a recent folder that had a slash in its name.
• Fixed error when initiating a burn via AppleScript.
• Fixed small memory leak.
• Better names for temporary folders.
• Added keyboard shortcut for Hide Others.
• Added Spanish localization.