Pagehand.com has just released our second application: LaunchCodes, a utility that helps you open files in the creator code application rather than the default application.

I’ve written about my intense disagreement with the decision to drop creator code support in Snow Leopard. Fellow developer Patrick Thomson and I teamed up to produce a tiny, unobtrusive utility that makes Snow Leopard respect creator codes as God intended.

Our objective was to re-introduce creator code application binding without modifying or replacing any system components. Snow Leopard preserves creator code metadata (it must, because the same volume might be accessed by 10.6 and pre-10.6 Macs), so all the utility has to do is intercept the appropriate Apple event and send it to the application identified by the file’s creator code.

Because we refuse to tamper with the OS, our solution is not a drop-in replacement for the pre-10.6 behavior. When you right-click a file with an extension recognized by LaunchCodes, you see that the default application is LaunchCodes rather than the creator code application. And LaunchCodes doesn’t intervene in every double-click on every file; it works only with the extensions that you’ve assigned to it.

LaunchCodes has some features that the pre-10.6 behavior lacks. In fact, I like our LaunchCodes behavior better than the old behavior. The principal feature is that you can instantly turn LaunchCodes on and off via a menu bar icon. If you are engaged in a task where you really do want all files with a certain extension to open in the default app, just one click disables LaunchCodes and returns you to the standard Snow Leopard behavior.

Configuring LaunchCodes on a file extension basis might at first seem an annoying limitation, but in practice it’s a benefit. If two or more applications can open the same file type, it’s a sure bet that the file type is associated with an extension. As a practical matter there are very few extensions that present conflicts between the default application and the creator code application. Most people who complain about the lack of creator code support mention only one or two extensions that disrupt their normal workflow. For many people, configuring LaunchCodes to work with only one extension might be all they need to get Snow Leopard to present the same user experience they enjoyed with previous Mac operating systems. Keeping LaunchCodes out of the picture when it is not needed helps to maintain its tiny footprint.

Even if you like creator code application binding, there are times when it can get in the way. If you open files that were created by other users, as is common when accessing files on a server, you might not want to use the same application that the other user chose when creating the file. For example, if I like to create .html files in TextMate, and a colleague likes to use BBEdit, I do not want to launch BBEdit when I double-click one of his files. With LaunchCodes, you can confine the use of creator codes to files that you created; if this preference is on, and you did not create the file, LaunchCodes deems it to have no creator code and sends the file to the default application.

Finally, LaunchCodes lets you see the creator code metadata for a file. If a file opens in the default application instead of the application that created it, like as not the creating application did not set a creator code. (Alas, Apple’s 10.6 apps are guilty in this respect.) With LaunchCodes, you can see what is happening by option-dragging the file to the LaunchCodes application icon. LaunchCodes will show you the file’s creator code, whether you own the file, the application that will open the file, and the reason why that application was chosen.

We’ve priced LaunchCodes at only $4.95. A few aspects of development were surprisingly tricky, and the app required much more development time than I anticipated. I have no idea whether LaunchCodes will be a commercial success, but it’s already clear that a lot of people are very grateful to have it.