# Features you didn't know about



## mw84 (Aug 17, 2005)

I was just messing around with some icon folders and found a couple of thing's I've never noticed before. One, how softly you can tap the standard Apple one button mouse it's almost touch sensitive and two when you're moving files around if you click and drag one file over another and hold it there for about 2seconds the folder you're hovering over automatically opens so you can navigate it's sub folders whilst still holding the original folder. If that makes sense   

Anyway has anyone else noticed any little cool tweaks in OS X like this?


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## barhar (Aug 17, 2005)

Wow, that is like a kind of 'spring loaded folder' sort of feature.  Sounds quite llke a feature we once had way back with 'System (MacOS) 8'.

Then there is the hope to once again see, (before MacOS 12.0 and surely after numerous $129 subscription charges. or so), 'popup folders' and even 'windowshade' native to the MacOS.  But then, seeing the rather poor implementation of 'Color Label's, and seeing it took Apple's crack NeXT team of developers four years to implement 'Grab's 'Capture, Window' menu item feature, I have my doubts.

P.S. - [MacOS X] Click on the 'Desktop', select 'Finder's 'Finder, Preferences...' menu item, and then the 'General' icon button in the toolbar. Look at the bottom most feature; seem familiar?


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## symphonix (Aug 17, 2005)

Yes, it is called "Spring loaded folders" and it was reintroduced into Mac OS X in version 10.2. You can configure the delay taken to pop open a folder in Finder --> Preferences, and you can go even quicker by holding the item you're dragging over a folder, and tap the space bar to pop open the folder.

Apple have already decided that "Windowshade" mode is dead. Their usability labs studies showed that it just confused new users too much, and power users rarely used it anyway. I know I never did ... window-shading something was just a waste of clicks.


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## Mikuro (Aug 17, 2005)

Yeah, spring-loaded folders has been part of OS X since day 1, IIRC. It works almost exactly the same way it worked in OS 9; the main difference is that in OS 9 you could trigger it without dragging a file, with a "click-and-a-half" (like a double-click, only you don't release the second click). Pity that doesn't work in X.


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## Lt Major Burns (Aug 17, 2005)

windowshading was silly.  all it meant was that you now had 15 title-bars on top of each other. equally as useless as having 15 open windows on top of each other. expose solves all of this and more. i <3 show all windows....


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## barhar (Aug 17, 2005)

Ones silliness is anothers productivity.

I would take 15 (silly) title bars of fixed size and proper proportion than 15 icons added to the 'Dock' - thus causing all 'Dock' based icons to shrink in size and legibility.  

One can only long for the day when the 'Dock' is an optional setting and 'Hoverbar' (as 'Hoverbar X') returns. Ahhh yes, 'Hoverbar' - what the 'Dock' strives to be ...


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## Mikuro (Aug 17, 2005)

WindowShade was not succeeded by Exposé; it was succeeded by the Dock's minimizing, which is _terrible_ as a replacement. And even with Exposé, there's no way good way to temporarily get a SINGLE window (say, your web browser) out of your face for a second just to see what's going on behind it. The two serve distinctly different purposes, and there's no reason they couldn't live together in harmony.

To this day, I still miss WindowShade. The new minimizing, while occasionally useful in its own right, simply doesn't do what WindowShade did, and causes more productivity problems than it solves. As for Exposé, I love it too (it's the one feature I _really_ miss when going back into OS 9), but again, they serve different purposes.


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## texanpenguin (Aug 18, 2005)

I, too, loved WindowShade, but it's not the feature I most desire to be re-introduced into X; that honour goes to Finder-tabs!

In OS 9, you could grab any Finder window and drag it to one of the sides or the bottom of the screen and it would make the window into a drawer, leaving just the name of the window as a tab. This was the best way of repeatedly accessing the same folder without having it in your way.

I hardly ever use Dock minimising. Occasionally I hide apps, otherwise they just stay open and I window-cycle (Cmd+~) or F10 it.


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## powermac (Aug 18, 2005)

Windows shade was useful in OS8-9. I can't see it in OSX. Expose would be great if you could apply it to specific open apps. Perhaps a feature Apple will have in future OS releases.


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## Esquilinho (Aug 18, 2005)

If you're on one application and you alt+click somewhere else (e.g. the desktop), that application will hide and leave the other apps visible. Isn't this what you're looking for?


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## pds (Aug 18, 2005)

I liked Window Shade - since it was a third-party control panel. Now I have become accustomed to cmd+H to get stuff out of the way for a mo and cmd+tab to get it back.


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## sirstaunch (Aug 27, 2005)

mw84 said:
			
		

> Anyway has anyone else noticed any little cool tweaks in OS X like this?



By accident, discovered if you click on a widget in the dashboard, hold down the option key and the close-check-box displays on that particular widget...


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## Satcomer (Aug 27, 2005)

In Dashboard how I can force a Widget to update itself  by selecting the Widget and then doing the key combination command+r .


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## symphonix (Aug 27, 2005)

^ That's two handy dashboard tips right there! Thanks. ^


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## powermac (Aug 27, 2005)

Yes, those dashboard tips are great thanxs for the post!!!!!


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## ElDiabloConCaca (Aug 27, 2005)

Mikuro said:
			
		

> Yeah, spring-loaded folders has been part of OS X since day 1, IIRC.


Spring-loaded folders were absent from 10.0 and 10.1.


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## senne (Aug 27, 2005)

I discovered some features too.. You have the Info Panel about a file/folder when you press "command + i". But when you press "command + alt + i" you get an Inspector. The inspector changes when you click on another file, the info panel stays the same.

Another cool feature is "Always open..." in the Action menu. When you select a file and press the Action Menu there appears "Open With". Now, when you hold down the alt button, this changes in "Always open with". The negative side of this feature is that it set this preference for the selected file only, not all the doc-files for example.


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## chevy (Aug 27, 2005)

I used WindowShade. The dock does not replace it, but Exposé does, partially. Exposé is better in that it lets us see the content of the window (active) it is less practical as it does not keep the order on the desk (aligning the title bars on the right of the screen was a good solution, like Adobe tools that you can shrink).


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## iPenguin (Sep 12, 2005)

Sorry to bring an old thread back to life, but I just read through this one, and thought I'd recommend an app for those of you seeking to quickly get the frontmost window out of the way to see what's going on behind it.
GeekBind is a app that allows you to manipulate windows in all sort of ways using the keyboard, like making them transparent or moving them, etc. The reason I recommend it is because it has an option to make whichever window your mouse is over disappear for a second while the key combo is pressed. Very handy for seeing what's going on in back of say a Safari window.


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## sirstaunch (Sep 12, 2005)

Satcomer said:
			
		

> In Dashboard how I can force a Widget to update itself  by selecting the Widget and then doing the key combination command+r .




Hey that's way cool, love the twirl effect


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## kainjow (Sep 18, 2005)

One cool tip I found out a while ago and use all the time is you can command-drag items in the Dock and it's like you're dragging the actual file! You can also command-click an item in the Dock to reveal it in the Finder.


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## texanpenguin (Sep 20, 2005)

I use kainjow's tip all the time for dragging applications to the Script Editor to get its AppleScript dictionary.

Very useful.


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## kainjow (Sep 20, 2005)

texanpenguin said:
			
		

> I use kainjow's tip all the time for dragging applications to the Script Editor to get its AppleScript dictionary.
> 
> Very useful.


That's exactly what I use it for too


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