Spring Loaded Folders

twister

Howdy
What is the big obsession over spring loaded folders? I don't get it. Everyone wants them back and they can't live without them.


:confused:
Twister
 
They make it easy and fast to move to a certain folder or move a file etc. You can move through the hierarchy a lot faster than by clicking on every folder, and waiting (alright, you don't wait that long, but still) for the window to pop up.. I miss them, and the contextual menus, a lot.
Twister, didn't you use them back in OS9? :)


Kris
 
I never used spring-loaded folders. Actually, I did, but rarely. What would be much cooler is spring-loaded column view. THAT would be really useful :)
 
YES! Being able to grab and drag a folder across columns WOULD rock... you could grab a folder at the top of your hard drive hierarchy, then simply drag it over a folder in the adjacent column and have the whole column view shift over to expose the contents of that column... and so on and so forth. Would make moving files within hard drives or within folder hierarchies VERY easy.

Great idea, ksuther.
 
I remember Jobs saying something similar to spring-loaded folders would be implemented in the future that would conform more to OS X guidelines, and I figured that's what he was talking about, cause it makes sense.
I think the way spring-loaded folders are now go against the guidelines because they open more than one folder at a time, which is bad I guess :confused:. I guess they are coming back anyways, due to popular demand :D
 
Originally posted by Kris
They make it easy and fast to move to a certain folder or move a file etc. You can move through the hierarchy a lot faster than by clicking on every folder, and waiting (alright, you don't wait that long, but still) for the window to pop up.. I miss them, and the contextual menus, a lot.
Twister, didn't you use them back in OS9? :)


Kris

Ohhh so you want the the option to move folder1 over folder2 and have folder2 open up automatically. I see. I wouldn't mind that.

And yes i used it in 9 i guess i just didn't notice that much. :p

Twister
 
Give SNAX a try. It already has Spring Loaded Folders and Finder Labels. Not to mention all the other customizaton options available.

SNAX
 
I agree with you ksuther; we shouldn't have to pay for the old Finder feautres that SNAX offers. It should be in the Finder by default.
Oh well.. Apple will hopefully bring them back soon... :) But I must admitt I'm surprised over a lot of the GUI feautres Apple have removed from OS X.

Originally posted by ksuther
[...] would conform more to OS X guidelines. [...]
I think the way spring-loaded folders are now go against the guidelines because they open more than one folder at a time [...]
- The OSX guidelines? What are they? Listed somewhere?


Kris
 
But it costs money, and we SHOULD have this in the normal Finder

You're right, but SNAX is here now, and you can use it fully without paying for it. It's reminder pops up from time to time, but it's not overly annoying.

Cut Apple a little slack over the missing features. Remember, OS X was not a continuation of OS 9. In essence, it was like moving in to a completely new house. It's going to take them some time to "recreate" some of the nicer amenities from the old (creaky) house, but they seem to be coming.

That said, Spring Loaded folders are definitely on tap for 10.2, but I'm more concerned about Finder Labels. These were one of the best features of the old Mac OS UI. Something that even Windows hasn't been able to implement out of the box yet. What bothers me is I haven't seen any indication that there are on Apple's radar to get put back in to OS X.
 
They color an icon a certain shade of a color so that they are easily distinguisable from others. You can also set the name of each color label, so you can have all your "Work" documents have a blue label, all your "Games" documents have a green label, etc etc. It's pretty cool, but I never used them :p
 
So isn't that what icons are for? I can see this being useful if you were only listing text, but icons should be distinguishable enough by themselves...
 
Well, say you wanted to use one icon for multiple things... then, you could use the icon to identify what KIND of document or thing it was, and then use colors to distinguish them even more...

For example, I could put a book icon on any document related to work. Then, I could color some blue to signify that they're jobs that are done -- red to signify "hot" jobs, or yellow to signify that they're incomplete... or any number of different labeling options...

Once you use them extensively, you'll come to rely on them and they really do help in organization.
 
What I would love to see in the area of spring-loaded folder is to be able to drag a file over to a Dock menu and have it expand the menu to drop the file onto an app in there. Anyone know of a way to do that? I bet that won't be possible with spring-loaded folders.
 
I agree, this was one of those "DUH!" things that Apple hasn't gotten around to doing yet. Actually, when I first started using OS X, I tried dragging a file to a dock folder hoping it might spring open. Oh well :mad:
 
Originally posted by nkuvu
So isn't that what icons are for? I can see this being useful if you were only listing text, but icons should be distinguishable enough by themselves...

Labels are much faster than changing icons and help a lot when organizing your work files. They are one of those things you either use and depend on or never use. Since i started as a webdesigner i now depend on them. I want them back so much. And i want them in my Mail application also.

Twister
 
Just drag the file over the icon of the program that you want it to open in in the dock. The program will automatically launch that file. The program will get darker if it can be opened using that program. if you want another program to open that file hole command+option and you can chose any program.
 
Labels are huge. Perhaps the single most underutilized feature of pre OS X. Once I got my chorts on it, though they coudn't believe they never used them.

I used them mostly for temporary organization, like Orange means these folders have "cleaned" of any clutter. Or Green means these folders have been batch processed in Photoshop. Or Blue means these files have been archived to CD. Very useful. Very missed.

Spring loaded also missed, but not as much.
 
I used labels a bunch in OS9 for temporary organization of similar files within a folder. This is great when you have several files with different states of progress and you don't want to have to create seperate folders for each state.
 
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