tiger - finder

cfleck

cfleck

tired
so i'm guessing there are no interesing updates to finder for the tiger release. is that correct? i've been fiddling with path finder lately and its growing on me. so now i'm wondering if apple is going to "upgrade" their finder at all.
 
Aside from Spotlight's search integration and "smart folders" in the Finder (much like in iTunes), we'll have to wait and see.
 
Burnable folders not to be forgotten, although that's probably considered a rather small new feature by most people I know...

But if you're a fan of PathFinder and expect Apple to do anything similar: Don't. You'll end up being disappointed. Apple's quite proud of the current Finder, I believe, and they're evolving it. A 'revolutionary new Finder' will probably take quite a bit longer.

Right now, it more or less looks and acts the same way it does in Panther. But Spotlight is such a _big_ change, that working with the Finder _will_ be quite different, once you get to know this super search engine and its merits.
 
a little open source app called quicksilver is far more useful than the panther/tiger style finder. it integrates perfectly in the os. I have it setup so I just press F8 and then type the first 1-3 letters (mostly finds what I want in one or two) and its there. I now use the mouse less which is fine by me.
 
Oh, that's long known. LauchBar is the original (and in my opinion cleaner). But neither Quicksilver nor LaunchBar really _replace_ the Finder. They're primarily application launchers that also try to be more. With Tiger, I guess they're going to be again reduced to that function, because everything else they do are quite well handled by the Finder with Spotlight, resp. Spotlight.
But I still use LaunchBar as my launcher, since Spotlight does 'too much', in order to become a good/fast launcher.
 
i have quicksilver. went to that after launchbar. just want a nicer finder i guess. dont know how i'd define "nicer". but i'll know it when i see it.
 
I used launchbar about 2 weeks before I started using quicksilver and after I switched I never looked back. qs is far more elegant and can be set to open files also. it can find files, bookmarks and apps as well as many other functions.

many would agree with me that its one of the best haxies/utilities ever. I feel its an example of truly great code.
 
let's not get into the qs/lb fight here, but lb does the same (bookmarks, files, playlists, songs, address book entries etc.) -> but that's what i mean: Spotlight will be better for most of those items, quite probably.

On both LB's and QS's side, there's been discussion about how Spotlight might affect the utilities. And the consensus seems to be that both LB and QS will probably support Spotlight technology and become even better utilities than before.

LB's dev once said about this that LB's code is better for handling less files (i.e. handling the apps etc.) and Spotlight is better for _all_ files. And that, like I said, in order to use it as a launcher, LB (or QS, if you prefer the gummi interface) will still be the better choice.

For me it's quite clear that the Finder still stays my preferred tool for actually handling/sorting files, folders and their structure. I love column view for this (and list view for some stuff, too).
 
Huh, I can't imagine how Apple could really be proud of the current Finder. It's a failed combination of a file browser and the old spatial Finder, and thus doesn't work well in either mode... I've complained about this enough though already. Apple should check out the latest Gnome version and think things over :)
 
Well, I guess they vomit when looking at Gnome's desktop, actually. ;) But you see: Looking at the Finder's development for the past four years, I'd say they _are_ proud at what they're doing.
 
fryke said:
Well, I guess they vomit when looking at Gnome's desktop, actually. ;) But you see: Looking at the Finder's development for the past four years, I'd say they _are_ proud at what they're doing.
Click to expand...

Although I didn't mean what Gnome looks like, but the way Nautilus's spatial mode works - which is pretty much the same way as the Classic Finder. In addition to that there is a separate file browser, which is how it should be, because they're two totally different things. I don't see why they should vomit though, the current Gnome desktop is actually very clean and functional, very much like good old Platinum :)

But I guess the people in Apple's Finder team just don't appreciate what was good in the old Finder. The new Finder hasn't significantly improved since 10.0, it's just got more features added (some of which are useful) and a silly brushed metal interface. But the basic unpredictability of how Finder windows behave is still there.
 
("very much like good old Platinum...") - That's what I meant, basically. ;) And: My Finder Windows are pretty predictable. I open a new Finder window, which ALWAYS opens my predefined column view. And from there I browse. No need for anything besides column view for me. ;)

(I created five new folders the last time I tried to work with OS 9, because - of course - I kept hitting Apple-N to create a new Finder window...) ;)
 
fryke said:
("very much like good old Platinum...") - That's what I meant, basically. ;) And: My Finder Windows are pretty predictable. I open a new Finder window, which ALWAYS opens my predefined column view. And from there I browse. No need for anything besides column view for me. ;)
Click to expand...

It's true that when using columnview only, the windows do behave predictably and in a browser-like fashion (and the layout of each folder is defined by the browser, not the folder itself), but even then if I happened to open a window by double-clicking an icon on the desktop, the result would vary. Also when using spring-loading folders in column-view, it would sometimes/most of the time work like it should, drilling through the column view, but totally unexpectedly open a new window, which would be more often than not in something else than column view.
But the fact that column view works sort-of-ok is not a justification for the fact that the Finder does not behave like a browser should, when used as a browser. If I select "icon view", it should be interpreted as a _mode_, just like column view, not as a per-folder preference (which, on the other hand does make sense in Spatial mode).
 
I don't much care about the interface to the Finder (well, I do care about it, I just think it's pretty good as it is.)

What I'd like to see is its usefulness with network file systems sucking slightly less - not locking up when it's trying to mount a network volume, not becoming unusable the second you try to read from a mounted ftp server or even move through directories, being able to write to ftp servers (or did they add that when I wasn't looking?), integrating sftp and/or WebDAV over SSL instead of all these plaintext protocols (it's in Linux, it's probably in FreeBSD...),
 
I have been hearing that the Finder is a lot faster in 10.4 on some hardware. Could that mean that more of the code has been optimized? Or maybe the finder is being redone as a Cocoa App (instead of Carbon)?
 
Instead of looking at Gnome, maybe Apple has been looking at KDE. Remember, Safari uses KHTML already (and Apple has been great about submitting fixes and changes back to the project tree).

Here is what I think:
A Cocoa version of the Finder is being developed (currently, its still a Carbon App). When it is Cocoa, I think Apple will have a way to tightly integrate it with your chosen browser (with lots of extras for Safari users).

KDE's Konqueror is both Browser and Finder. It handles network protocols incredibly well. It handles file browsing logically (regardless of where the files actually live). I would love to see this functionality in Finder.
 
hmm, sounds like you want an apple version of windows explorer. me thinks this could be trouble.
 
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