Finder interface ...

Posted:
in macOS edited January 2014
You know, I'm sitting here looking at a directory of a bunch of MP3s, in list view, and i realize, the OSX finder isn't really great at letting me find what I want. I have, for example, 363 items, and coupled with the overall slowness of the finder in general, its hard to find the mp3 i'm looking for. Also, when i push the 'N' key, to jump down to my New Order songs, ... well, i don't really know what the heck the finder is trying to show me! It jumps to a song that does start with N, but not what I want, then if i hit N again, it jumps to a seemingly random song ... i'm not really sure what its doing there.



At any rate, i thought about directories full of a lot of files ... in unix its fairly simple, I could just do 'ls New*' and get everthing that starts with New... but if the file names are long and ugly, it becomes a tab-completion fest ... some things are easy to do with the Finder ... if you can find the file ...



So then i started thinking about iTunes. iTunes has a kick ass interface. Right in the upper right hand corner, you can just type in anything, and it will start to display just what contains what you type. And its pretty fast! Easy to make playlists like that ... and with the 'Browse' function, easy to get even more specific.



So what i'm wondering is, does anyone think its a good idea to sort of fuse that part of iTunes with the finder? Instead of 'song title', it would be file name, but you could also do things like 'created on', 'accessed last', etc etc ... using the file's metadata. Also, that could all be hidden, just like it is in iTunes, and you could just have the little text window ... if you've used iTunes, and if you don't you should, you'd be right at home.



So, any thoughts, flames, comments? I think its a good idea, but i may be missing something simple.



Also, if you've never heard New Order, you should download so... er, i mean, go to your local music shop and buy some

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 16
    proxyproxy Posts: 232member
    sounds like a great idea to me. Knock on apple's door and they'll give you a big bag of money and a free Ti book



    Seriously though, it's a great idea but I'd prefer a speed bump first.
  • Reply 2 of 16
    Excellent idea.
  • Reply 3 of 16
    bellebelle Posts: 1,574member
    [quote]Originally posted by stepson:

    <strong>Also, that could all be hidden, just like it is in iTunes, and you could just have the little text window ... if you've used iTunes, and if you don't you should, you'd be right at home.</strong><hr></blockquote>

    This feature existed in some early versions of OS X. There was a text box in the top right corner of Finder windows. For whatever reason, it didn't make the jump to shipping product. I agree it would be a nice feature.



    Something else I'd like to see is the subtle color banding in the list window. It makes it so much easier to pick things out.



    [ 11-15-2001: Message edited by: Belle ]</p>
  • Reply 4 of 16
    There was an application for OS 9 that did something similar. It catalogued all the applications you had on your drive. You could then type the name of the application into the text bos and it would autocomplete like IE or Omniweb does. Pretty spiffy. I wish it had made it to X.
  • Reply 5 of 16
    proxyproxy Posts: 232member
    Surely they could seamlessly link sherlock to the finder to harness it's power.
  • Reply 6 of 16
    Moving to OSX
  • Reply 7 of 16
    It sounds like a great idea to me. Although it did spawn the absurd idea that Apple would try to imitate Microsoft (haha, apparently that's spelled wrong) only instead of replacing the Finder with explorer they'd do it with iTunes...
  • Reply 8 of 16
    emaneman Posts: 7,204member
    That sounds like a pretty good idea.
  • Reply 9 of 16
    ah yeah... new order. they´re the greatest. so what´s your favourite album?



    HEY!!!! WTF? where did the oktoberfest-cheers graemlin go? or is it just hidden...... trying: :cheers:
  • Reply 10 of 16
    ouch. :cheers: is gone... <img src="graemlins/hmmm.gif" border="0" alt="[Hmmm]" />



    i mourn the loss.
  • Reply 11 of 16
    BeOS has some nice file selection abilities in its Tracker, basically fusing some formerly CLI-only things into a GUI 'Select...' menu item. It's not integrated as tightly as it should be, and probably doesn't provide all the benefits of the terminal, but I think Apple could pick up on that feature and improve on it.



    Another nice feature of the Tracker was the amount of time it would give you to type in a file name to go to that file. It shows you what you're typing in the bottom left corner of the window.
  • Reply 12 of 16
    [quote]Originally posted by Proxy:

    <strong>Surely they could seamlessly link sherlock to the finder to harness it's power.</strong><hr></blockquote>

    Uhh... have which harness the power of which? <img src="graemlins/bugeye.gif" border="0" alt="[Skeptical]" /> Surely you can't think Sherlock is all that "powerful"... okay, it does have some nice features, but it's dog-slow, barely multithreaded, and has a horrible interface.



    Yuck.



    I wish Apple would go bury Sherlock in the hole they found him. <img src="graemlins/hmmm.gif" border="0" alt="[Hmmm]" />
  • Reply 13 of 16
    Wow, thanks for all the positive comments guys! I submitted my feedback to apple ... so who knows! Just remember, if we see this in 10.2... it was all me! :cool:
  • Reply 14 of 16
    sinewavesinewave Posts: 1,074member
    [quote]Originally posted by starfleetX:

    <strong>

    Uhh... have which harness the power of which? <img src="graemlins/bugeye.gif" border="0" alt="[Skeptical]" /> Surely you can't think Sherlock is all that "powerful"... okay, it does have some nice features, but it's dog-slow, barely multithreaded, and has a horrible interface.



    Yuck.



    I wish Apple would go bury Sherlock in the hole they found him. <img src="graemlins/hmmm.gif" border="0" alt="[Hmmm]" /> </strong><hr></blockquote>



    Yeah I want my old find file back
  • Reply 15 of 16
    moogsmoogs Posts: 4,296member
    I agree completely. Forcing users to use Sherlock to find files on their hard drive is bass-ackwards.



    There should be a text field in the Finder Toolbar...type in your phrase, click return and bam, a sheet-based listing of all the files found and their location should pop up, single-click showing the tree hierarchy, double click either going to that directory or opening that file....



    Sherlock is a POS for finding hard drive files. The indexing feature is less than friendly as well. I can't even Index my OS 9 drive (why I have no idea). Worthless. Works OK for searching multiple web engines, but that's about it. I'd rather use Google anyway.



    [ 11-16-2001: Message edited by: Moogs ? ]</p>
  • Reply 16 of 16
    [quote]Originally posted by Moogs ?:

    <strong>I ..agree completely. Forcing users to use Sherlock to find files on their hard drive is bass-ackwards. There should be a text field in the Finder Toolbar...type in your phrase, click return and bam, a sheet-based listing of all the files found and their location should pop up, single-click showing the tree hierarchy, double click either going to that directory or opening that file....

    [ 11-16-2001: Message edited by: Moogs ? ]</strong><hr></blockquote>

    SNAX pretty much does all that now. Mahybe Apple will snap it up...
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