Finder interface ...
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
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
Seriously though, it's a great idea but I'd prefer a speed bump first.
<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>
HEY!!!! WTF? where did the oktoberfest-cheers graemlin go? or is it just hidden...... trying: :cheers:
i mourn the loss.
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.
<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]" />
<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
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>
<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...