Emulating piles with folder actions...
Okay, I ran across BuonRutto's post in the Expose thread here about how Expose is a nice replacement for the 'rummaging' aspect of piles without cluttering up the Finder with any UI element.
Good point.
But... I've been wanting one feature of piles for quite a while now... a workspace launcher. Ie, I'm working on seven or eight different documents in three applications, have a Terminal window open to a particular directory, and I need to shut it all down in a hurry (usually to run for the bus). I'd *love* to be able to say "Save as Workspace" in the Apple Menu, and have it query all open applications for their open documents, compile it all into a list, and save it as a tidbit in the Finder. (Maybe internally it's just a shell script that opens all those docs, for instance.)
All good so far, but it occurred to me that Finder piles would let you add such items in the Finder. That'd be slick. "Oh yeah, tomorrow I need to work on *this* one too... I'll just add it..."
Well, it hit me that Folder Actions allow this. Set up a folder that contains that shell script inside, with a 'On Drop' action that adds a dropped file to that said shell script, then *puts the file back where it was*, and an 'On Open' action that runs the shell script. Slap a neat icon on it, and voila - piles, in a rudimentary form.
Comments?
This is one of the cool things about MacOS X... on the surface, it looks minimalistic, but you start digging and some really neat things start to combine in powerful ways.
Good point.
But... I've been wanting one feature of piles for quite a while now... a workspace launcher. Ie, I'm working on seven or eight different documents in three applications, have a Terminal window open to a particular directory, and I need to shut it all down in a hurry (usually to run for the bus). I'd *love* to be able to say "Save as Workspace" in the Apple Menu, and have it query all open applications for their open documents, compile it all into a list, and save it as a tidbit in the Finder. (Maybe internally it's just a shell script that opens all those docs, for instance.)
All good so far, but it occurred to me that Finder piles would let you add such items in the Finder. That'd be slick. "Oh yeah, tomorrow I need to work on *this* one too... I'll just add it..."
Well, it hit me that Folder Actions allow this. Set up a folder that contains that shell script inside, with a 'On Drop' action that adds a dropped file to that said shell script, then *puts the file back where it was*, and an 'On Open' action that runs the shell script. Slap a neat icon on it, and voila - piles, in a rudimentary form.
Comments?
This is one of the cool things about MacOS X... on the surface, it looks minimalistic, but you start digging and some really neat things start to combine in powerful ways.
Comments
nice job
Kickaha, in your RW example... why not just put your computer to sleep? I don't think I've shut down my laptop in months.