New Feature: Smart Folders

ghost_user_nameghost_user_name
Posted:
in macOS edited January 2014
Ok, I just had this brilliant idea. It's so radiant that you may very well need sunglasses. This thread now highly recommends that you utilize...







Ok, so in iTunes, we have all of our songs in a database. These songs have various information tagged on them, such as artist, genre, etceteras. We can also create a playlist, and add the songs we want to that playlist. Furthermore, we can now create smart playlists, and have the playlist find the songs that fit the criteria.



What if we could take that to the finder, and have Smart Folders. Permit me to explain.



I keep all of my clients in a folder called, "Turbo Projects". It's really one giant listing of folders, each named after one of my active clients. These projects span web, print, broadcast, etceteras. In Mac OS 9 I used labels to quickly distinguish between them all. The problem is some clients are a combination of mediums.



So what if I had, say, three folders in my dock, each named after one of the aforementioned mediums: Web, Print, Broadcast. I then told each of those folders to find client folders flagged, or labeled, as being in one of those mediums.



Ok, so admittedly, it sounded a bit cooler when I had first conceived of it....

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 20
    buonrottobuonrotto Posts: 6,368member
    Where the heck have you been?! This is a thought that has cropped up now and again here ever since iTunes 3 came out. The Piles concept took over people's imaginations for a while, but with Folder actions being tied into the Finder directly in Panther, Applescript and Folder Actions seem like the vehicle for creating smart folders in the Finder and essentially doing what people imagined with Piles a few months ago. I think Smart folders is the way to go myself. Sort of combines much of what piles promised with the idea of saved queries from Copland.



    Here are some places where it has been discussed to one degree or another:



    http://forums.appleinsider.com/showt...=smart+folders



    http://forums.appleinsider.com/showt...=smart+folders



    http://forums.appleinsider.com/showt...s&pagenumber=2



    (PS: looking back through some of these threads, it's amazing how Panther addresses so many ideas and requests people put together -- encryption on the fly, new open/save dialogs, live filtering/search, multiple window management, better location functionality, etc.)
  • Reply 2 of 20
    baumanbauman Posts: 1,248member
    Hmmm... someone (was it Kickaha?) thought of a way to get this going (albeit not so nicely) with Folder Actions. He posted about it a while back but I'm too lazy to go looking
  • Reply 3 of 20
    placeboplacebo Posts: 5,767member
    Poor guy, LoCash...he has a brilliant idea, only to discover it is not new...
  • Reply 4 of 20
    scottscott Posts: 7,431member
    I thought there was some Linux project that was on top of this. Or was it BeOS?
  • Reply 5 of 20
    aquaticaquatic Posts: 5,602member
    I live on Smart Playlists. This would be cool! It could sort by the Finder column criteria for Date Modified, Created, Size...but to do much more we get in to that "new file system with meta data" thing again. Here's to 10.4!
  • Reply 6 of 20
    ghost_user_nameghost_user_name Posts: 22,667member
    Yeah, Brad already informed me of the prior discussion.



    I'm going to go crawl back to Software and the Genius Bar now... my homes away from home
  • Reply 7 of 20
    buonrottobuonrotto Posts: 6,368member
    We still wuv yoo!
  • Reply 8 of 20
    andersanders Posts: 6,523member
    Who IS this LoCash? Typical newbie behaviour not to see if it has been discussed before
  • Reply 9 of 20
    chris cuillachris cuilla Posts: 4,825member
    Who says "Smart Folders" won't be in Panther?



    I say they will be.
  • Reply 10 of 20
    big macbig mac Posts: 480member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Chris Cuilla

    Who says "Smart Folders" won't be in Panther?



    I say they will be.



    I'd love to be optimistic too, but I doubt we'll see any major new features in Panther that haven't already been demonstrated.
  • Reply 11 of 20
    ghost_user_nameghost_user_name Posts: 22,667member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Anders

    Who IS this LoCash? Typical newbie behaviour not to see if it has been discussed before



    Ok, Brad, I told you nobody here knows who I am!



    You owe me a pizza trophy!
  • Reply 12 of 20
    chris cuillachris cuilla Posts: 4,825member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Big Mac

    I'd love to be optimistic too, but I doubt we'll see any major new features in Panther that haven't already been demonstrated.



    Except that Steve alreayd said there were somthing like "100 new features" in Panther and "I want to show you a few of them today."



    So I am optimistic that we'll see more features when it actually rolls out. I am not certain they'll all be the things we want. :-)



    Smart Folders seem logical to me. Better FTP support in the Finder also seems logical. Built in zip/unzip would be really nice. Windoze has this, though it is terribly implemented (as usual).



    That's three features right there.
  • Reply 13 of 20
    macgregormacgregor Posts: 1,434member
    I just hope we get to smart folders before Longhorn does...
  • Reply 14 of 20
    moogsmoogs Posts: 4,296member
    The only thing that makes me think there will be at least one more major feature released with Panther is not Steve's comment, but the Panther preview site...where it says



    Quote:

    Learn more about the future today in this Sneak Preview, and stay tuned for more news of the future.



    I don't think there will be lots of additional features we haven't seen but I bet the Finder / Dock will have some other major improvement we haven't been told about. Piles, LoCash's Funky Folder Fountain, or something. Maybe even something to do with Ink / handwriting recognition or speech recognition. Who knows. But I bet it's there, waiting to be sprung on us.
  • Reply 15 of 20
    ghost_user_nameghost_user_name Posts: 22,667member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Moogs

    ... LoCash's Funky Folder Fountain...



    Oh my god! That totally has to be the name of something...
  • Reply 16 of 20
    valmadvalmad Posts: 49member
    Funky Folder Fountain, future feature finaly found. For full finder function, F4 finds "folder funtain" favorites. ( Frogsh!t, Features frozen )
  • Reply 17 of 20
    tkntkn Posts: 224member
    This is really a job for the filesystem and metadata which is an endless discussion. HFS+ is just okay, something like Reiser4 or the old BFS could do a lot of cool things that HFS+ just really can't handle. When tied with folder actions and scripts this would be huge...
  • Reply 18 of 20
    robsterrobster Posts: 256member
    just a thought...(i'm gonna regret this...)



    but doesn't this kind of already happen with the recent documents feature of the apple menu...is that not a kind of 'smart folder' that groups alll the last opened document?



    My point: if so, it's not a new feature merely one that needs to be implemented/turned on.
  • Reply 19 of 20
    gardenofearthlydelightsgardenofearthlydelights Posts: 963member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by valmad

    Funky Folder Fountain, future feature finaly found. For full finder function, F4 finds "folder funtain" favorites. ( Frogsh!t, Features frozen )



    Fruity forum freak finds fantastic folder feature funny. Figures.
  • Reply 20 of 20
    inkheadinkhead Posts: 155member
    How can I use the actions that are in the new Panther anyway? How do I assign an action to a folder and what good are they? Is anybody using these now for something?
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