This topic belongs in the software section because we all know "The Finder is just another application".

After all this time, why don't the columns in Column View "snap to" an even number of columns when I adjust the column widths? Why do the custom columns that I've set not remember their settings between logins or restarts?

Why do I still find myself launching the file name editor when I double click to launch a file or program? And why do I still have to fight the auto-scroll feature of Column View when I double click a file? The first click starts in New Jersey and by the time the thing has scrolled past to show the preview window the second click comes down on California. It's annoying.

And thalo: Could you re-design an Applications icon for the Finder toolbar that didn't look like it came out of a third grade "Dick and Jane" math reader?

Oh my god, I know. That icon makes me crazy. Get out your pencil boxes, boys and girls, it's Application time!

You know me, stick with the classsics. The old generic application icon is already charged with meaning. But I'd probably go with something much simpler and more "iconic"... something you could put on a street sign. That looked good small and large, and said the same thing at any size.

I hate the way I have to keep hitting the "home" key as I use the Finder. I don't recall constantly having my Finder lists auto-scroll to the bottom when I invoked them in 9. In X, it seems like I'm hunting around and scrolling more and easing windows to try and see stuff than I ever did in the legacy. Stuff I did in seconds before, I have to twiddle my way through.

Auto-scroll has been buggy since day 1. I think it's because the window manager is reinventing everything every second when you invoke it. That's why we'd sometimes get the multiple mis-draws, like a brush effect in photoshop. The Finder doesn't see a scrolling column as one thing, but a sequence of many things in time based on mouse position. Very wasteful. Very indicative of keeping a façade on what's basically streaming unix commands.

An aside: remember the days when the watch cursor said everything? Now we have the hypnotizer (my fave), the beachball, the system update cursor... all different ways to tell us to sit tight. I say pick one. And I still think the watch communicated better visually what was going on.

[This message was edited by thalo on Mon May 12 2003 at 08:55 PM.]

And I still thing the watch communicated better visually what was going on.

But you have to be sort of surprised that a 128 x 128 pixel Big Ben wasn't used.

LOL!
But you know, this brings up an interesting point...

Remember how cool it was when the hands of the little watch cursor actually moved? I mean spun around and such as the computer was cranking away? We learned then that visual feedback was a good thing. When the little hands on the watch froze up, we knew something wasn't working... that something was interfering with computer operations, slowing down the show.

That idea was taken to the beachball, which spins at a constant rate as if to say, "leave me alone I'm thinking"... I don't think I've seen a stalled beachball yet, though I could be mistaken.

Anyway, here's what I suggest: I'm sick of progress bars that estimate time incorrectly, and sick of "wait" cursors that don't estimate time. Seems to me that this is something computers could do easily. When the beachball is invoked, it could give us some idea HOW LONG we can expect to wait... and for progress bars for file management activities in the Finder, if something sayd "2 minutes" or "ten seconds"... it damn well better take that long.

I always feel gamed when that last "less than ten seconds" takes a minute and a half. I'd rather the system told me the truth, that's all. If something is gonna take ten minutes, have it take ten minutes. Don't lie. I'm convinced OS X tries to downplay its slowness with crafty subterfuge. But usage always outs it. The sense of user feedback and responsiveness in this interface has always been very weak.

And where I need it the most, it's the worst. The Finder. I can't tell you how many times I'm doing the simplest thing, like copying a bunch of files from one place to another, and something goes south. The "ghosted" representations of the files will stall over some window as I drag it over top (especially if it's a Classic window)... sometimes it takes several seconds of beachballing to even know whether the Finder was smart enough to figure out what I was trying to do.

If it wasn't, you get that "springback" effect, where the feedback image of the files you were trying to drag, zoom back to their source. Problem is, none of what I generally try to do in the Finder is rocket science. File management should be childsplay for the Finder. That it isn't, is very alarming.

And so I wonder, what if user feedback was simply HONEST? If tasks that were going to take forever, told us the truth, and in effect communicated the idea (like a progress bar) that this was going to take x-minutes. I dunno, a little countdown stopwatch or something.

And if dragging a bunch of files confused the Finder, instead of waiting through the beachball for the springback effect to tell us "oops, didn't work!" What if there were a dialog box EXPLAINING why the System couldn't handle such a simple task? I'll tell you why, because right now, the OS is banking on the user crap-settling and slack cutting and being forgiving. So the OS spins a lie the user wants to believe, like the software is fast and stable... when in reality it's neither.

I always feel gamed when that last "less than ten seconds" takes a minute

That's as good as any comedy bit I've ever heard that starts with: "Don't you hate it when…."

The "ghosted" representations of the files will stall over some window as I drag it over top (especially if it's a Classic window)... sometimes it takes several seconds of beachballing to even know whether the Finder was smart enough to figure out what I was trying to do.

Yeah. I'm sure it's a case of OS X Alzheimer's: "Now, I came into this room to do something…"

I dunno, a little countdown stopwatch or something.

I vote for a little scantily-clad buxom babe icon walking around the desktop holding up a sign that said "10" and then "9" as if in a boxing ring between rounds.

And if dragging a bunch of files confused the Finder, instead of waiting through the beachball for the springback effect to tell us "oops, didn't work!" What if there were a dialog box EXPLAINING why the System couldn't handle such a simple task?

Such as: "I'm sorry. The computer couldn't perform the required operation because Unix is busy at the moment and has better things to do then manage your files. Wouldn't you rather play an mp3 or watch the Dock bounce?"

Hahahaha, brother Brad you do make me laugh.

quote:

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I vote for a little scantily-clad buxom babe icon walking around the desktop holding up a sign that said "10" and then "9" as if in a boxing ring between rounds.

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Being a longtime fight fan, I'd be up for that. And it does communicate well that Aqua is an interface you have to fight, round by round by grueling round... instead of an Angelo Dundee in your corner, helping you get your work done.

instead of an Angelo Dundee in your corner, helping you get your work done.

Yes. Instead, we have a Crocodile Dundee always pulling out something bigger and saying to the lean, mean OS 9: "That's not an icon. (Whoosh of slider bar of View Options) *This* is an icon.

Hahahahaha, oh man. But it's Crocodile DUMBdee in this case.

If there was any doubt that this is the supersize culture coming to bite us in the ass, all you'd have to do is look at Aqua. Except at least with french fries, you get more fries. Aqua is more like Doritos... put less chips in the bag, redesign the bag so nobody looks at how many net ounces are in it, and keep the price the same so nobody flips out over that. Frito Lay saves money by degrading and diminishing what they used to give you, and using eye candy to hide the con.

put less chips in the bag, redesign the bag so nobody looks at how many net ounces are in it, and keep the price the same so nobody flips out over that

Am I the only one who puts value in that great puff of Dorito air that you get upon opening the bag? That�s concentrated flavor, dude.

Huffing Doritos gas. Be careful, I think you can get high from that.

Personally, I've always wanted to test that Doritos bags burst at high elevations, since the gas is introduced into the bag at a higher air pressure.

Maybe I can gang up this experiment with one I've been meaning to do on the relative emotional fragility of Renee Zellweger. I've always wanted to creep up behind her and pop a paper bag. Maybe instead I can put a bag of Doritos in her backpack, and take her on a hike to higher ground.

I'm supposed to know just who the heck Renee Zellweger is. I don't. But I see a couple desktop pictures in the making.

Oscar nominated a-list hollywood actress, star of "Chicago" "Bridget Jones' Diary" and "Jerry McGuire." Latest film "Down With Love"--see the trailer on the Apple site, you'll recognize her.

Thanks for the Hollywood Minute. I confess my ignorance of a lot of pop culture – only too gladly. Now many of you are out there thinking "What the heck do Doritos, Renee Zellweger, pop culture and Crocodile Dundee have to do with the Finder?"

[Why do I have to burn several clicks just to make the "as Icons, as List and as Columns" menu items active (un-grayed) for a Finder window sitting right there in front of me?]

I'm glad you asked.

[Viewing a window in List View, I click the Applications button in the Finder Toolbar and now I'm in Column View. I didn't tell it to change views, just locations.]

The similarities are many.

[With a window open in List View I select "Home" from the "Go" menu and a new window sprouts and takes me "Home". I navigate a bit in this new window. I select "Home" again and no new window sprouts as I go "Home" in this same window. Why the difference?]

Pop culture is full of great artists and ideas.

[Why is the "Name" column in a List View window so bloody wide by default? More twiddling.]

Great ideas make the world go round.

[Man, you really need to be able to adjust the size, particularly the width, of a Column View window from the left edge too or else you simply cut off the right-most column and have to twiddle with the scroll bar to bring it back into view.]

The youth of today, as expressed in pop culture, bring much vitality to our way of life.

[Okay. There's a Back button and a Forward button that allow me to "browse" my files like a web browser. God knows where they'll take me if I haven't been at the computer for a while and don't remember where I've been recently. Okay. But if we're going to have these buttons then something likely to be far more useful, an "up a level" button, is missing. Why?] ["Path" isn't the same thing as a one-click button.]

Their creative minds are coming up with new ideas and invention all the time.

[Okay. That's it. I don't know how the hell you people can call this thing a Macintosh. I've tried. Lord knows I've tried, but trying to manage files in this so-called Finder is cumbersome as all heck. I've used XP and quickly took to the way it does it. It's different, but it works. This beast is just too unpredictable, buggy, unintuitive and annoying.]

Screw pop culture.

Guys, I don't know if you are aware of this but I suggest you install Candybar and apply the "smoothicons 5" icon set. This set not only cool excellent, it abides by the rules of iconic illustration, and inherently it scales very well into 16x16 or 32x32 icons. Every x-critic should use this.

Thanks, Trif, for bringing CandyBar to our attention (although I would have preferred the name "StyleBar" or "SanityBar"). That looks like a useful piece of software although I'm not quite sure I'd choose the Smoothicons 5 if the preview is anything to go by.

CandyBar is a nice little utility. Beats having to go in and manually replace the System icons.

Brad, give it try. You'll be hating Apple's Aqua folder with passion after using smoothicons 5

Hey Trif, I just saw StickyWindows on MacUpdate, thought it might interest you. It definitely has the feel of tabbed windows. I'd like to know what you think.

"Bringing the tabbed browsing experience to the Mac Desktop"

Uh, don't they mean "BACK to the Mac Desktop"?

Because after all, this was more or less a feature of the legacy.

I found it humorous how IN THE WAY the dock was, and wondered instantly how MINIMIZED WINDOWS would fit into all of this.

Look at how we're heading for that whole junk drawer scenario... fifty ways to do the same crap, none of them really the RIGHT way. Not one without some "catch."

Geez, y'all know how I hate to agree with thalo but "junk drawer" doesn't begin to describe Sticky Windows. But as a concept, I like it. In the implementation, it sucks. It may be 1.0 in terms of working, but it's 0.1 in terms of doing something useful and really nailing the UI.

Having both the open window and the tab on screen at the same time is not intuitive. And there's a certain amount of fuss in creating a tabbed window to begin with. Unlike OS 9 which remembers the window location before you start moving it (to the bottom of the screen whereupon it becomes a tab), with Sticky Windows you move a window to the bottom (or side) of the screen until it becomes a tab. But then when you click on the tab to make the window reappear the window isn't in the same place that you left it. There are usually a couple inches of it hanging off the screen. So like I said, there's some fussing in order to create a working window - and this work is shot to hell the instant you minimize a window. The tab disappears.

Also, you can't drag a tab from the bottom to the side of the screen.

Last but not least, I can see why they didn't call these thing pop-up folders. They don't pop up. As far as I can tell they're useless for emulating the Finder's pop-up windows.

In this case thalo is 100% correct. This is pure junk drawer stuff. As much as I look forward to a program that totally hijacks the UI in OS X and does it right, this ain't it.