On Fri, Jul 23, 2010 at 2:41 PM, Godfrey DiGiorgi <[email protected]> wrote: > On Fri, Jul 23, 2010 at 10:27 AM, Adam Maas <[email protected]> wrote: >> On Fri, Jul 23, 2010 at 1:21 PM, Bruce Walker <[email protected]> wrote: >>> >>> It's off by default ... >>> >>> View -> Show Path Bar >>> >>> >>> -bmw >> >> Ah, useful to note. Thanks for the info. That would go a long way to >> making Finder nicer to work with. > > It's been there since 10.3.
It's not there on either my 10.3 machine or my 10.4 machine. May be somewhere else but I just checked and I'm not seeing the setting anywhere. It's certainly not at View->Show Path bar and Help on 10.3 pulls up nothing for Path Bar. > > Another thing you're likely unaware of is that Command-clicking on any > Finder window's title will reveal a drop-down menu with the entire > folder path from that window to the volume root. You can open a window > to any folder on that path by picking it from the menu. This has been > there since 1991 on all versions of Mac OS. (It also works with most > application document windows too, a service provided by the Finder.) That is new to me. Not as useful as the Path/Address bar since it requires keyboard intervention but still useful, especially since my machines are older and not running 10.5 or newer. > > I don't use Finder "file navigator" alternatives because in the 26 > years I've been using Apple Mac OS systems I have yet to find one that > was as intuitive and sensible to use as the Finder. Most of them are > heavily laden with yakity-yak nonsense that the Finder does with far > more subtlety. These products have a ridiculously small market > penetration, considering the size of the Mac OS installed base. And in > doing consulting the past six years as an independent, I've discovered > that the vast majority of problems on most people's systems are solved > by removing all these poorly designed and implemented add-on things, > and teaching them how to do what they want with the Finder. Of course Finder isn't immune to these problems either, as the show-stopping Move bug in 10.5 showed. And frankly, regardless of the quality of the replacements, they wouldn't be there if you could do what they do in Finder easily. And yes, they've added features to the point of getting crufty. So has OS X and Windows (Expose and its Windows clone?). We hit the point where adding features over improving basic usability is a given in each OS update. OS X hit that at 10.5, arguably at 10.4, Windows did with Vista (Win7 is a downgrade in usability over Vista, regardless of the backend changes). Also Finder as 'intuitive and sensible to use'? If you continuously have to teach people to use it, it ain't. Apple's damned good on usability, but Finder's just about the least intuitive aspect of the main OS X UI. Especially if you've used a modern 2-pane or 3-pane file manager before. Columns View in particular is a real WTF moment the first time you see it, it's also painful if you're used to a filesystem tree view. -Adam -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
