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zurek106 · Oct 29, 2003, 08:05 PM

There is two features that I wish they had added to panther:

1. Selecting a programs window and hiding every other window behind it. I just dont get why they dont have this feature? They have every other feature to deal with windows except this one!
2. The use of the function keys to start up programs! They brought back the Schedule feature (In Energy Saver) from OS 9 but not this?!?!?

-Dan

gorickey · Oct 29, 2003, 08:13 PM

Originally posted by zurek106:
2. The use of the function keys to start up programs! They brought back the Schedule feature (In Energy Saver) from OS 9 but not this?!?!?

-Dan

Thought not built-in by Apple....there are a few 3rd party apps that will conquer this I believe....Keyboard Maestro?!?

nforcer · Oct 29, 2003, 08:19 PM

- FTP Uploading from the Finder
- Multithreaded Finder when working with networked servers (it holds up while mounting/unmounting them and in a few other places)
- Clicking and dragging in a whitespace below the last element in List View (Table View) should select the last element and allow the user to drag upward to select more elements
- Multithreaded Webcore/Safari (it holds up when loading sites like IGN, and really hinders using tabs efficiently)
- Mail.app needs to display ALL new messages in the Dock icon, not just those in the main inbox.
- Tabbed iChat (would have been nice, at least until Adium gets libgaim fully implemented, at which point all iChat will offer over Adium is video/audio conferencing)

I'll post more as they come to mind

Chris Grande · Oct 29, 2003, 08:30 PM

Originally posted by zurek106:
There is two features that I wish they had added to panther:

1. Selecting a programs window and hiding every other window behind it. I just dont get why they dont have this feature? They have every other feature to deal with windows except this one!

-Dan

You can do this..just command+option click the window to hide all other apps.

zurek106 · Oct 29, 2003, 08:33 PM

Originally posted by Chris Grande:
You can do this..just command+option click the window to hide all other apps.

WOAHHHHH THANKS!

MartiNZ · Oct 29, 2003, 08:53 PM

I've always thought the ability to go to a window in a save dialog by clicking on it in the background would be nice. I know there have been 3rd party apps that do this before. Either way, at least the save dialogs have improved a lot with Panther!

besson3c · Oct 29, 2003, 09:06 PM

Originally posted by nforcer:
- FTP Uploading from the Finder

With the enormous effort put into Filevault and Secure Empty Trash, I doubt Apple would want people sending their password out in plain text. It's just not smart to encourage this.

- Multithreaded Finder when working with networked servers (it holds up while mounting/unmounting them and in a few other places)

I read a post in here stating that a new file system would be necessary to eliminate the hold-ups. Regardless, spawning a thread does not make everything instantly faster. There are somethings that should be foreground tasks, and tradeoffs to be made.

I like your other ideas!

wataru · Oct 29, 2003, 09:22 PM

Originally posted by gorickey:
Thought not built-in by Apple....there are a few 3rd party apps that will conquer this I believe....Keyboard Maestro?!?

No, OS 9 has this exact feature built in.

I can't say I ever found it very useful, though.

riverfreak · Oct 29, 2003, 09:24 PM

Originally posted by nforcer:
... at least until Adium gets libgaim fully implemented, at which point all iChat will offer over Adium is video/audio conferencing)

Yep, that's all iChat will have over Adium. Audio/video. Ho-hum. But look, we have tabs!

jokell82 · Oct 29, 2003, 09:27 PM

Originally posted by nforcer:
- Mail.app needs to display ALL new messages in the Dock icon, not just those in the main inbox.

Damn straight. I've wanted this since 10.1...

Originally posted by nforcer:
- Tabbed iChat (would have been nice, at least until Adium gets libgaim fully implemented, at which point all iChat will offer over Adium is video/audio conferencing)

Actually, one of the developers said he might have a try at the a/v thing once libgaim is fully implemented. If this actually happens, I'll never use iChat again.

C.J. Moof · Oct 29, 2003, 09:50 PM

Open a Finder window to your home directory.
Open a Terminal window to your home directory.
In terminal, type touch foo
You've now created an empty file called foo. type ls in the terminal window, and you'll see it exist.
Look at the Finder window. there's no foo.
click the Finder window. Ah- there you are.

That file should show up instantly.

At this point I'd consider it a feature that any remote server I authenticate to should show it's sharepoint on my desktop and/or the left side of the Finder windows. This whole if go/connect to server then on desktop, if browse, then not is inconsistent and confusing.

ZackS · Oct 30, 2003, 12:13 AM

Originally posted by zurek106:
There is two features that I wish they had added to panther:

1. Selecting a programs window and hiding every other window behind it. I just dont get why they dont have this feature? They have every other feature to deal with windows except this one!

What's wrong with doing it by app? I use command-option click a lot.

ryaxnb · Oct 30, 2003, 12:41 AM

Originally posted by ZackS:
What's wrong with doing it by app? I use command-option click a lot.

He just didn't know it was there.

naknek · Oct 30, 2003, 02:26 AM

One feature I dearly miss from Windows: I wish the VPN client had the ability to keep using a local gateway for Internet Access during a PPTP connection.

I hate losing my Net connection when I'm dialed into the company VPN server.

stew · Oct 30, 2003, 04:26 AM

The option to change the system font face and size.

nforcer · Oct 30, 2003, 07:11 AM

- Finder needs a means to globally set the position of the new left-hand pane. With this, the user can have only the icons being displayed, or whatever size the user wants for the left-hand pane to be across all windows
- Preview.app needs to have continuous scrolling for PDFs, like Adobe Acrobat Reader has. When I read PDFs now, I scroll down with the hand, get to the end of the page, then have to click Page Down or use the drawer to get to the next page. This is a big timewaster, and with continuous scrolling, I could simply keep dragging down.

nforcer · Oct 30, 2003, 07:12 AM

Originally posted by stew:
The option to change the system font face and size.

I believe the Silk haxie does this. Tinkertool can also change specific system font sizes and types.

JLL · Oct 30, 2003, 07:14 AM

Originally posted by nforcer:
- Preview.app needs to have continuous scrolling for PDFs, like Adobe Acrobat Reader has.

View -> Continuous Scrolling

Amorya · Oct 30, 2003, 07:26 AM

Originally posted by nforcer:

- Mail.app needs to display ALL new messages in the Dock icon, not just those in the main inbox.

I would hate that. Please at least ask for it as an option, not the default!

Amorya

Diggory Laycock · Oct 30, 2003, 07:34 AM

Services in the Contextual Menu
and
Spring-loaded Dock.

wadesworld · Oct 30, 2003, 07:49 AM

Originally posted by naknek:
One feature I dearly miss from Windows: I wish the VPN client had the ability to keep using a local gateway for Internet Access during a PPTP connection.

I hate losing my Net connection when I'm dialed into the company VPN server.

This is typically a feature of the VPN client that is disabled by your corporate administration when you connect. Allowing you to connect to the Internet at the same time as the V PN opens a potential security hole, so most companies will prevent you from doing so.

Wade

Moose · Oct 30, 2003, 07:54 AM

Originally posted by nforcer:
- Mail.app needs to display ALL new messages in the Dock icon, not just those in the main inbox.

No. It shouldn't. Subscribe to some high-traffic mailing lists, and you'll quickly realize why this should not happen. I'd rather not see "5291" over my Mail icon.

Perhaps having the ability to select folders to do this would be fine, but it'd be bad bad bad to include new mail counts in all folders.

gralem · Oct 30, 2003, 08:16 AM

Originally posted by Moose:
No. It shouldn't. Subscribe to some high-traffic mailing lists, and you'll quickly realize why this should not happen. I'd rather not see "5291" over my Mail icon.

Perhaps having the ability to select folders to do this would be fine, but it'd be bad bad bad to include new mail counts in all folders.

It needs to be an option, though.

I subscribe to several high-volume lists. I always move to folder and MARK AS READ. So my high-volume archives will not interfere with actual new email that I've moved to another folder, but leave marked as new. I want to see that I have new mail in another folder.

---gralem

pendragon · Oct 30, 2003, 08:18 AM

I would like to see Safari have an option to include, in a header, the URL and the Date & Time the page was saved or printed.

rjenkinson · Oct 30, 2003, 08:22 AM

i would like to be able to make "cookie sets," basically a list of cookies that i want to always be on... and be able to turn anything not on that list off.

-r.

Moose · Oct 30, 2003, 08:29 AM

Originally posted by gralem:
It needs to be an option, though.

I subscribe to several high-volume lists. I always move to folder and MARK AS READ.

Why would you mark mail you haven't read as having been read? Kinda defeats the purpose of the header being there.

I'm fine with there being an option to select specific folders to count towards the badge total. But the day I have to molest my procmail rules to modify the goddamned header because NANOG and FreeBSD-* are showing up as NEW MAIL!@#@! is the day I start looking for a new mail reader.

Apple would be retarded to break Mail in this manner, which, I guess, makes it even odds.

bygimis · Oct 30, 2003, 08:35 AM

Originally posted by MartiNZ:
I've always thought the ability to go to a window in a save dialog by clicking on it in the background would be nice.

Just drag the folder icon from finder into the save dialogue box and you will be transported there!

Simon X · Oct 30, 2003, 08:54 AM

Faster Finder Updating It feels a bit worse on my TiBook. If I save to the desktop it's not as instant as in Jaguar. And dragging an item to the trash take about two seconds before the item disappears from the Finder.

And it's a lot slower on my B&W G3. Copying anything over from my TiBook to the G3's desktop doesn't make the item appear there until I open the Desktop folder. Very slow.

Folder Specific Toolbars
However you feel about the new Finder I think you'll agree that Apple could have done quite a bit more. It isn't that big a leap forward from the last. I would sincerely love to able to plave toolbar items which only appear in specific folders. For example, on my Pictures folder toolbar I would like to just have items specific to image editing. Those toolbar scripts Apple has on their site would be much more useful if they didn't appear on every damn Finder folder.

southtdi · Oct 30, 2003, 09:39 AM

I just wish that using tabs could be improved a bit. Mainly I want to be able to set it so that when i open any link from a webpage it opens it as another tab. I don't want to have to push the command key to make this happen. I just want the option to set it.

For me, the way I browse, it woould be very handy.

fafnir · Oct 30, 2003, 09:43 AM

Originally posted by Chris Grande:
You can do this..just command+option click the window to hide all other apps.

And how can I show all hidden apps?

Tom C · Oct 30, 2003, 09:50 AM

Anybody remember the Location Manager from OS 9? That's the #1 thing that I still miss. It can't be that hard to implement. They already have the "location" menu built-in; the problem is that it only controls the network. Back in OS 9, it could also control the default printer, the time zone (important for travelling laptop users), and a few other things.

Yes, I know that there's a third party app out there that does this (can't remember the name)...I tried it, and while it worked, it just isn't as elegant as it could be if Apple built it into the OS.

Simon X · Oct 30, 2003, 10:16 AM

Originally posted by Tom C:
Anybody remember the Location Manager from OS 9? That's the #1 thing that I still miss. It can't be that hard to implement. They already have the "location" menu built-in; the problem is that it only controls the network. Back in OS 9, it could also control the default printer, the time zone (important for travelling laptop users), and a few other things.

Yes, I know that there's a third party app out there that does this (can't remember the name)...I tried it, and while it worked, it just isn't as elegant as it could be if Apple built it into the OS.

Agreed. I was actually looking at the third party app today that you refer to, Location X

Looks ok but haven't decided to buy it yet. What is nice though is that it can use scripts to control other apps when switching locations. Things like changing Energy Saver Settings, printer and so on. But methinks Apple will include this functionality at some point. Hopefully sooner rather than latter.

dharknes · Oct 30, 2003, 12:11 PM

Okay I'll lead this with the fact I'm an old unix guy and despite all of X11s problems the ability to run GUI apps with decent speed remotely rocks. Now if Quartz is based on the old NeXTStep UI code then it should be possible to offer this functionality to Cococa apps.

For those who have never used X. X allows you to run an application on lets say a server and redirect the GUI display to your workstation over the network. The original idea was to have BIG servers and little clients call X Terminals. Today I find it much more useful for remote administration or for shared applications. I install one copy of OpenOffice and everyone can use it.

So I would love a remote windowing system similar to X. Oh and for the record the NeXTStep system was MUCH more advanced then X11.

aapljack · Oct 30, 2003, 12:37 PM

Originally posted by fafnir:
And how can I show all hidden apps?

You can set up a Keyboard Shortcut in the Keyboard prefs for this. I set mine up to be Command-Option-Shift-H.

If you have apps hidden, you need to do this before expos� will 'show all open windows'. Otherwise, it won't show hidden apps.

That is what I think should be in Panther. The option in expos� to show hidden/minimized windows in the 'show all open windows' expos� command.

-b

clarkgoble · 01:32 PM

Multithreaded Finder when working with networked servers (it holds up while mounting/unmounting them and in a few other places)

I've not tried Panther with a network yet. If this wasn't fixed that is rather surprising. Especially considering how many people griped about this.

Multithreaded Webcore/Safari (it holds up when loading sites like IGN, and really hinders using tabs efficiently)

I'd love this as well. However the KHTML (or whatever the core is based on) can't easily be multithreaded. People who've looked at it say it is a non-trivial problem that likely can't be overcome.

I do agree with you. It is about the only flaw I see with Safari at this point.

Mail.app needs to display ALL new messages in the Dock icon, not just those in the main inbox.

Actually I think it ought to be an option (or pick what folders are included) I'm a member of several mailing lists which I let build up for several days. The only mail that comes to my main InBox now is stuff absolutely for me. I get hundreds of messages that go to other mailboxes. I'd hate the functionality you suggest.

Look at the Finder window. there's no foo. click the Finder window. Ah- there you are. That file should show up instantly.

I don't think this will happen until the new FS is done. And then it will only work with that file system and not HFS+, UFS, or network shares. But yes, I agree it would be nice. Especially since the Finder, unlike Windows Explorer, doesn't have a "refresh" button.

Services in the Contextual Menu and Spring-loaded Dock.

Yes to both of these. Apple has an amazingly powerful ability in Services that it really hasn't tapped well nor made user friendly. Improving folders in the dock is a definite must as well.

Now if Quartz is based on the old NeXTStep UI code then it should be possible to offer this functionality to Cococa apps.

It really isn't. Quartz, while very similar to NeXT's display postscript, is largely a different beast. I kind of wish they had added those NeXT features too. But I doubt it'll ever happen.

stew · Oct 30, 2003, 01:27 PM

Originally posted by nforcer:
I believe the Silk haxie does this. Tinkertool can also change specific system font sizes and types.

Silk is a dirty hack to give applications a different font than what they requested. Tinkertool lets you set some defaults that hardly any application respects. I have not seen anything that would reliably allow you to set the menu font to e.g. Tahoma 11 in oder to fit a large menu bar on a 1024x768 screen without having it collide with the time&date menuling.

Besides, this thread is about features that should be in Panther - and neither Silk nor Tinkertool is in Panther.

MacLone · Oct 30, 2003, 01:29 PM

I would like to see web pages scroll as fast as in OS9...should i stop dreaming???
Jaguar, Panther, whatever...the scrolling speed still sucks a lot. I am beginning to think is something that is not possible be improved.

Macrat · Oct 30, 2003, 01:42 PM

Originally posted by nforcer:
- Clicking and dragging in a whitespace below the last element in List View (Table View) should select the last element and allow the user to drag upward to select more elements

This is my only gripe about Panther. Why did they have to screw up what every other GUI OS has had for-ever? Hopefully someone will create a hack to have list and column view behave like in Jaguar.

nforcer · Oct 30, 2003, 03:31 PM

Originally posted by JLL:
View -> Continuous Scrolling

Never noticed that before. I looked for a control in the toolbar or a preference option, and completely ignored the menus. Thanks.

nforcer · Oct 30, 2003, 03:44 PM

Originally posted by MacLone:
I would like to see web pages scroll as fast as in OS9...should i stop dreaming???
Jaguar, Panther, whatever...the scrolling speed still sucks a lot. I am beginning to think is something that is not possible be improved.

I'm not sure what comp you are on or what browser you are using, but applications that use WebCore (Safari, OmniWeb 4.5) scroll pretty fast for me. I used to use Camino but recently switched to Safari. When I tried the latest Camino nightly the other day, I was shocked at how laggy scrolling was after using Safari for so long.

If you have it turned on, turning off smooth scrolling in the System Preferences helps speed scrolling up a bit.

On the browser side, disabling Plugins results in a scrolling speed boost for me on sites that use a lot of unneeded Flash.

nforcer · Oct 30, 2003, 03:54 PM

Originally posted by stew:
Besides, this thread is about features that should be in Panther - and neither Silk nor Tinkertool is in Panther.

True, but if you need this functionality now, Tinkertool and Silk are the closest you can get

real · Oct 30, 2003, 03:58 PM

Wasn't there a feature called(I think it was called) Piles or something like that. It groups files together, for say like projects; you would have images, pdfs, saved .doc what ever and those would be in a single file(pile) right click and it expands And you can select the file you need. Was that a feature I saw somewhere but I may be wrong.

I may be crazy,

real

-Q- · Oct 30, 2003, 04:00 PM

Originally posted by Diggory Laycock:
Services in the Contextual Menu
and
Spring-loaded Dock.

Yes! I would love to have both of those.

kovacs · Oct 30, 2003, 04:09 PM

Originally posted by Amorya:
I would hate that. Please at least ask for it as an option, not the default!

Amorya

Actually I would also like that, as an option that is...

-Q- · Oct 30, 2003, 04:09 PM

Originally posted by real:
Wasn't there a feature called(I think it was called) Piles or something like that. It groups files together, for say like projects;

real

Isn't that called a folder?

Piles were never a feature of Panther. I think it was extrapolated from the minimize in place windows that were in some previous builds, which I think were precurors to expose.

real · Oct 30, 2003, 04:13 PM

Yeah I just did some searching,

I guess it was a rumor:

http://www.macrumors.com/pages/2003/...13220229.shtml

I thought I was crazy.

real

arekkusu · Oct 30, 2003, 06:23 PM

Originally posted by nforcer:
- Finder needs a means to globally set the position of the new left-hand pane.

AGREE. I logged this as a request. I suggest you do too.

I also want:
1) Context menu on items in Finder sidebar.
2) Context menu on System Preference toolbar.
3) Burn completed sound in Disk Utility
4) Zoom & scroll in Preview's fullscreen mode
5) AA point/line/polygon support in Radeon 9600 drivers
6) Working VBL sync

booboo · Oct 30, 2003, 07:43 PM

A tiny thing: Show View Options in the contextual menu . . .

Brass · Oct 30, 2003, 08:00 PM

Originally posted by besson3c:
With the enormous effort put into Filevault and Secure Empty Trash, I doubt Apple would want people sending their password out in plain text. It's just not smart to encourage this.

Why not? They're happy to send out plain text passwords for a myriad of other things (mail, FTP in the finder read-only). It's then up to the user to decide if it's worth the risk.

I read a post in here stating that a new file system would be necessary to eliminate the hold-ups. Regardless, spawning a thread does not make everything instantly faster. There are somethings that should be foreground tasks, and tradeoffs to be made.

Threading is not to make the machine faster, it is to make the user faster. Threading would definitely make this work better. Let the hung task hang in it's own thread while the user gets on with other things.

And I fail to see why a new file system has anything to do with it. Could you please explain?

Superchicken · Oct 30, 2003, 08:04 PM

better icon mannagement. IE you copy one icon, and then you select the info for like five folders, and it changes.

Also a better way to change the icons of the default home folders, I'd like to be able to make my icons look the way I Want them to.