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neverwind · May 16, 2004, 07:52 PM

I love speculating about future enhancements to the OS we use and love as much as anyone. But I love more than anything seeing mockups of ideas people have, and then checking them a year or 2 later.

So post away - Show your mockups for all to see and be inspired here! Show us how you think the finder should be - or the dock - or anything! Small movies are ok too.

Fire away.

neverwind · May 17, 2004, 02:09 AM

I'll go first. This is how I think the the info pane should be included in the finder.

curmi · May 17, 2004, 02:29 AM

Ok. Here are a lot of mine:

http://homepage.mac.com/curmi/what

neverwind · May 17, 2004, 03:47 AM

Keep em' rolling!!!!

sushiism · May 17, 2004, 04:05 AM

nice ideas apart from volumes on the right of the desktop ugh nonononono awful

neverwind · May 17, 2004, 05:33 AM

um... didn't Curmi suggest volumes on the left (like the finder)?
I think it's a fabulous suggestion.

MartiNZ · May 17, 2004, 06:45 AM

I've always liked the mac way of having volumes on the right. I emulate that on any windoze machine I use for any time too, as well as removing all of that extra rubbish from the windows desktop. The hard drive is enough on my iBook, and at 128*128

.

I'm not so keen on that embedded info pane idea ... but I have just considered it and maybe it would work as a drawer, like iCal does it, although those things can take up heaps of room. At least that would make it so it wasn't visible only in column view ... in fact I'm liking this idea more and more the more I think about it now. I don't think I have anything with which to make a mockup, but oh well

.

zen jihad · May 17, 2004, 08:50 AM

I'd like to be able to sort files by types, or names, etc in the column view. Just like it is in list view.

JKT · May 17, 2004, 09:25 AM

There's a good reason volumes are on the right of the desktop - they are more readily visible when you have windows in front as they tile from the top left. If you had them on the left, then they would be obscured 99% of the time. Not so essential with Expose etc, but...

Personally, in the Finder windows, I'd prefer it if the sidebar had a metal background like the toolbar so that it didn't look like just another column (which is potentially very confusing to new users), so as to better emphasise that its contents don't behave like those of the window itself.

For column view in the Finder and Open/Save dialogues, I'd prefer it if we could select a fixed number of columns to appear in each window which would auto-size to fill the area of the window/sheet when it was re-sized. I hate having partial columns in view.

Two very minor suggestions, I know.

RooneyX · May 17, 2004, 11:01 AM

Originally posted by curmi:
Ok. Here are a lot of mine:

http://homepage.mac.com/curmi/what

Jamie, I really like the idea of keeping files and volumes separate on the desktop. I want it.

diamondsw · 04:54 PM

Originally posted by RooneyX:
Jamie, I really like the idea of keeping files and volumes separate on the desktop. I want it.

Also, drives used to be sorted by how "permanent" they were. Your fixed drives showed up first, then firewire/usb drives, then iPods, then CD's/DVD's, then disk images. That kept the icons static most of the time. I believe either the sidebar in Finder windows or Open/Save dialogs (can't remember which) still sort this way. Jaguar and earlier did on the desktop as well...

curmi · May 17, 2004, 10:52 PM

Originally posted by RooneyX:
Jamie, I really like the idea of keeping files and volumes separate on the desktop. I want it.

Well, make sure you tell Apple. You are welcome to send them the link.

I know some people like the volumes on the right, but I've suggested the left so that they are consistent with the finder windows. Could be on the right. Maybe an option. I would just love to not have a desktop that is more like a junk yard.

Link · May 17, 2004, 11:48 PM

The "services" and sort by name, kind, etc in finder contextual menus.

I also wouldn't mind having these two in contextual menus (secondary actions):

*For zip/gz/tar/whatever files: the ability to right click and "browse archive"

*For disk images: "Burn this image"

One other thing would be having all unix compressed files (bz2, tar, gz, etc) handled through OS X directly instead of stuffit. That app is a piece of crap and apple should quickly realize how wrong they were in providing it

Adding in lotsa pictures like in the OS 9 days for desktop backgrounds would be cool too..

Oh and there's another.. In the OS 9 days you could have desktop patterns UNDER desktop pictures. I wonder why they never brought that back..

biscuit · May 18, 2004, 02:50 AM

I liked most of your ideas Jamie so I sent the link to Apple via this page: Mac OS X Feedback.

There are lots of things that Panther changed, for good and bad. My hope for future OS X versions is that we keep the good stuff and change the bad stuff back to how it was.

biscuit