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Tyler McAdams · Apr 5, 2005, 05:01 PM

I don't know about you guys, but when I get busy, my desktop is my workspace. Right now as I look at it I have no space left on the desktop and I blame it on the icon spacing.

Those of you who have Tiger... is it any better yet? Any suggestions/haxies for dealing with desktop clutter?

Ozmodiar · Apr 5, 2005, 08:06 PM

Make the icons smaller?

chabig · Apr 5, 2005, 09:12 PM

Or take advantage of a wonderful organizational tool called "folders".

omar96 · Apr 5, 2005, 09:17 PM

I see where Tyler's coming from...using smaller icons doesn't help horizontal spacing, though it does help vertically. I eventually adapted and made a folder that I stuck on my desktop with my WIP's. I may one day make proper use of my Home folder's Documents subfolder but that'd be TOO organized.

Tyler McAdams · Apr 5, 2005, 09:34 PM

I have over 280 gigs worth of storage on my G4 system... what's scary is that I have about 4 gigs free. It gets increasingly difficult to keep yourself "organized" at such a volume. Basically I just use the desktop for all temp files and when I'm done with them I put them in there respective project folders. I hate to say it but I need OS 9 sytle spacing... or even worse Windows spacing. Can't we all just get a-desktop?

kcmac · Apr 5, 2005, 10:12 PM

I agree with Tyler. I use the desktop for current files and then organize them. My 12 inch screen gets packed quickly. Spacing is way too generous. I've sent this in as feedback so many times I have lost track. In fact, sending again right after this.

Anand · Apr 5, 2005, 11:58 PM

What is worse is that when you have too many files on the desktop the start to stack on top of each other. I see a lot of people that are new to the Mac platform with this. In my mind, it is a bad design. The Icons should scale automatically so they don't stack. Is this not fixed in tiger?

patman600 · Apr 6, 2005, 12:52 AM

Originally posted by omar96:
using smaller icons doesn't help horizontal spacing, though it does help vertically.

I would imagine this is an intentional decision on Apple's part. The most informative part of a document is the filename. Squeezing the desktop horizontally would make the filename hard to read and much less useful. Squeezing them vertically allows more files but retaining legible file names.

Originally posted by omar96:
What is worse is that when you have too many files on the desktop the start to stack on top of each other. I see a lot of people that are new to the Mac platform with this. In my mind, it is a bad design. The Icons should scale automatically so they don't stack. Is this not fixed in tiger?

This would be a useful feature. They do dynamic resizing for the dock, why not for the desktop? The 2D discrete grid would be more difficult than a continuous line to implement, but it should be doable.

TETENAL · Apr 6, 2005, 01:06 AM

Originally posted by Tyler McAdams:
I have over 280 gigs worth of storage on my G4 system... what's scary is that I have about 4 gigs free.

You should have about 20% free space on your hard disk.

ism · Apr 6, 2005, 01:39 AM

Originally posted by TETENAL:
You should have about 20% free space on your hard disk.

Try that on a laptop working with dv. It's not absolutely necessary to keep lots of free space (enough for swapfiles (a couple of Gb) should do it)

curmi · Apr 6, 2005, 01:41 AM

From what I hear there is no fix for the spacing problem in the Tiger finder. Sad, I know.

- - e r i k - - · Apr 6, 2005, 02:16 AM

How hard is it really to save to your document folder

Link · Apr 6, 2005, 03:04 AM

Originally posted by - - e r i k - -:
How hard is it really to save to your document folder

Are you that big of an apologist? It really boggles me the lazy ****s in apple's HQ haven't bothered to put a slider somewhere to adjust spacing -- it's been in windows since 1995, so wtf?

Answer: Apple's Apple.. yeah.. okay fine. When I first bitched about the OS needing resizable elements I said hey maybe they should stick them all on a single slider -- and sent it in as feedback about a year ago.. you know what happened to make it into tiger? Yeah that slider -- the DPI slider too! Was in quartz debug last I heard... but still!

Sliders to control the desktop would be nice

See, they really do listen sometimes

monkeybrain · Apr 6, 2005, 04:11 AM

Originally posted by Anand:
What is worse is that when you have too many files on the desktop the start to stack on top of each other. I see a lot of people that are new to the Mac platform with this. In my mind, it is a bad design. The Icons should scale automatically so they don't stack. Is this not fixed in tiger?

This is a big problem. I downloaded a stuffit archive and it unstuffed to the desktop, what I didn't realise was that it unstuffed about 200 files and they all stacked on several layers deep on the desktop. Even worse, I couldn't unstack them because the Finder completely locked up. I had to use the Terminal to move those files - imagine if that happened to a newbie, not very impressive file management behaviour at all.

It's a rare occurence, but it's the little things that matter, they should sort this out. Although if the Finder hadn't locked up it wouldn't have been a problem either.

Randman · Apr 6, 2005, 04:12 AM

Posted feedback to Apple directly?

- - e r i k - - · Apr 6, 2005, 05:14 AM

Originally posted by Link:
Are you that big of an apologist? It really boggles me the lazy ****s in apple's HQ haven't bothered to put a slider somewhere to adjust spacing -- it's been in windows since 1995, so wtf?

What has being organised to do with being an apologist? The first thing I do is turn off the stuff Apple leaves on by default on the desktop. That's hardly being an apologist. Not to say that they leave the desktop as their default download folder. WTF?

Zadian · Apr 6, 2005, 06:01 AM

Originally posted by Tyler McAdams:
I don't know about you guys, but when I get busy, my desktop is my workspace. Right now as I look at it I have no space left on the desktop and I blame it on the icon spacing.

Try to use a smaller font for the icon labels on the desktop. The icon spacing is related to the font size. Smaller font size results in smaller icon spacing.

Sophus · 06:28 AM

Originally posted by curmi:
From what I hear there is no fix for the spacing problem in the Tiger finder. Sad, I know.

From what I have seen, icon spacing, at least inside Tiger's Finder is much closer horizontally. You get four coloumns of icons in Tiger wheras you only get three in Panther, same icon size and same window size. However, this was on a build in the early 300's, so it might have changed since then. Also, I can't remember whether the icon spacing in the horizontal plane was dynamic (changing with the icon size). May of course just be a closer fixed positioning. W'ell know for sure soon

Krypton · Apr 6, 2005, 06:30 AM

I submitted a bug through devbugs, and it's a "known issue".

I imagine that means they won't fix it.

Judge_Fire · Apr 6, 2005, 08:38 AM

The spacing seems to work more efficiently when you choose to display file names on the right side of the icon. Works for me, mostly. Mostly.

J

mitchell_pgh · Apr 6, 2005, 11:13 AM

adjustible spacing... good idea... as an option.

Anand · Apr 6, 2005, 01:19 PM

Originally posted by monkeybrain:
This is a big problem. I downloaded a stuffit archive and it unstuffed to the desktop, what I didn't realise was that it unstuffed about 200 files and they all stacked on several layers deep on the desktop. Even worse, I couldn't unstack them because the Finder completely locked up. I had to use the Terminal to move those files - imagine if that happened to a newbie, not very impressive file management behaviour at all.

It's a rare occurence, but it's the little things that matter, they should sort this out. Although if the Finder hadn't locked up it wouldn't have been a problem either.

I have noticed this as being a large problem in people who are new to the platform. They just keep accumulating things on the desktop. Additionally, they don't know what files they can discard without worry (such as .sit files and .dmg files). Windows does modify the icon size to prevent this sort of behavior and the mac should as well. I only allow macs in my laboratory and hence, I see this problem a lot with newbies.

Link · Apr 6, 2005, 02:05 PM

It's not really that -- I just happen to work with a lot of things at once (right now I've got like 12 programs open) -- and the desktop is a useful place for sticking them, albeit that the turnaround on icons being there is short for me, no more than a week and the desktop is completely different

ryaxnb · Apr 6, 2005, 02:08 PM

Tip: Use the desktop as a List view option: i.e. go to the Desktop folder by choosing, Go > Go to Folder, then going to ~/Desktop.

ryaxnb · Apr 6, 2005, 02:21 PM

Tip: Use the desktop as a List view option: i.e. go to the Desktop folder by choosing, Go > Go to Folder, then going to ~/Desktop.

- - e r i k - - · Apr 6, 2005, 10:28 PM

Note to Apple: Instead of making people download stuff to the desktop by default, create a Downloads-folder in the Home-folder and stick it in the Sidebar by default. That way people won't clutter their desktop and still will have an easy way to find their files.

- - e r i k - - · Apr 6, 2005, 10:37 PM

Here's how you do it if you want to maximise icon-spacing on the desktop:

Note that font-size has no effect on vertical spacing when you put the file-names on the right, only horizontal.

And once again: Sort files in folders (even if it's just dumping them all in the Documents-folder), not on your desktop. It's much easier to find then and you'll greatly reduce visual clutter.

Tyler McAdams · Apr 7, 2005, 01:44 AM

Thx erik that helped... I still think it's a work-around until we get the old OS 9 spacing back. It makes me think that there is something really hard about getting the old spacing back since it's been 3 releases and we still have the same strange spacing.

Sure, lickable icons make the sell... but workability is what keeps them coming back!

ashtoash · Apr 7, 2005, 01:49 AM

We still should have options. The grid spacing still sucks in 10.4. I've yet to see a print publisher or anyone who does lots of design (especially at large companies) NOT have 200+ files on their desktop at any given time.

However, even if the files laid out sucks, you'll be able to uses Apple's semi-solution ;-) of Spotlight. Honestly I don't really use the finder file browser anymore. Just spotlight.

Originally posted by chabig:
Or take advantage of a wonderful organizational tool called "folders".

MartiNZ · Apr 7, 2005, 01:56 AM

Originally posted by Tyler McAdams:
Thx erik that helped... I still think it's a work-around until we get the old OS 9 spacing back. It makes me think that there is something really hard about getting the old spacing back since it's been 3 releases and we still have the same strange spacing.

Not only do we still have the wide spacing; it has become progressively worse - in Jaguar the horizontal spacing in icon view was much tighter than in Panther. For some reason they decided there should be enough space to fit the largest icon size possible (ok, not the largest 'possible') horizontally, even when you're using the smallest size available! Genius....

CaptainHaddock · Apr 7, 2005, 02:16 AM

Originally posted by ashtoash:
I've yet to see a print publisher or anyone who does lots of design (especially at large companies) NOT have 200+ files on their desktop at any given time.

Well, I'm a professional designer and I don't have a thing on my desktop. Like Erik, I even turned off the default drives and volumes OS X puts there. Using the desktop as a dump for files and stuff is a nightmare for organization and workflow. Everything on my Mac is properly organized in folders, and I can be very efficient by keeping Finder windows for active projects open. Being able to drag folders into open and save dialogues is great. So is being able to open dozens of stock photos in Preview and drag the ones I want straight to Photoshop.

In my opinion, the only thing designers should put on the desktop is temporary graphic and text snippets.

If Tiger was going to add a feature for easier file management, they should allow you to take and restore Finder workspace snapshots - i.e. window arrangements. Then you could always have just the right files and folders ready for use.

A clean desktop and GUI make for a relaxed, creative session at the computer. That's one reason why most designers prefer Macs.

Randman · Apr 7, 2005, 02:20 AM

I'm a designer and a writer and the only thing I have on my desktop are widgets. I like a clean workspace and I like keeping everything organized.

Tyler McAdams · Apr 7, 2005, 05:14 AM

I agree that you should be organized... but that's no excuse for Apple not to make it work the way that we want it to work... the way we're "used" to... just my 2 cents.

Now if they came out and said there was some technical reason and showed us, I would be at lesst willing to understand the issue. But so far, no explanation that I know of.