[Sam Venning]

One thing that has always made the MacOS (6-9) a delight is the ability to use the keyboard to navigate through the hard drive at the open/save dialog box.

MacOS 6-9:
Command Up-Arrow to move up a folder level.
Command Down-Arrow to move into a folder.
Press a letter to jump to a file/folder (starting with that character).
Tab between the navigation area, filename area, cancel and OK buttons.

Navigating MacOS X open/save dialog boxes using the keyboard seems to be limited.

MacOS X
Arrow keys (up or left to move up a folder level; down or right to move down a folder level). What about pressing a letter to jump down a list of items in a folder?... particularly useful for quickly moving through folders containing many items.

Am I missing something here? Is this still possible?

[Cipher13]

Originally posted by Sam Venning:
<STRONG>One thing that has always made the MacOS (6-9) a delight is the ability to use the keyboard to navigate through the hard drive at the open/save dialog box.

MacOS 6-9:
Command Up-Arrow to move up a folder level.
Command Down-Arrow to move into a folder.
Press a letter to jump to a file/folder (starting with that character).
Tab between the navigation area, filename area, cancel and OK buttons.

Navigating MacOS X open/save dialog boxes using the keyboard seems to be limited.

MacOS X
Arrow keys (up or left to move up a folder level; down or right to move down a folder level). What about pressing a letter to jump down a list of items in a folder?... particularly useful for quickly moving through folders containing many items.

Am I missing something here? Is this still possible?</STRONG>

I have the same gripe...

I use that always in OS9... Apple-Up, Down and arrow keys, etc.

OSX's poor navigation is one of my long-standing complaints.

[starfleetX]

Open/Save dialog navigation is sorely broken in OSX. Cocoa apps behave rather well, but in Carbon apps, there are terrible bugs!

Here's how it's "supposed" to work (as it does currently in Cocoa apps):

right/left arrows - go lower/higher in the hierarchy, similar to cmd-up and cmd-down from OS9
up/down - scroll items in the current level, same as in OS9
typing letters - select the item whose name starts with those letters, same as OS9

The "letter typing" bit is probably the buggiest part for Carbon apps. Not only does it often send you flying to the top of the hierarchy, but it can also inflict some strange drawing bugs. See the weird arrows stuck to the left of this dialog that appeared when trying to type some letters to navigate? Tsk, tsk...



I personally HATE column view for these dialogs. They are far too small for seeing a lot of files. Yes, I know the whole box can usually be resized, but the individual columns can not.

[Floh]

I miss that functionality very much.
Another shortcut I�m loking for is (like CMD-D in OS9) something that takes you to the main level of your system (where you can select a different drive). Right now CMD-D takes you to your desktop, but because of the new multi-user-abilities of OSX this is not the place where your drives show up.
I really hope that Apple fixes the navigation-bugs in the open-save dialogs.

[Millennium]

It works well for Cocoa apps, as others have pointed out. For Carbon apps, it's really badly broken, but DefaultFolder fixes this problem (this alone makes it worth the upgrade price, and there's all kinds of other neat stuff it can do too).

Here's hoping it's fixed for good in 10.2 though.

[cpt kangarooski]

Not only does column view not work well for that reason, it also is incapable of displaying any addtional metadata aside from the filename and icon. Given that I never use Miller Columns by choice, I find it highly annoying that I'm not even given a choice there.

[SS3 GokouX]

Originally posted by Floh:
<STRONG>I miss that functionality very much.
Another shortcut I�m loking for is (like CMD-D in OS9) something that takes you to the main level of your system (where you can select a different drive). Right now CMD-D takes you to your desktop, but because of the new multi-user-abilities of OSX this is not the place where your drives show up.
I really hope that Apple fixes the navigation-bugs in the open-save dialogs.</STRONG>

Actually there are keyboard shortcuts. They're exactly the same as the ones in the Finder and they work in both Cocoa and Carbon apps.

Cmd-Opt-A: Apps folder
Cmd-Opt-H: Home folder
Cmd-Opt-C: Computer/drive list
Cmd-Opt-F: Favorites folder

The only one that doesn't work in Carbon apps is Cmd-Opt-I for your iDisk, it only works in Cocoa apps.

But yes, those open/save dialogs need a lot more functionality.

[bewebste]

The most annoying bug in the Carbon dialogs (for me) is the way it handles the left arrow key. Let's say you are in a folder with files labelled "a", "b", "c", "d", and "e", with item "d" selected, and the containing folder is labelled "a" with siblings "b" through "e". Looks something like this, with selected items in bold (please excuse the poor ASCII art):

a &gt; a
b b
c c
d d
e e

In Cocoa, pressing the left arrow will select the folder "a" (the one in bold), which is correct. In Carbon, pressing the left arrow will select the item one level up which is on the same line as the currently selected item. So, if you had the "d" file selected and press the left arrow, it would select the folder named "d" one level up, rather than the folder named "a", like it should. It's kind of hard to describe, but just try navigating with the left and right arrow keys in a Carbon save panel and you'll see what a mess it is.

[chris v]

Originally posted by SS3 GokouX:
<STRONG>

Actually there are keyboard shortcuts. They're exactly the same as the ones in the Finder and they work in both Cocoa and Carbon apps.

Cmd-Opt-A: Apps folder
Cmd-Opt-H: Home folder
Cmd-Opt-C: Computer/drive list
Cmd-Opt-F: Favorites folder

The only one that doesn't work in Carbon apps is Cmd-Opt-I for your iDisk, it only works in Cocoa apps.

But yes, those open/save dialogs need a lot more functionality.</STRONG>

Those are good shortcuts-- thanks. I personally like being able to scroll with the arrow keys. To get to the drives at root level, just hold the left arrow down for a second or two. (only takes one finger instead of three) Seems pretty easy to me.

They do need to return the functionality of typing a letter to be taken down the list alphabetically. This is definitely a glaring omission, as scrolling down a list of more than ten or fifteen folders gets fatiguing.

CV

[Xeo]

Originally posted by bewebste:
<STRONG>It's kind of hard to describe, but just try navigating with the left and right arrow keys in a Carbon save panel and you'll see what a mess it is.</STRONG>

Oh, I see what you're saying now. I almost told you that's how it's supposed to be until I started playing with a Carbon app more. Yes, that's very messed up. Sometimes you can't even use the left arrow if you're in a "Save" dialog because the item it want's to select isn't a folder. Carbon apps won't let you select anything but folders when saving, it seems. That's really annoying because you'd think hitting left should take you one level up, but it wants to do that at the same time as selecting whatever item is on that specific line!

Ugh, ya, I agree with you. It's almost like they programmed that one on purpose.

[Apfhex]

Yes, and unfortunately most apps right now are Carbon.

The messed up Open/Save boxes have annoyed me from day 1. I would really enjoy being able to have a list view option for them. Collum view, while nice in a large Finder window, is way to clumbsy for the smaller Open/Save dialogs.

[Targon]

I personally HATE column view for these dialogs. They are far too small for seeing a lot of files. Yes, I know the whole box can usually be resized, but the individual columns can not.[/QB]

I think if you hold the Option Key down and move the resize thumb on any column you will find you can resize the width of only the column to the left on an individual basis :-)

Targon

[starfleetX]

Originally posted by Targon:
<STRONG>I think if you hold the Option Key down and move the resize thumb on any column you will find you can resize the width of only the column to the left on an individual basis</STRONG>

Wrong. We're talking about open/save dialogs, not the Finder.

[shortcipher]

Originally posted by starfleetX:
<STRONG>Wrong. We're talking about open/save dialogs, not the Finder.</STRONG>

mmm, wrong context yes, but actually a damn useful hint, thanks!

[SillyMonk]

Stupid newbie question:

In the Finder, once you have navigated to your file (using arrow keys) how do you open it without using the mouse clicks?

thanks noisefloor!

[ 03-20-2002: Message edited by: SillyMonk ]

[noisefloor]

Command-O (that's oh, not zero)

[bewebste]

Originally posted by Apfhex:
<STRONG>Yes, and unfortunately most apps right now are Carbon.

The messed up Open/Save boxes have annoyed me from day 1. I would really enjoy being able to have a list view option for them. Collum view, while nice in a large Finder window, is way to clumbsy for the smaller Open/Save dialogs.</STRONG>

In Cocoa apps, if you hold down the option key while you resize the dialog, it will increase the width of the columns rather than creating new ones when the window gets large enough. It seems to always snap back to having two columns when doing this, but you can have two really wide columns. Of course this doesn't work in Carbon apps.

[Developer]

Originally posted by starfleetX:
<STRONG>Wrong. We're talking about open/save dialogs, not the Finder.</STRONG>

Resizing a Cocoa open or save panel with the option key down will also resize the columns.