Windows Explorer vs Mac OS X Finder

[gxsaurav]

1. In the drop down list from the breadcrumb bar, does the list include folders only or files and folders.

Just folders

Can we drag-and-drop from source to destination by using breadcrumb bar different subfolder as destination (ie, in the above screenshot of yours, showing directx subfolder in the main window, drag a file and drop it into catroot32 subfolder) or cut and paste through right-click on the different subfolder. (For drag-and-drop, please confirm how you get the drop down to initiate while holding the dragged file - hold over for a while like the tree view?

Nope, why do u need drag here? Either drag to the tree or favorite sidebar or cut-> go to destination folder using bread crumb bar & paste. Once you cut, your hands are free to work on other keys. While u drag your hands are locked on mouse & keyboard cos if u leave the mouse button the drag pile vanishes. You can do this, or simply simply open the other folder in another Explorer view & then drag & drop. Windows Explorer supports both while Finder only support one method.

Maybe breadcrumb bar is a sufficient alternative to the column view. I dont know. Having used neither, I cannot make a comment... However, with what little I have found about column view, I know that there is no alternative to it in Win XP Explorer, except through the third party replacement application, which still needs some work.

Breadcrumb bar lets you work without opening multiple windows. You can do whatever u want in one Explorer window only. You are comparing Windows XP (2001) with an OS released in 2005 (Tiger)

The Windows Explorer Open File view in Windows Vista can be customised too unlike the Finders open window view which either support column or list view. No Icon view, no icon resizing...no file type sorting or hiding..nothing.

 

[sakumar79]

Oh, Mac applications have the 'File >> Open...' command too? You mean to say there actually are people in this world who use Macs and do not drag files to their respective dock icons to open them? WOW, never knew that

If you have Photoshop open with a file, and you want to open another file, dont you use the File>>Open command to open the new file? Do you go to the desktop, find the file in Finder and drag onto dock? Wouldnt that be cumbersome?

@gx_saurav: Having the convenience of drag-drop onto breadcrumb bar would have been good. The breadcrumb bar would have been better than tree for this because of the reduced space utilisation... And sorry that Im comparing XP with Tiger, but I have XP and I am trying to learn about Mac here... (When I do get my hands on Vista, I will try it also and then compare it with Mac, but currently I have no interest in upgrading my XP to Vista for atleast a year).

I can imagine the breadcrumb bar based on reading on this forum, reading various articles in the net, and trying out an implementation on XP through UltraExplorer... It may not be accurate, but the feeling I got is that in some cases, using it with tree would still not give me the ease that column view would give me... Of course, there are many situations where the tree view (by itself) would be faster (or at least as fast as) than the column view, but that is a separate issue. My situation was this - In my dad's office, we generate a lot of structural drawings, and these are stored for backup based on job number. Each project is given a job number starting from 1001 (currently it is above 4300). Now, earlier jobs were mainly done manually, and computer drawing files were minimum. Current jobs almost always are done on computer. Now, the jobs are backed up in groups of main folders "Upto2000", "Upto2500", etc and subfolders within the main folder for each project is created "2001","2002",etc... Sometimes, our drafting staff put files in the wrong project folder, and sometimes even put folder within another project folder or wrong group folder... Recently, I decided to back up the files on an external HDD. I wanted to rearrange the drawings in the correct order. Through column view arrangement in UltraExplorer, I managed to finish the work reasonably fast. I had to use it in conjunction with a separate Explorer Window because of some limitations in its features and some minor bugs in the program, but I think that those limitations/bugs would probably not have been there in Finder...

Arun

 

[iMav]

dude believe me when u will use both of them u will be in a better position to decide ...

column view is only good on certain occasions ... have a look the screenshot post of mine

 

[Zeeshan Quireshi]

Oh, Mac applications have the 'File >> Open...' command too? You mean to say there actually are people in this world who use Macs and do not drag files to their respective dock icons to open them? WOW, never knew that!


@sakumar79, yes, it only shows you the folders in the bread crumb bar and no, you cannot drag things over to it. Like I've said before, it is a very poor implementation of the column view.

I think arya you skipped my File-Location point . plz provide how to copy file location of any file easily .

 

[aryayush]

If you have Photoshop open with a file, and you want to open another file, dont you use the File>>Open command to open the new file? Do you go to the desktop, find the file in Finder and drag onto dock? Wouldnt that be cumbersome?

Isn't it easier? Think about it.

A large icon is there in the dock present at all times. When you are working on an image in Photoshop, you click on a Finder window in the background (remember than Photoshop on Mac OS X does not have an incredibly useless gray background that blocks access to all other windows) and drag your stuff onto the Photoshop icon. If it is on the desktop, simple drag your mouse to a corner of the screen; every window slides out of the way and the desktop appears. Drag the photo to the Photoshop icon and everything slides back onto the desktop and the image opens in Photoshop. The best way is to hit 'Command + Space' even while in Photoshop, type the first few letters of the file you wish to open and hit 'Command + Return'. The file shows up in the Finder and you can drag it to the Photoshop icon. You can, of course, also drag a bunch of files onto the icon.

In any case, all three approaches are better than opening Photoshop, hitting 'Ctrl + O', navigating to the file and then opening it. Ever since I've switched to the Mac, I've never opened any file in any application that way. And when I was on Windows, I opened every file in every application that way. Even though Mac OS X supports both approaches, the Mac way is so much better that normal people just do not use the Windows way any more after switching.

@Zeeshan Quireshi, I'll tell you about this later. I've never needed it so I never enquired about it but I'll ask on some Apple forum and tell you.

 

[goobimama]

Here's another kicker.

Say you open an image file in an application "Preview" which is the default for opening PDFs, Jpegs, PNGs and the like. Now you suddenly want to edit that file but you closed the Finder window, so you will have to get to the file again.

But one can just Command + drag the image icon on the top of the title bar of Preview into the photoshop dock icon....automatically opens it.

This works for other applications/file types as well, I just gave a hypothetical situation...

 

[gxsaurav]

Isn't it easier? Think about it.

Lolz...you call that convinient. I don't even need to open any other explorer window. Just ctrl+o which open photoshop Open Dialog in "My Pictures" folder, then from there just open any file which even shows a preview of it right there in open Window.

I wonder how you call that long process convinient.

Say you open an image file in an application "Preview" which is the default for opening PDFs, Jpegs, PNGs and the like. Now you suddenly want to edit that file but you closed the Finder window, so you will have to get to the file again.

But one can just Command + drag the image icon on the top of the title bar of Preview into the photoshop dock

Here is another Eye opener, when you View an image in Windows Photo Viewer, just click on the toolbar button "Open..." & open in photoshoop.

About draging a file to dock icon, just drag any file to a shortcut of the application or to the taskbar icon fo the opened application & that application will come in foreground for u to drop the file in.

 

[goobimama]

Well suppose the application is not in the list? You got to hunt it down with the "Open with" thing.

Also, I said this was a hypothetical situation. Preview is just an example, there are many other apps/files which behave this way.

As for dragging to the taskbar, you seriously thing one can use those tiny icons to drag and drop a file, of which vista makes such a huge preview out of?
*img510.imageshack.us/img510/1958/untitledet8.jpg
And how many apps can one have in the taskbar "quicklaunch"?

 

[gxsaurav]

^^^ I said taskbar icon of the open application. Not Quicklaunch. Your post is wrong.

 

[goobimama]

ah. Okay. But the application has to be open then. In OS X the app doesn't even have to be open...

 

[gxsaurav]

If photoshop isn't running & u drag a file to that icon, won't photoshop start?

(or any other application for that matters)

 

[iMav]

man arya u seripously dont know how to use computers efficiently for everything u always have had a long method .... dude use windows ul find shorter quicker and more efficient ways of working seriously

 

[gxsaurav]

Who cares for the usability. I have 25 Windows open when I just need 4. Who cares how slow I work when it looks good. Time isn't important while doing work on computers, only looks is

 

[iMav]

so much for the gr8 column view it shows thumbnails if it wishes to ...

*img291.imageshack.us/img291/3820/screenshot01na6.th.jpg

and this when re-sizing the icons comes in handy .... arun i hope u see this coz u and many others said re-sizable icons are use less .... have a look at the screen shot browse thru an image folder and in vista u can have different sized thumbnailed views for a window

*img297.imageshack.us/img297/8007/screenshot02vk5.th.jpg

 

[aryayush]

The column view shows the thumbnails every single time without fail if you have not turned it off. Even if you post a video showing me how it is not showing thumbnails on your "hackintosh", I won't believe it can ever be true on an actual Mac. In my ten months of using it, it has never happened to me and I have not heard any such complaint on any Apple forum. You are either lying, plain and simple, or you did something stupid and are blaming the operating system for it.

I am aware that I am speaking to a person who once thought that dragging something to the dock deletes it and that the OS cannot work with plain text files.

 

[iMav]

it is dude it shows me sometimes and it doesnt some times ... iv posted the screen shot when it didnt i can post a video also ... give a few minutes ...

dragging something to wrong section of the dock deletes it now only a salesman can know which is the correct section before hand users cant

 

[gxsaurav]

The column view shows the thumbnails every single time without fail if you have not turned it off. Even if you post a video showing me how it is not showing thumbnails on your "hackintosh", I won't believe it can ever be true on an actual Mac. In my ten months of using it, it has never happened to me and I have not heard any such complaint on any Apple forum.

I just confirmed this. Mac fails to show thumbnail of images sometimes if it is on network drive. In our case it is treating our NTFS drives as network drives.

You are either lying, plain and simple, or you did something stupid and are blaming the operating system for it.

Arya : Mac cannot have any flaw

 

[iMav]

Here is ur video .... sorry for the bad quality but its better than the iphone ... hell the iphone cant even record videos leave alone video quality

 

[aryayush]

I said that iMav is "either lying, plain and simple, or he did something stupid and is blaming the operating system for it." Here is simple proof of that:

dragging something to wrong section of the dock deletes it

Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!


I cannot believe you still have not figured out something as simple as the dock and virtual shortcuts. LOL!

Dragging anything to any section of the Dock does not delete it. Ha! Ha! Are you in Kindergarten or something!

 

[gxsaurav]

The column view would have been better if we could increse the icon size. Too bad Jobs doesn' think like that.

By the way, when did iMav said that