7 ms·

The one thing I don't understand that Mac has never adopted is being able to use open and save dialogues as mini file explorers (move stuff around and rename, s

The one thing I don't understand that Mac has never adopted is being able to use open and save dialogues as mini file explorers (move stuff around and rename, specifically). Having to switch to Finder to move or rename a file that has the same name as the file I'm trying to save is ridiculous. Of course I never need to do this anymore since I only work on text files under revision control, but it still seems odd to me it was never introduced. I really just miss Window Explorer A LOT since moving to Mac. I don't hate macOS, but Finder is a bit of a joke.

jakecopp 9y ago
I believe this has been possible for some time on macOS.
ryanianian 9y ago
You can use most open/save dialogues to do this - a right-click is all it takes in most places. But I definitely agree with your sentiment. Finder feels like a badly-designed toy. The latest things they've added - tabs and labels iirc - require more steps to do the same tasks in the new way versus the old way.
rahoulb 9y ago
OSX Finder is horrible. Classic MacOS Finder was far better - but still had open/save dialogs. RiscOS had it right - the Open dialog didn't exist - you would open the folder and double-click the file. And the Save dialog didn't exist - the document would reduce to an icon which you would then place into the correct folder. (You can sort of do this on the various versions of macOS by dragging the icon from the title bar but it's inconsistent)
- ubermonkey 9y ago
  What do you find horrible? I prefer it by a wide margin over Windows Explorer.
  - rahoulb 9y ago
    I prefer it over Windows Explorer. I prefer the Classic Mac Finder to both. This article from 2003 lists the problems with the OSX Finder. Since it was written, it's only got worse. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2003/04/finder/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2003/04/finder/
- smashingfiasco 9y ago
  You could always replace your usage of the modern macOS Finder with my poor and very incomplete clone of the classic Mac Finder. :) https://classicmacfinder.com https://classicmacfinder.com
  - rahoulb 9y ago
    Amazing
  - kmill 9y ago
    A few years ago, I actually searched around for an implementation of the classic finder, so this is very amusing for me to see actually implemented! What I was interested in back then was the idea that there was a direct correspondence between the folder window and the data structure on the hard disk, and that to the user these concepts should be indistinguishable. One part of the illusion is that a folder always appears in the same place with the same window size, to give the sense that the folder is a tangible thing with permanence.
    - rahoulb 9y ago
      I also used to love the fact that the equivalent of kernel extensions (totally forgotten the name) could be disabled by moving them to a different folder. The file system IS the computer.
      - smashingfiasco 9y ago
        Agreed! I think that this behavior may have been one of the truly novel principles of classic Mac OS. IIRC, you even used to be able to just swap the System folder around and have like a completely new/different install of Mac OS.
    - smashingfiasco 9y ago
      Glad you're enjoying it! It's got a loooonnggg way to go (I never realized how many small but vital details are in a file explorer application), but it's strangely exciting to see it draw itself on modern macOS, especially on a retina screen! And yes, the spatial UX! I'm still working through getting all of that implemented (I just completed persisting window locations/positioning days ago). I have recently been reading theough some of John Siracusa's turn of the Mac OS X era writings and that's been hugely insightful and helpful. The level of detail (both of the original Finder and his writings) is impressive and sirprising. Very cool UX concepts!
blattimwind 9y ago
To be fair, Windows' file open/save dialogues are so far ahead of everything else that the competition seems like unusable garbage to me. I'm glad KDE/Qt chose to emulate these very closely on Linux. Wouldn't want a desktop where my only choice is Gnome's take at this. (On the flip side, Windows' select-a-directory dialogue of the same vintage is such an utter piece of garbage that I can't imagine there being any overlap of designers between the two dialogues.)
- sigzero 9y ago
  Because that is extremely non-intuitive. It's an "Open" and "Save" dialog. That is what it should do. Joe Public is not going to know it does anything else, yet it does.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y ago
    "Joe Public" is a strawman people who make crap software prop up as the reason their software has to be crap.
    - rocky1138 9y ago
      I am going to print this and put it on my wall.
    - jpindar 9y ago
      It beats using "your mother" or "your grandmother" as the term for a stupid person.
      - sjsbsh 9y ago
        True, no one of consequence is offended by belittling fly over Americans.
  - marrs 9y ago
    This is the excuse that's always used, but I rarely see it play out in practice. Many people don't notice advanced features that are present, that's true. But they don't notice them so it does matter. For the people who do, they can easily discover advanced features through exploring the interface. Apple have a tradition of being really bad at this. Many of the (slightly more) advanced features are completely hidden behind undiscoverable key combinations or very hidden features. The slide-to-reveal pattern on iOS (now mostly fixed with augmentations) is a good example. Middle clicking the titlebar in Finder to reveal the directory parents is another.
sodapopcan 9y ago
Haha, damn ok, it's been so long since I've had to do this, I didn't realize it is now possible (I used to want this all the time and was the bane of my existence in the late 90s early 2000s when using Mac). You still can't seem to move files into sibling directories, though, only to directory links in the sidebar. Anyway, I LEARNED SOMETHING TODAY (about macOS dialogues and about testing things before I open my mouth). ++edited to clarify language.++
makecheck 9y ago
While a fair point, it’s important that feature-rich OS components be designed correctly (including security) and this wasn’t the case with Windows. How many exploits were just a matter of tricking an extra-fancy OS dialog into popping open something it’s not supposed to, escalating permissions alongside it?
- lukeh 9y ago
  On OS X, open/save panels run in a different process via ViewBridge, at least they did last time I checked.
NegativeLatency 9y ago
Coming from the other direction, it kills me when I'm using windows and have a save dialog open, then drag the file I want to open into it from the explorer. On windows it moves the file to a possibly new location, while on OSX the save dialog selects the file you dropped on it (without moving it).
dpkonofa 9y ago
I would normally agree with you here except that I've accidentally renamed files on Windows so many times only to lose them because something was in focus that I didn't intend to be. I use a combination of the mouse and keyboard when browsing and the fact that I can accidentally click on a file (which renames my current file to that file) and save or click enter thinking that I'm saving which then just starts to rename the file is utter garbage in an Open or Save dialog box. I feel like the only things I should be able to do are Open a file or Save a file but not rename other files. Neither is a good solution so it comes down to preference but I definitely see the reason for it because it happens to me on Windows all the time.
ptx 9y ago
Another good approach might be to do it the other way around: Get rid of the pseudo-file-manager dialogs entirely and let applications integrate with the regular file manager. I think RISC OS (?) did this. Open documents in applications had icons representing them which you could drag to the file manager to save. (And perhaps to other applications to open?) Mac OS also has (or had?) this to some extent – many document-based applications show an icon in the title bar, which is for dragging and dropping the document in question. Even Windows has an example of catering to this way of working, in Explorer, where the folder icon in the location bar represents the current folder and can be dragged and dropped. They even have some custom behavior to prevent the window from being raised when you drag from it, so that it works more like classic Mac OS and lets you drag to an overlapping window.
- watersb 9y ago
  Windows Explorer can be extended; the example I remember is browsing a folder of email message files, both the metadata attributes displayed in list view, and a functional content pane for viewing the message itself. Be OS did this, too; I got the impression that Windows was inspired by that, both for BeFS (NTFS) and the desktop filesystem UX.
  - digi_owl 9y ago
    NTFS was introduced a few years before BEOS. More likely that they were both inspired by a common source. Never mind that MS have been working on a fully database driven FS (WinFS?) for ages.
favorited 9y ago
I have the opposite experience WRT Finder vs Explorer. I use a Mac as my primary machine, but have a PC for games. Trying to use a file browser without Miller columns[0] drives me crazy. I love being able to drag a file up one level in the tree without cutting and navigating to the destination to paste, or having 2 windows open to almost the exact same location. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_columns https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_columns
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > I love being able to drag a file up one level in the tree without cutting and navigating to the destination to paste, or having 2 windows open to almost the exact same location. While Miller columns certainly support that, so does the tree view in the left panel in the default Windows explorer layout.
  - favorited 9y ago
    Honestly I didn't think of tree view before seeing this (and neither did the friends I asked who are more regular Windows users than I am). I'm gonna give it a shot. I've been using bitCommander, which is a Windows file manager that supports (among other things) Miller columns.
    - dragonwriter 9y ago
      Compared to the tree view, Miller columns use more horizontal space, but have less vertical overflow. Which is superior probably depends a lot on your usage patterns, but both will support “drag to (grand, etc.) parent of current folder” fairly simply.
jjoonathan 9y ago
From someone traveling in the opposite direction at the moment: the Windows folder selection dialog is the crustiest open/save relic of them all and "open files are locked even to administrators" is a UX catastrophe. Lesser pains: it hurts to have missing consistent "jump to enclosing folder" semantics everywhere (command-click on mac -- only get an equivalent context menu 30% of the time) and to not have the ability to snap open/save dialogs to a particular file or folder with drag and drop. The door swings in both directions, in other words :)
- adrianratnapala 9y ago
  > "open files are locked even to administrators" is a UX catastrophe. This can't be blamed on UX people. It's an ancient difference between Unix and VMS and not easy to fix.
wruza 9y ago
Windows Explorer, on the other hand, still has no “expand folder” functionality on the right pane. I have to go back and forth to sort garbage trees, opening multiple windows or temporary pinning all folders into favorites. Given that their names may intersect, problem gets worse. In Finder you just expand interesting folders and DnD until it’s done. What really is a joke is a left pane that combines favorites, libraries (die, die, DIE) and disk trees. It was never usable, except for favorites.

jakecopp 9y ago

I believe this has been possible for some time on macOS.

ryanianian 9y ago

You can use most open/save dialogues to do this - a right-click is all it takes in most places. But I definitely agree with your sentiment. Finder feels like a badly-designed toy. The latest things they've added - tabs and labels iirc - require more steps to do the same tasks in the new way versus the old way.

rahoulb 9y ago

OSX Finder is horrible. Classic MacOS Finder was far better - but still had open/save dialogs. RiscOS had it right - the Open dialog didn't exist - you would open the folder and double-click the file. And the Save dialog didn't exist - the document would reduce to an icon which you would then place into the correct folder. (You can sort of do this on the various versions of macOS by dragging the icon from the title bar but it's inconsistent)

ubermonkey 9y ago
What do you find horrible? I prefer it by a wide margin over Windows Explorer.
- rahoulb 9y ago
  I prefer it over Windows Explorer. I prefer the Classic Mac Finder to both. This article from 2003 lists the problems with the OSX Finder. Since it was written, it's only got worse. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2003/04/finder/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2003/04/finder/
smashingfiasco 9y ago
You could always replace your usage of the modern macOS Finder with my poor and very incomplete clone of the classic Mac Finder. :) https://classicmacfinder.com https://classicmacfinder.com
- rahoulb 9y ago
  Amazing
- kmill 9y ago
  A few years ago, I actually searched around for an implementation of the classic finder, so this is very amusing for me to see actually implemented! What I was interested in back then was the idea that there was a direct correspondence between the folder window and the data structure on the hard disk, and that to the user these concepts should be indistinguishable. One part of the illusion is that a folder always appears in the same place with the same window size, to give the sense that the folder is a tangible thing with permanence.
  - rahoulb 9y ago
    I also used to love the fact that the equivalent of kernel extensions (totally forgotten the name) could be disabled by moving them to a different folder. The file system IS the computer.
    - smashingfiasco 9y ago
      Agreed! I think that this behavior may have been one of the truly novel principles of classic Mac OS. IIRC, you even used to be able to just swap the System folder around and have like a completely new/different install of Mac OS.
  - smashingfiasco 9y ago
    Glad you're enjoying it! It's got a loooonnggg way to go (I never realized how many small but vital details are in a file explorer application), but it's strangely exciting to see it draw itself on modern macOS, especially on a retina screen! And yes, the spatial UX! I'm still working through getting all of that implemented (I just completed persisting window locations/positioning days ago). I have recently been reading theough some of John Siracusa's turn of the Mac OS X era writings and that's been hugely insightful and helpful. The level of detail (both of the original Finder and his writings) is impressive and sirprising. Very cool UX concepts!

blattimwind 9y ago

To be fair, Windows' file open/save dialogues are so far ahead of everything else that the competition seems like unusable garbage to me. I'm glad KDE/Qt chose to emulate these very closely on Linux. Wouldn't want a desktop where my only choice is Gnome's take at this. (On the flip side, Windows' select-a-directory dialogue of the same vintage is such an utter piece of garbage that I can't imagine there being any overlap of designers between the two dialogues.)

sigzero 9y ago
Because that is extremely non-intuitive. It's an "Open" and "Save" dialog. That is what it should do. Joe Public is not going to know it does anything else, yet it does.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y ago
  "Joe Public" is a strawman people who make crap software prop up as the reason their software has to be crap.
  - rocky1138 9y ago
    I am going to print this and put it on my wall.
  - jpindar 9y ago
    It beats using "your mother" or "your grandmother" as the term for a stupid person.
    - sjsbsh 9y ago
      True, no one of consequence is offended by belittling fly over Americans.
- marrs 9y ago
  This is the excuse that's always used, but I rarely see it play out in practice. Many people don't notice advanced features that are present, that's true. But they don't notice them so it does matter. For the people who do, they can easily discover advanced features through exploring the interface. Apple have a tradition of being really bad at this. Many of the (slightly more) advanced features are completely hidden behind undiscoverable key combinations or very hidden features. The slide-to-reveal pattern on iOS (now mostly fixed with augmentations) is a good example. Middle clicking the titlebar in Finder to reveal the directory parents is another.

sodapopcan 9y ago

Haha, damn ok, it's been so long since I've had to do this, I didn't realize it is now possible (I used to want this all the time and was the bane of my existence in the late 90s early 2000s when using Mac). You still can't seem to move files into sibling directories, though, only to directory links in the sidebar. Anyway, I LEARNED SOMETHING TODAY (about macOS dialogues and about testing things before I open my mouth). ++edited to clarify language.++

makecheck 9y ago

While a fair point, it’s important that feature-rich OS components be designed correctly (including security) and this wasn’t the case with Windows. How many exploits were just a matter of tricking an extra-fancy OS dialog into popping open something it’s not supposed to, escalating permissions alongside it?

lukeh 9y ago
On OS X, open/save panels run in a different process via ViewBridge, at least they did last time I checked.

NegativeLatency 9y ago

Coming from the other direction, it kills me when I'm using windows and have a save dialog open, then drag the file I want to open into it from the explorer. On windows it moves the file to a possibly new location, while on OSX the save dialog selects the file you dropped on it (without moving it).

dpkonofa 9y ago

I would normally agree with you here except that I've accidentally renamed files on Windows so many times only to lose them because something was in focus that I didn't intend to be. I use a combination of the mouse and keyboard when browsing and the fact that I can accidentally click on a file (which renames my current file to that file) and save or click enter thinking that I'm saving which then just starts to rename the file is utter garbage in an Open or Save dialog box. I feel like the only things I should be able to do are Open a file or Save a file but not rename other files. Neither is a good solution so it comes down to preference but I definitely see the reason for it because it happens to me on Windows all the time.

ptx 9y ago

Another good approach might be to do it the other way around: Get rid of the pseudo-file-manager dialogs entirely and let applications integrate with the regular file manager. I think RISC OS (?) did this. Open documents in applications had icons representing them which you could drag to the file manager to save. (And perhaps to other applications to open?) Mac OS also has (or had?) this to some extent – many document-based applications show an icon in the title bar, which is for dragging and dropping the document in question. Even Windows has an example of catering to this way of working, in Explorer, where the folder icon in the location bar represents the current folder and can be dragged and dropped. They even have some custom behavior to prevent the window from being raised when you drag from it, so that it works more like classic Mac OS and lets you drag to an overlapping window.

watersb 9y ago
Windows Explorer can be extended; the example I remember is browsing a folder of email message files, both the metadata attributes displayed in list view, and a functional content pane for viewing the message itself. Be OS did this, too; I got the impression that Windows was inspired by that, both for BeFS (NTFS) and the desktop filesystem UX.
- digi_owl 9y ago
  NTFS was introduced a few years before BEOS. More likely that they were both inspired by a common source. Never mind that MS have been working on a fully database driven FS (WinFS?) for ages.

favorited 9y ago

I have the opposite experience WRT Finder vs Explorer. I use a Mac as my primary machine, but have a PC for games. Trying to use a file browser without Miller columns[0] drives me crazy. I love being able to drag a file up one level in the tree without cutting and navigating to the destination to paste, or having 2 windows open to almost the exact same location. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_columns https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_columns

dragonwriter 9y ago
> I love being able to drag a file up one level in the tree without cutting and navigating to the destination to paste, or having 2 windows open to almost the exact same location. While Miller columns certainly support that, so does the tree view in the left panel in the default Windows explorer layout.
- favorited 9y ago
  Honestly I didn't think of tree view before seeing this (and neither did the friends I asked who are more regular Windows users than I am). I'm gonna give it a shot. I've been using bitCommander, which is a Windows file manager that supports (among other things) Miller columns.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    Compared to the tree view, Miller columns use more horizontal space, but have less vertical overflow. Which is superior probably depends a lot on your usage patterns, but both will support “drag to (grand, etc.) parent of current folder” fairly simply.

jjoonathan 9y ago

From someone traveling in the opposite direction at the moment: the Windows folder selection dialog is the crustiest open/save relic of them all and "open files are locked even to administrators" is a UX catastrophe. Lesser pains: it hurts to have missing consistent "jump to enclosing folder" semantics everywhere (command-click on mac -- only get an equivalent context menu 30% of the time) and to not have the ability to snap open/save dialogs to a particular file or folder with drag and drop. The door swings in both directions, in other words :)

adrianratnapala 9y ago
> "open files are locked even to administrators" is a UX catastrophe. This can't be blamed on UX people. It's an ancient difference between Unix and VMS and not easy to fix.

wruza 9y ago

Windows Explorer, on the other hand, still has no “expand folder” functionality on the right pane. I have to go back and forth to sort garbage trees, opening multiple windows or temporary pinning all folders into favorites. Given that their names may intersect, problem gets worse. In Finder you just expand interesting folders and DnD until it’s done. What really is a joke is a left pane that combines favorites, libraries (die, die, DIE) and disk trees. It was never usable, except for favorites.