Sadly, I appear to be caught up with your excellent blog, which I’m really enjoying, and learning a lot from. Can’t wait for the ‘file downloading demystification’, I’m still confused about the icons that appear on my desktop from loading software, etc…which I can throw away, which ones I have to move to Applications.

Scott, as you know, with Windows you can drag any border to resize a window. Is there ANY way (either internally, or with some add-on software) that will duplicate this feature on a Mac, rather than just by dragging the lower right corner? For me, this is absolutely the most frustrating shortcoming on my Mac, and I can’t believe the best computer in the world has this limitation.

@Matt, glad we can be of help to you. File downloading is indeed an important topic. I think no less than 5 chunks of “litter” can be left around when you download a file on OS X. It is always confusing as to which ones are safe to throw away, which ones you move to your applications folder, and which one you put in your dock etc. I hope to cover this tonight.

@Matt, I am not aware of any built in way to change window sizes other than with the bottom left resize area of a window.

It is not to say there are not third party tools to help you in this, but I am hesitant to share them as they can cause issues. I have no experience with the software listed below, so use at your own risk.

OCSmart Hacks

it is clearly a hack, it could very well be rock solid and reliable. If you do decide to use it, report your findings back here so other users may benefit.

Hi,
Great Site. I’ve been with MacOSX for some months now, but still I truely appreciate the way you make things look simple. Great tips about Safari (I had absolutely no idea about cmd+click in the title bar for hierarchical surfing !)

@Matt: For easy window resizing, it’s hard to beat Zooom, from CodeRage Software:

http://coderage-software.com/zooom/

All the best,
Greg

Can you drag in a nested folder? I have a folder in Documents that I access several times a week. It would show up in the fourth column in Finder. Would I be able to drag that folder to the sidebar without messing anything up?

@Donna, yes, you can drag in a nested folder, it will work fine, you will only have access to the top folder in the nest. If you want access to the fourth level folder, just drag that folder in.

Remember, you are not actually moving folders, just a representation of them, so feel free to test this out, there is nothing you will hurt by giving it a try.

hi, great site! ..unfortunately I still don’t know how to risize the icons(if possible) and font size in a sidebar in leopard…?

@Mat, changing fonts and icon size can not currently be done in OS X 10.5 and less. There is a chance a software update will give us what is called resolution independence. More than likely, it will be a system 10.6 feature.

The developers have been given the tools to start preparing for it:

Resolution Independence
The old assumption that displays are 72dpi has been rendered obsolete by advances in display technology. Macs now ship with displays that sport native resolutions of 100dpi or better. Furthermore, the number of pixels per inch will continue to increase dramatically over the next few years. This will make displays crisper and smoother, but it also means that interfaces that are pixel-based will shrink to the point of being unusable. The solution is to remove the 72dpi assumption that has been the norm. In Leopard, the system will be able to draw user interface elements using a scale factor. This will let the user interface maintain the same physical size while gaining resolution and crispness from high dpi displays.

The introduction of resolution independence may mean that there is work that you’ll need to do in order to make your application look as good as possible. For modern Cocoa applications, most of the work will center around raster-based resources. For older applications that use QuickDraw, more work will be required to replace QuickDraw-based calls with Quartz ones.

http://developer.apple.com/leopard/overview/

It will take some time, but it is in the works.

Hi Scott, thank you very much for your answer.
..and I do understand about the resolution and the icons…
but I was wandering if is possible at list to increase the font size in a sidebar as there is no problem to do so in mail and iphoto…?

@mat, as far as I know, the only way to change the size is to install the developer tools and play with the highly experimental resolution change app that Apple supplies. Or potentially there are more hidden hacks to preferences you can adjust, but I have not looked into it.

The part where you wrote:

“Close off or resize the sidebar
…Click, hold, and drag, and not only can you resize the width; but you can also shrink it to the far left. This will completely remove the sidebar from that particular window.”

Is not true for 10.5(.2). Apparently it used to work in 10.4, and remembered it, however in 10.5 it’s just forced on at all times unless you strip the entire window of all toolbars (which is next to useless as the next time you open the window, it has everything, including the sidebar, turned back on).

You have this information filed under 10.5, thus why I thought I would mention that it sadly no longer works!

I’ve been searching for a way to eliminate the sidebar in certain project windows permanently, like in 10.4, but have yet to find a way to do it.

@Randall, wow, you got me I had no idea they took the side bar removal feature away. Good catch, and thanks for pointing it out. Shame, it was a nice feature, as I rarely use the side bar. Lately, with spotlight and some other tools, I rarely use the Finder, so I guess that would be my excuse for not noticing this change.

Thanks again for pointing out my error.

Stumbled across your excellent site whilst searching for the answer to a particular sidebar issue that I am having.

I am a freelance Graphic Designer, been working on Macs for, well for what seems eternity now… and I’m loving OS X.

I have a couple of huge Seagate hard drives linked by Firewire, these contain my work files and accounts etc. I have a few top level folders in Places on the sidebar as I frequently access them throughout the day/week/month etc, and find this instant access invaluable.

I have just started working in-house for a printing company one day a week and to enable me to keep up-to-date with my main clients whilst I am working away, I take one of my Seagate drives into their studio with me, so I can access my files if need be.

Returning home and plugging the drive back in all of my folders that I dragged into Places are now gone (not that I am surprised I guess as the place that they are linked to was removed).

What I would like to know is… is there any way to keep these links alive in the sidebar even when the original device has been removed, so that when I plug the drive back in again they relink?

Its not particularly difficult to drag the folders in again, but like anyone I hate doing repetitive stuff and as time goes on my favourite folders are increasing in number.

Would appreciate your help

Andy

@Andy, this is just a guess, I do not have a simple means to test this. Make a folder somewhere, put aliases to the folders on your removable drive in the folder.

Now, add those aliases to the Places sidebar. Since they did not officially move when you remove the drive, I would bet they stay. They of course will not work, but they should stay.

Thanks Scott… I’ll give it a try and report back later!

Sorry for the delay in responding… but thanks Scott, thats fixed it! Much appreciated

Regards

Andy

I agree wholeheartedly with Randall!

I am so disappointed that 10.5.3 has no way to remove the sidebar still leaving the great other function buttons.

And why doesn’t it stay in “lozenge” mode when you re-OPEN it???

It’s probably not a reasonable request, since Leopard is virtually impossible to hack into with Haxies (however, Windowshade does work..Yay!!!) but, has anyone found a haxie that might work for removing the sidebar and leaving the function buttons?

bounty for sidebar killer!

->>Steve, give us back our real-estate!

Anyone learning/finding a method to reduce the finder’s sidebar min width (10.5.2) please post!!!

Feature removal is really not appreciated.

Many thanks to the writers, maintainers, and posters of this column — keep up the excellent work!

@robn8r, I am not aware of any way, even with a hack. If we find anything out, we will be sure to post it.

I agree with robn8r about the “real estate” issue. it’s very annoying that Mr. Jobs decided that if we want all the nice features and buttons at the top of the regular OS X window, then we have to have a full 1.5 inch removed from our real estate. Very selfish, Steve. Give us a friggin’ option!

I’ll add to that bounty to kill the new 10.5.3 sidebar!!!

And special thanx to Scott for being so diligent!

~leesa

I have a question I was hoping you could help me with. I just received a Mac at work, in a mostly PC environment. The IT guys here have not been able to figure out how to change the names of the servers I access on the sidebar, so they are currently listed as IP addresses and take a while to connect when I click on them. I access the same names of folders (ie. “marketing” “graphics”) etc on three different servers, and everything is very nested within other folders. I would love to be able to link each of these folders on my sidebar, but they replace each other since they have the same name and I can’t rename them without renaming the folder. So far the only shortcutting I can do is to make aliases of everything on my desktop.

Any ideas???
- Trista

@Trista, the names of a remote server in the sidebar, if it is not a Macintosh, will be determined by DNS.

If it is a Mac, it uses it’s computer name set in sharing. In your case, it is showing an IP. If it has a DNS name.

This is not something you can change, and may not be something your IT dept can change. You may have to work with who supplies those IP’s if they are not local non routable IP’s.