OS X Finder tutorial and customizations (Part 3)

Written by: hexley on Wednesday January 16th 2008, 2:23 am

Filed under: Finder, OS X 10.5

I know, it seems never-ending. These last few steps in regards to the Finder menus should go rather quick. Let’s just go through the list, an item at a time.

New Finder Window
Brings up a new file browser window. As you will recall, you set your default for this behavior in your preferences. Mine opens a new window to my “home” folder. Any time you need to get to a new clean window to start moving around files, you can select this.

New Folder
Creates a new, empty folder. Its location will be where your current focus is. So if you have last clicked on the desktop, the new empty folder will be made there. If you last opened a new Finder window, it will be made there. If you are deep into your files, and you have that window open, the new finder window will be made there.

The new folder will be called “Untitled Folder”, just click on it once, and you can rename it.

New Smart Folder
At times, this menu may be a little misleading, as it does not immediately create a new folder of any kind. You will see it pops open a new window though.

In this window, you define search criteria. For now, lets keep it simple. Eventually we will run though an entire post about “smart searches”. For the time being, enter in something in the search field you may frequently search for.

If the results it shows you are to your liking, click “Save” and now you will be asked where you want to save this “New Smart Folder”. It is highly powerful. You can create smart folders that show you all the images you have made today. You could further limit those to just a certain image type. Perhaps you want to locate all the Word files you made during Monday through Friday, you can do that as well.

Specifics will be covered in a future post, but feel free to experiment. Smart Folders have potential to be powerful. The nice thing about them, if you do not like them, just throw the smart folder in the trash, and you are right back where you began.

New Burn Folder
New Burn Folder has to do with CD and DVD burning. Selecting it will create a folder called “Burn Folder”, or “Burn Folder.fpbf”; the later depends on the how your Finder preferences were set in regards to “Show all file Extensions”.

The idea here is you put items in this folder. Do note, no real items are put in the folder, just “aliases” or links to the real files. Once you have all the files you want in the folder, simply click once on the folder, and select “Burn Folder to Disc…” from the File menu.

You will be asked to insert a blank CD, or DVD. Do so, and it should perform the entire CD or DVD burning process for you. Yes, it is that simple to burn CD’s and DVD’s in OS X 10.5, there is no need for additional software so long as you have simple needs.

Once it is done, you can safely delete “Burn Folder” as it is no longer needed. Remember, these are only aliases, or pointers to your real files in the Burn Folder. They are safe to remove. OS X burns the real files to disc, not the aliases.

Open
Selecting “Open” from the File menu will open a selection file or folder. As you can see in the screen shot, I could not select it, as I do not have a file selected. This will change to a menu you can in fact select, if you have selected a file or folder. You can also select multiple files and folders, and they will all be opened at once.

Open With
Open With allows you to force a selected file to be opened in some other application. If you have a text file that is constantly opening in Excel, you can force an alternate behavior here. Perhaps TextEdit would be a better application to use. This menu will allow you to over-ride the default behavior and force an application to open in something other than its default.

Print
The “Print” menu desires to be handy. At times, it can be picky. The idea is you can select a file, or a multitude of files, select Print, and they will be printed.

This is great if you have for example, 30 Word files, they all need printing, and you do not want to open all 30 of them. It should fully automate that. Results are mixed for me, at best. Plain text files, simple files, those seem to work fine. Your mileage may vary.

Remember, you are not going to hurt anything by trying. You may waste a little paper, but give it a whirl; you never know when it will come in handy.

Close Window
“Close Window” will close the current window you have selected. Of course, there are many other ways to do this, and this is just one of those methods. Sometimes you have too many windows open, you can use this menu item to close them.

Get Info
The “Get Info” window, when selected, will pop up an informational palette based on the file or folder you have selected. There are all sorts of goodies in the Get Info window. I suggest you browser it briefly, so you know it is there. In a future post, this window will be covered in detail.

Compress
Compress is one of my favorites. If you have a file selected, you will see it changes to “Compress name-of-file-selected”. You can compress a folder, a file, and a selection of files. The nice part is, you do not need any third party software. You can create Windows and Macintosh compatible .zip files built right in.

Feel free to send these files to Macintosh users, or even Windows users. And feel free to have them send .zip files to you as well, you will be able to decompress them with nothing more than a double click.

One note of caution. You have plenty of drive space; do not feel the need to go around compressing all your personal files. Compressing files is for sharing them with other people. There is no need to compress your personal files.

Duplicate
Duplicate does as it says. Select a file or folder, select “Duplicate” from the File menu, and a copy is made. The words “copy” are added to the file name, so you know the copy has been made.

Make Alias
Select a file or folder, and select “Make Alias”. This will make a link of the file or folder. You are free to move this alias anywhere on your computer you want. It is now a shortcut to the original item. You can rename it, delete it, or do anything you want to it without hurting the original.

For example, if you are working on a project that has a multitude of files in a folder, yet you really only access one file most of the time, make an alias of that file. You then need not dig around for the one file, as you can put the alias in a more convenient location.

Quick Look
Quick Look is awesome. Select a file, or multiple files, activate “Quicklook” from the File menu, and you will get a preview of those files. This saves you opening the original application, which at times can take longer than you want. Quick Look can read images, movies, pdf’s, Word files, you name it, it has a good chance of giving you a quick look at that file or set of files.

Show Original
Show Original will locate the original file linked to an alias. If you have an alias and no longer remember where the original is, select this menu item. The original file will be presented to you.

Add to Favorites
This will also change to “Add to Sidebar” and is something that will be covered in more detail when we talk about all that can be done in a Finder window. Do feel free to test it out; it is harmless to experiment with this menu item.

Move to Trash
Yes, you can drag an item to the trash; this is another method for getting something in the trashcan.

Eject
Certain media, such as USB drives, Firewire Drives, Cameras and any other item where you see an icon pop onto your desktop, will at some point need to be “ejected” This menu item performs that function. When we talk about downloaded files, such as disc images, these also can be ejected as well.

Burn *filename* to Disc…”
This was covered above in the disc burning section. This menu activates burning to DVD and CD media.

Find by Name
As with some of the other menus, this can sometimes read just “Find” or “Find by Name…”. It will pop up a window, much like the “Smart Folder” window, in which you can start searching for files and folders.

Label
Any folder or file can have a colored label. If you have a file or folder selected, you can then pick one of the 7 colors available, and assign a color to it. You can also remove a color assignment by clicking the “x” icon as well.

Seems we are near done on the Finder menus, one or two more posts, and I think we should be able to get into some more interesting tips and tricks. Bear with me, there is a method to this madness. Certain foundations need to be set before I can jump into more advanced topics.

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