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Browsing Files
From Mac vs. Windows
Mac OS X and Windows 7 both come with applications to assist the user in browsing through the files on their computers. Mac OS X has the Finder and Windows 7 has Windows Explorer. But with the number of files on a user's system ever increasing, its important that each operating system's file browser makes it easy for its users to navigate through the file system and review hundreds or thousands of files quickly.
Contents |
Viewing Files
Mac OS X
The Mac OS X Finder has four different views for Finder windows (Icon view, List view, Column view and Cover Flow view). The view buttons in the Finder's toolbar will highlight to show which view the user currently has selected. Going to offers additional settings the user can configure to customize the current Finder view.
Icon View
Only a file or folder's icon and name are displayed. Icons can be freely arranged inside the the window or be set to automatically arrange by various criteria such as name, size, date, kind, or label.
Icons can be resized anywhere between 16x16 pixels and 128x128 pixels. Enabling “Show icon preview“ under Show View Options will display a small thumbnail preview in place of a file's icon. In Tiger, only image files support showing a thumbnail preview. In Leopard, icon previews work for all the built in Quick Look formats, including Office documents images, and plain text files. Turning on “Show Item Info” will display additional information underneath a file or folder's name. Again, this only applies to certain items... images and folders in Tiger, support for archives in Leopard. Images will display their dimensions and folders will display the total number of items inside. An item's name and details can be set to appear either underneath the icon or to its right.
List View
Files and folders are displayed in a list along with columns that display additional details about an item. Despite Mac OS X being able to index and store the metadata for files, users are limited to only displaying columns with following values: date created, date modified, size, kind, label, version, comments. If the contents of a column is longer than the column itself, it will truncate the item from the middle as not to cut off the characters at the beginning or end. There is no way to quickly adjust the length of a column to be the same size as the longest item.
Folders can be expanded showing a nested view of their contents. This allows a user to explore the contents of multiple folders simultaneously inside one window.
Column View
Files and folders appear in columns. When a user clicks on folder in one column, its contents appear to the right in the next column. Sliders appear on the bottom of each column to resize their width. Double-clicking a slider will resize the column to automatically fit the length of the longest item.
Column view lets users visually see the path they took to navigate to a particular point in the file system and let them quickly jump back to any previous level.
Selecting a file in a column displays its details along with a preview (if enabled). Image files will show a thumbnail while playback controls for audio/video files appear letting the user play the files directly in the Finder without opening iTunes or Quicktime Player.
Cover Flow
Displays a folders contents with a resizable preview pane on top and a vertical list of the folders files below it. In the preview pane will displayed a preview of any selected file or subfolder or the by default the first file/subfolder in the folder, if none is selected. The previous and next files/folder of selected file/folder can be seen at angles to the left and right previewed file/folder. As one scrolls through contents of the folder, the previews to the left and right move into the center for viewing. Scrolling can be accomplished via up/down and left/right arrows, via horizontal scrolling with the mouse, clicking the previews to the left/right, or by clicking on items in the file list at the bottom.
In addition to the four different views for Finder windows, one can view quick previews of files using the "Quick Look" feature in the finder. For any selected file(s) in folder, pressing the space bar causes a window to appear displaying a preview off the file(s). Within a Quick Look window there are buttons for displaying a full screen preview of the file and, if it is a audio or video file, for playing the file. Double clicking on the displayed preview of a file cause it to open the default application set for opening a file of that type. If more then one file is selected when activating Quick Look, then additional options become available. You can view each file preview one at a time using left and right arrow buttons or activate an automatic slide show using the play button. You display all selected file previews as an index sheet, from which any preview may be clicked on to view a larger version.
Windows 7
Windows Explorer offers five ways to display the files in a given folder. Views can be changed by clicking the view button on the toolbar to cycle between them or by clicking the arrow to the right, which displays a slider and a menu to choose the view. The icon on the view button changes to indicate the current view.
Content View
Tile View
Tile view displays files as rectangular tiles, allowing information to be arranged vertically next to a 32x32 icon or preview of the file. The metadata displayed differs depending on what type of folder the files are in. For instance, a music folder will display the Artist and Album of the song file, whereas a Documents folder will display file type and file size information. Tiles view is one of two views where files can be located anywhere in the folder, as opposed to being aligned to a grid (the other is Icon view, see below.) Additionally, a folder can be set to automatically sort files added to the folder based on the current sorting method.
Details View
In details view, files are arranged in rows with various columns of information. The column headers are visible no matter what view the user is in, but details view is the only view that lines up the files with the columns see the Sorting and Grouping section for a more detailed description of the features of column headers.) As with tiles view, the columns visible by default are different depending on the type of folder, but in this case, they can be changed by the user. Columns can be resized by dragging the right line of the header. To size a column to the length of its longest entry either double click that same line, or right click on the column and choose "size column to fit"
List View
Essentially, list view is just a listing of all file names without any other information shown. List view scrolls horizontally, rather than vertically.
Icon View
Icon view displays files as though they were desktop icons; that is, the icon is usually larger with only the filename shown below it. Icon view is unique among views in 7 in that the icons can be sized from the minimum icon size of 16x16 (where filenames are to the right of the icon,) to the maximum supported size of 256x256. File previews are not shown when icons are 16x16, but for any size above, they are shown (even if that size is only a pixel or two larger.)
Sorting and Grouping
Mac OS X
Viewing files is one thing. Organizing the items within a window is also important.
Users can sort items in a window by various criteria such as item name, date, kind, etc. It depends on which file view the user currently has selected.
- Icon view: Users can have items automatically arrange themselves in a window by name, date modified, date created, kind, and label.
- List view: Clicking the header of any visible column sorts the items alphabetically in the window by its values.
- Column view: Column view sorting can be configured via the View Options window ("View" -> "Show View Options"). You can choose to sort by Name, Date Modified, Date Created, Size, Kind, and Label. You can also choose to hide icons or inhibit the preview column.
- Cover Flow: Clicking the header of any visible column sorts the items alphabetically in the window by its values.
When performing a search or viewing a smart folder, list view is the default view, though icon view and Cover Flow are also available but not column view.
How files are sorted in a folder can also be changed by selecting "View"->"Arrange by" in the menu bar and then the criteria to arrange by in the sub menu. One can also control-click/right click within a folder (anywhere other than on a file) and select "View as" and the criteria to arrange by.
Windows 7
As stated above, despite only details view aligning data with the column headers in Windows Explorer, every view displays them. This is because the column headers are used to control sorting and grouping of files within a folder, as well as a third feature: filtering.
To sort by a certain criteria, the user must first make sure that column is visible. To add a column, the user should right-click the column header area and click “More…” if the column they want isn’t on the list. Then the user only needs to click on the header to sort, and click again to sort the opposite way. Any sub-folders that the folder has, will be sorted in the same way as the other files, but they will be sorted separately. For example if they are sorted alphabetically by Name, sub-folders will be placed at the top.
Filtering is accomplished by clicking the arrow that appears in the right side of the header when hovered over and selecting the criteria to filter by. Again, any metadata indexable by the system is fair game to filter by.
There are two different ways to group files. The first could be considered the conventional method, with the collapsible section grouping the files together. The second way is called Stacks, which display each group as an icon. The groups can then be browsed into individually. Additionally, stacks can have shortcuts created to them, and those shortcuts can be placed anywhere in the filesystem.
Navigation Aids
Mac OS X
The Finder's sidebar holds shortcuts to locations on the user's system. The top portion is reserved for mounted volumes and network shares. A shortcut to the Finder's network browser and the user's iDisk can also be added. The bottom of the sidebar is for shortcuts to folders. By default, the Finder populates the sidebar with shortcuts such as the applications folder and places inside the user's home folder like desktop, music, pictures, and movies. Dragging a new folder into the sidebar (or pressing COMMAND+T) adds will add it as a new shortcut. Likewise, dragging a folder out of the sidebar removes it (in a puff of smoke no less). Icons in the sidebar can be used as proxy icons – the same keyboard modifiers work for them as everything else. Essentially, command+option will create a shortcut to the file, option on its own will copy it, et cetera.
To view the path of the current folder being viewed in the Finder, either hold down the ⌘ (COMMAND) key or the ^ (CONTROL) key (right click) whilst clicking its name in the Finder's title bar. This will display a menu showing the exact location of the folder on the user's system. Clicking on any of the parent folders in the menu will navigate to that folder. Adding the path button to the Finder's toolbar provides the same functionality.
A Path Bar can also be added to the bottom of the Finder window. This displays as a breadcrumb trail, with each folder acting both as a link and a proxy icon, though they themselves cannot be dragged. If the path is too long to fit in the bar, the higher folder names will become truncated, according to their length (excluding the drive name). The folder names can be viewed again by hovering over them, which will subsequently truncate the others.
Windows 7
Explorer’s sidebar is divided into two sections. On top is the favorite links area, where the user can drop folders for quick access. The bottom displays the folder tree of the file system. The folder tree can be collapsed by clicking the arrow to the right, and can be resized from its top edge.
At the top of every Explorer window, there is a breadcrumb bar to display the path of the folder currently being viewed. To access a folder further up the folder tree, the user just has to click it. The arrow, when clicked, displays a list of all the subfolders in that folder. The arrow farthest to the left displays the folders that are too far up the folder tree to fit into the display area, as well as some common places, such as Computer, Network, Recycle Bin, etc. Clicking in any empty space gives a conventional file path that can be edited
Odds & Ends
Mac OS X
- Spring-loaded Folders Spring loaded folders and windows let you drag files up and down multiple levels of the file structure without letting up on the mouse. When the feature is switched on hovering file(s)/folder(s) over a folder for a specified period of time causes them to reveal their contents automatically so they can be moved through the file system more easily.
- In list view, when a user resizes the “Created on” or “Last Modified On” columns, the date value will shrink or grow based on how large the column becomes.
- Aliases can be placed in a folder for quick access to a different file or folder without copying. They automatically update when a file is moved or renamed.
Windows 7
- The folder tree pane doesn't have a horizontal scroll bar at all. Instead, it autoscrolls to best fit the current contents - See here for demonstration.
- A Preview pane is available by clicking "Organize", pointing to "Layout", and clicking "Preview". This preview pane will play music and video files, and display images and text files.
- Shortcuts are similar to aliases (see above). They can be used in the same way, but appear to be most commonly used for putting icons on the desktop. If the file they refer to is moved or renamed, the shortcut will update when it is used. The shortcut will not update if another file with the same name is put in the location of the old one before the shortcut is used.
- Right clicking on any column in detail mode provides an option to resize that column to fit all available information, or to resize all columns
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