When navigating in the finder and when I come into a folder with a lot of items press the 1st letter of the name of the file/folder I need, now I found out when using stacks when you click the stack icon and then pressing the 1st letter of the item I need, it goes to that item (or another one if that one is before it in alphabetic order)
This isn’t really a “tip” or “trick,” but since it applies to numerous entries posted here, it is of valuable note: Macenstein and Macdailynews.com are reporting a rumor that will hopefully put to rest all of the complaints about Stacks since Leopard’s release.
According to those sources, the soon to be released major update of Leopard (10.5.2) will bring back hierarchical browsing to the Dock. The hierarchical view (referred to as “list” view) will be added to the view options of “fan,” “grid” and “automatic.”
In addition, there will apparently be a preference added to Stacks that will allow users to display them as simple folders instead of the rather unappealing “stack of icons” default view currently available.
Please note that these may only be rumors at the moment, so you would do well to hold off on celebrations. For more information–and screenshots–visit MacDailyNews.com.
Over at kuragari.com they figured out that you could make application stacks in the leopard beta, but that feature seems to have been killed in the final version. Imagine having an Office stack in the apps in your dock. Or a CS3 stack. Or a games stack. Right now, the only way to do this is with a bunch of aliases in a folder. Not quite the same as dragging a group of apps to the dock. Check out the video if you don’t get my meaning.
http://kuragari.com/2007/12/03/the-way-it-was-supposed-to-be/
“…This is not a hack, this Dock was taken from one of the Leopard beta installations that was seeded to developers and beta testers before the official release. Up until the final release of Leopard, this part of the feature was not only present in the beta versions, but was also included in the description of the new Dock features on Apple’s website…”Someone needs to figure out how to implement this hack on a massively distributed scale. Maybe someone here at LeopardTricks.com?
So Stacks are cool, and they show you what’s in the folder, but only the last added item (for Downloads) or based on your sort preference for others.
So what about a cool icon, and also a nice stack of the contents? You got it! Whatever you have at the front should be dated a long way into the future to ensure it stays at the front. To do this you can use a utility like FileBuddy, A Better Finder Attributes or some such.
Or if you know how, use the ‘touch’ command in the terminal. Or if not, type “man touch” to find out how. Want some cool icons to have at the front? Well, start here with some great transparent folder icons provided by a Japanese blogger. They even come pre-dated a long way into the future. Enjoy!
