Bug in Finder list view

May 22, '01 12:30:15AM

Contributed by: robg

After some experimentation, and confirmation from another X user, I've discovered a bug in the way the Finder displays list views in a couple of situations. This has been replicated on a number of machines, so I tend to think it's a pervasive problem. I have submitted it to Apple's feedback site, but thought you might like to be aware of it as well.

The bug is related to a "name" column that continuously and automatically shrinks when in LIST VIEW mode. You can see the bug in one of these situations:

  1. If you are viewing a folder that's at the root level of a hard drive (view the top level of your OS X disk in list view, for example). If you then click to sort by date, then click on any of the folders in the list (just once), then click to sort by name, the name field will shrink. From now on, any sort of click in the column names or in the finder list will result in the name field shrinking -- to the point where it vanishes! If you simply go one level deeper into your folder structure, this problem does NOT occur. Very odd, and very repeatable on two machines.

  2. Take any folder, and put it on the desktop. You'll see the exact same behavior described above if you view it in list view.
I may not have explained this very well, but we've been able to duplicate the problem on two different machines, with those same two situations on each machine. So if it seems your list views are behaving a bit oddly, they may very well be. Hopefully this will be fixed in a future OS X update!

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