Aug 31, '02 08:52:55AM • Contributed by: Membranophonist
It works! Any folder placed in the toolbar can "pop open" when items are dragged over its icon.
When combined with the new Finder preference making new windows appear in Column view, this is very useful.
Editor's expansion: I was going to publish this as a hint of my own, but I figure it's just as easy to expand on Membranophonist's great start. The screnshot in this hint is from my desktop, showing just one possible use of toolbar spring loaded folders. I keep all the various installers I've downloaded over time, and to make finding them easier in the future, they're sorted into alpha folders within the "Installers" folder. I dragged the Installers folder to the toolbar ... and with spring-loaded folders in the toolbar, I can now file a downlaoded installer by dragging it to the "Installers" folder in the toolbar, hitting the space bar, then dropping it into the correct folder.
I leave the spring-load enabling checkbox disabled on my machine, which puts me in control of when a folder springs open -- they will only open when I press the space bar. I find that this adds no time to the process and prevents those unwanted pop-opens I get if I try to set the auto-open delay to a short enough interval that it doesn't annoy me.
Another very cool thing you can do is create a new folder which contains aliases to each of your hard drives and/or partitions. Place this new folder in your toolbar, and you can now file anything anywhere on your system, regardless of where your current windows may be pointing.
Finally, I prefer to set the view choice on folders in the toolbar to "View as List" as opposed to columns (which I love for everything else). With the list view option, I can size the folders which will pop-open to a very small size (as seen in this screenshot) and then continue to drill-down as needed with the space bar. But the process also works fine in column view; it's not so good with icon view, as the icons can be out of the edges of the window or scattered f you haven't done a "clean up" on the window as of yet.
All in all, spring loaded folders and a column-view option are two of the Finders most useful navigation features. Together, they make an awesome team!
