Default Folder - Add power to open/save dialogs
Jan 05, '03 02:12:45AM
Contributed by: robg
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The first Pick of the Week for 2003 is an oldie but goodie. If you were an OS 9 user, you more than likely have heard of (and/or used) Default Folder before. Default Folder enhances open and save dialogs in a number of ways. When enabled, you'll see a small floating vertical line of icons attached to your open and save dialog boxes. Using these icons, you can jump to your Favorites folder, your recently used items folder, any open Finder window, or any drive or partition on your machine. You can also rename selections, and assign a folder as a "default folder" for the chosen application.
But that's just the beginning of its power. When you open the Default Folder preference panel, you can assign folders to your list of favorites and give them a shortcut key. Have a folder called Images that you always jump to? Instead of navigating via the column-view window, just add it to your Favorites list and assign it the Control-I hot key. Now any time you need to get to Images in an open or save dialog box, just hit Control-I. You can have multiple sets of default and favorite folders, and you can even tell Default Folder to highlight folders in the Finder as you mouse over them, and display their contents in the dialog when you click on them.
There are a number of additional features, and it's well worth a download to give Default Folder X a run-through. As with most powerful tools, you may spend a few minutes learning the interface, but once you do, you'll probably wonder how you got along without it in the past.
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