10.4: Use the 10.3 System Preferences application

May 15, '05 02:27:00AM

Contributed by: jamiebah

Tiger only hintWhy would anyone care? For one, the area just below the titlebar of the window is still there for you to store your shortcuts in. If you did an archive and install, then look in your Previous System folder, and follow it from there. You should probably keep the new version around, just in case it's needed in the future.

[robg adds: I was thrilled when I found out this worked -- my big complaint about the new System Preferences panel isn't the loss of the toolbar (though that hurt), but it's the loss of speed when using keyboard navigation. I like to open various panels by just typing a couple letters of each panel's name: En for Energy Saver, for instance. In 10.3, as you typed, each possible match would highlight in turn. When the one you wanted was lit, you just hit the space bar. In 10.4, Spotlight grabs the focus of your typing, so your text goes into the search box. In these movie clips, the task was the same: open Energy Saver, return to all (via Command-L), open QuicktTime, return to all, open International, and end after returning to all one last time. As you'll see, Spotlight's helping hand dramatically slows the process:

I'm roughly twice as fast using the old panel versus the new panel, all due to Spotlight trying to "help me" figure out which panel I want to use. So for as long as it will work, I'll be sticking with the old version of the application (and it seems to run just fine!). As a side bonus, it's great having the toolbar back again...]

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