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Warning - the Find box can delete source folders!
Authored by: jiclark on Sep 29, '04 03:30:38PM

Not to be contrary, but why does this behavior surprise anyone? You've dragged a folder to the trash; where did you expect it to actually go? Just like in a normal Finder window, if you drag something other than a disk to the Trash, that's where it goes! While I agree that you should be able to drag a folder out of the window and have it just *poof* disappear, I don't see anything odd in dragging a folder to the trash and having it be moved there. No one here is suggesting that you shouldn't be able to trash anything from the Find window, are you?



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Warning - the Find box can delete source folders!
Authored by: Faux Plastic on Sep 29, '04 05:48:38PM

Yes they are suggesting you shouldn't be able to trash anything from the Find window. I'm not a computer scientist, so pardon my less-than-technical terminology, but there is a difference in the Mac UI between firsthand representation of a file and secondhand representation of a file. Firsthand representation would be the file icon in a regular Finder window. In iTunes, it would be a song listing in the Library.

Secondhand representation would be a song in an iTunes playlist or an item in the Finder sidebar or anything in the Dock. I would include search places in Finder's Find window in this secondhand representation category. If I want to see a volume, for example, I would got to it with a normal Finder window, not Finder's Find feature. In the case of secondhand representations, the normal response when you pull something off of the seach places list and put it in the trash is that it will simply be removed from the list because it is only a list of secondhand represenations. The song is removed from the playlist, but not from the library. The app is removed from the dock, but not from the Applications folder. The folder is removed from the sidebar but not trashed. And so on.

The point being is that this is indeed a poor design. If you want to delete a file or folder, the proper method within Finder is to go to the file firsthand representation in a regular Finder window, not in the Find window.

I guess it could be a matter of opinion, but that's how I see it.



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Warning - the Find box can delete source folders!
Authored by: zpjet on Sep 29, '04 07:04:06PM

thanks, faux. your comparison with the sidebar is exactly what i mean.

move folder from a finder window to trash - it goes to trash. move folder from a sidebar to the trash - it "poofs".

another analogy is that clicking "remove" or pressing "delete" should equal to moving to trash, shouldn't it? at least it is so in many apps (e.g. mentioned iTunes'es playlists).



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