Hopefully we are all familiar with the Finder. Your documents are in the Finder, your Applications, all of it, accessible through the Finder window. The Finder is the filing cabinet for all of your computerological ‘stuff’ on the Mac. But unlike the standard filing cabinet, the Finder has some neat tools to allow you to find what you’re looking for easily and quickly; today i’d like to tell you about the different Finder views.
Surely you’ve noticed these three buttons in the uppers left corner of every Finder window. If not, have a look. I’ll wait. OK.
- Left button: icon view. [Apple+1]
- Middle button: list view. [Apple+2]
- Right button: column view. [Apple+3]
They are simply 3 different ways to view the same contents of any folder, each one comes in handy in certain cases. I’ll show you:
Icon view [ Keyboard shortcut: Apple + 1 ] :
Icon view is limited in its functionality but it’s nice for looking at all the pretty icons that Apple software comes with, like in the Applications folder. Sorry Icon view, i just never use you.
List View [ Keyboard shortcut: Apple + 2 ]:
Now we are getting somewhere useful. List view is a very helpful view because it allows you to easily sort the contents of your current folder by clicking on the column headers such as by date modified, great for finding the files you’ve been working on most recently. I find the list use ful to be most useful for rooting through the folder that you need to work in. However it’s not ideal for actually finding the folder you need. For that, the column view really shines…
Column View [ Keyboard shortcut: Apple + 3 ]:
Oftentimes you are looking for a folder or a file that has been buried deep within folders within folders within folders (ahem—documentland). In these situations the column view really shines. Click a folder, it’s contents appear in the next column. In column view the folder contents are displayed alphabetically by file name.
Stay tuned to the People’s Co-op Technology Blog for more handy tips on working gooder!