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How come I can't simply hit "enter" to open a file in the finder?
It seems it's the small things that cause me to h*te macs so much... Why can't I simply hit enter to open a selected file in the finder? I don't want to rename it. That's the stupidest thing...
It seems that no matter what I try to do, macs make me use the mouse... I hate the mouse!! :D In any case, how can I get around this "enter-to-rename-file" issue? Or I should say... fix it for good. |
Apple-O or Apple-down arrow.
It isn't Windows, and let's not make it into Windows. That would be like the city slicker moving into the country and complaining about the roosters. Go to system preferences, Keyboard & Mouse, Keyboard Shortcuts to see keyboard shortcuts and create your own. |
I don't want it to be Windows... just want it to be more intuitive. I'm not some Windows loving drone. I'm a usability expert... I know how things should work. ;)
In any case, thanks for the info. I'd think after using a mac for over 5 years I'd know that one by now. I'm thinking I knew it once, then just forgot. Heh. |
I guess I just don't see the enter/return key being an intuitive option to open a file. It seems to me that if you hit a key that exists only because of it's text altering quality, you should first expect any functions it performs to be related to text. If it were Apple-enter or Windows-enter, then it would make some sense to me, sort of like command-delete or command-shift-delete for moving files to the trash and emptying the trash.
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I don't mind the Enter/Return key to open apps. In many Mac contexts, the key means "Do it!", as in the OK button. If an file icon is highlighted, having it open ("Do it!") is a somewhat consistent result to be expected.
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Yes, but in those cases the modifier is already present as a dialog box or at least a button.
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I agree that it could also be Enter or at least Cmd+Enter... If it's not enter, I would naturally think Cmd+Enter (and did) before I'd ever think Cmd+O, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. Course, I'm not a die-hard Mac fan like you cwtnospam :p
I also believe in there being more than two ways to skin the cat :D |
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I guess you could try creating a Finder-specific keyboard shortcut to map Enter (more likely Cmd-Enter) to to the Finder Open command. |
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My biggest problem with the Mac right now is that the huge number of recent switchers threatens to pollute the Mac interface with Windows-centric shortcuts and other UI 'features' that are part of the reason I don't use Windows. Hitting 'Enter' to open a file is just one of the features that I would consider a step backwards. |
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1. Pressing the Enter or Return key is a confirmation action, as well as a field editing action. Look at 95% of applications, and that's how they work. Neither of these equates exactly to opening a file specifically. 2. After you've edited the name of a file or folder, you press Enter or Return to end the editing of the name field and confirm the new name. But wait, what if those keys also open the document? Oops, mixed contexts. Two completely different behaviours with the same object without any context change. This is completely opaque to the user, and that is not good in this type of scenario. 3. When you're in an non-file system browser application in Mac OS X /or/ Windows, you don't press Enter or Return to open a document, do you? If you're in Text Edit, you press Command-O. Why introduce an inconsistent method with which to open documents? Remember, the Finder is an application like anything else. Just like Text Edit has File > Open, so does the Finder. For this reason, we keep things consistent, which creates intuitiveness for a rather abstract concept. Windows drops the ball here. There is nothing inherently intuitive about pressing Enter or Return to open a document. The keys aren't named "Open" or "Edit", after all. Command-O, for example, becomes intuitive in the context of the larger cross-application consistency of using that key stroke to open documents, but even that keystroke isn't intuitive on its own. |
There's no such thing as an intuitive user interface! There is only an interface with whose constructs you are familiar.
;) |
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At the end of the day, you must use some kind of word or phrase to describe what this thread is talking about. "Intuitive" is the word people use. Sorry. |
Too bad it's the wrong word. I agree with benwiggy.
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So do I, which is why I find it upsetting when Windows users want the Mac to act more like Windows. I'm familiar with the Mac way. I like the Mac way better, and if you want a machine that acts like Windows, you're free to use Windows.
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Answers like "Z is stupid and you need to learn how to do it like X does it or go back to using Z" just puts people off. I read a lot of mailing lists of things I want to learn but there are very few times I ask questions (past here where I feel comfortable and not looked down on for not knowing) because the questions from people who are switching from something different are many times answered with RTFM when a pointer to another thread or a simple reason for the why, if there is one, is present. Not everyone who questions why is trying to ruin a certain way of doing things. Sometimes people just want to know why. |
Well said schwartze. I think that the response "Why would you want that?" is apologist and patronizing. If I want my computer to make coffee when I say "make tea", that is my prerogative; yours is to either help me do it, or ignore the question and walk away.
To each their own -- I thought Macs were about celebrating individuality. Finally, I am a recent switcher from Linux/Windows, and I am fine with the return key being mapped to "Rename". I just hate it when people get religious about technology. |
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Had they simply asked "why" or "how" without ranting, I might have felt inclined to post the well known method to set the key combo for "Open" to the "Return" key, at least to try for a while as a workaround. It isn't ideal because it is subject to precisely the context issues that Mikey-San brought up regarding renaming, as well as dialogue boxes, etc., but given the tone of the post, I figured it would have been a waste of time and I didn't feel like listening to the inevitable complaints that would follow about those limitations. It isn't about being "religious" about anything. I just don't understand the logic of someone doing the "switch" if they're going to complain about everything. I know people who have switched and are loving it. If others aren't even willing to try it the Mac way, I actually want them to go back to Windows. It would be better all around - MS keeps a customer, Apple avoids pressure to compromise their UI, Mac users get to keep enjoying their UI conventions and better for the user who is happier on Windows anyway. |
Okay, I agree that the OP should have had a much different tone while asking his/her question, though one would think you guys are used to it by now. ;)
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Thus the third choice is to try to help people to ask the right questions or to ask questions in the right way. Asking how to get it to make coffee when you say "make tea" is the wrong question if you could simply say "make coffee" and get the beverage that you desire. If you have a good reason for an obscure request, then you should explain your reasons (e.g. "I can't say the letter 'c' ") so people can suggest work-arounds, etc. |
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Wouldn't you like to be able to tweak OS X to not remind you of Windows at all? |
Without interrupting anybody's prayer meetings too much, I'd just like to point out that there are some principles that have been developed in user interface design, and it's usually a good plan to understand the basics before making any major changes to them.
Some examples: http://www.sylvantech.com/~talin/pro...ui_design.html http://www.useit.com/papers/heuristi...stic_list.html http://www.asktog.com/basics/firstPrinciples.html A Google search will locate many others, although Jakob Nielsen and Bruce Tognazzini will turn up quite frequently. Consistency isn't always a foolish hobgoblin. :D |
My apologies for steering this thread off course.
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Now that I spend more time working with Windows machines there are a lot of things I would like to mix and match. I know many of them I can't. I also know sometimes there is a way to do it and I just don't know it - so I ask. Enough dead horse beating from me though. Again, my apologies for steering this thread off course. |
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As for tweaking the OS to not remind me of Windows, I'd be happy if I could go to a Mac site and not be reminded of Windows! |
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And since it is unlikely or impossible that either system will ever do 100% of tasks 100% better than all other operating systems, it is logical that at times there may be a feature that works better on Windows than the Mac, making it perfectly reasonable to request that the Mac add that to its arsenal to nudge it further along that asymptotic curve approaching but never actually reaching 100%. |
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There is no interface that would be intuitive for everyone. As a long time programmer, I know that you can ask 100 users of any system what would be the best way for them to do a specific thing and get 99 different suggestions. The 100th guy didn't get the question.
Apple has long used the Return/Enter keys as a way to easily edit file names. I for one, find this perfectly intuitive. I figured this out back in '84 without being told or reading about it. Please, please, let's not make Mac OS a copy of windows. Remember windows is just a cheap copy of Mac OS. |
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I long ago used QuicKeys (or maybe KeyQuencer?) to set Return in the Finder to do a Cmd+O, while leaving the Enter key for rename mode. (Remember, on the Mac, unlike PCs, Return and Enter generate different key codes.) Hehe, when my sister used my machine and discovered what I did, she thought I was the only person to do that. Somehow I don't think I was. :D |
I do get fed up with the insistance that if someone wants a given feature to work like Windows, they're a stupid switcher who should take time to get used to the Mac, or go back to Windows. Anyone with any degree of pragmatism would see that neither OS can possibly be perfect for everyone, and so for a given individual, the perfect OS would inevitably take the best of both.
I don't like the steps at the back of my house, but asking a home improvement forum how to re-build them shouldn't result in a series of "idiot - get used to it becuase steps are better than ramps", or "move back to your tiny old house and stop bothering us" comments, should it? I switched just under a year ago. At the start there were many things I couldn't work out in OS X, but with help I found the OS X way to achieve most of them. Some of those methods are easier than Windows, some are neutral, some are harder, but overall I now find OS X the more productive OS. However, that's not to say I don't want it improved. Setting aside the sad lack of decent OS X apps in certain categories, the following still annoy me: - Finder listing folders alphabetically amongst files, rather than folders first, then files NOT because Windows does it that way, but because it's illogical and slows me down. At the very least there should be an option. - Finder's lack of ability to deal with FTP except read only. Yep, of course I can do it with third party apps, but in a modern OS I should be able to manage ALL my files from one place. NOT a "make it like Windows" request. I know Window's FTP integration with Explorer is weak, but that doesn't mean Apple shouldn't tackle the issue. Making me add third party apps to manage files also sits badly with Apples "it just works out of the box" advertising claim. And no, terminal is not a solution - in this day and age I should be able to expect GUI ways to do everything. - Inability to manage (mainly close, but also hide, minimise etc) open apps and windows using Expose. I find it almost impossible to believe that Apple didn't see the next logical step after bringing up Expose - click a window to bring it to the fore, OR get a context menu (dare I say right click?) offering close, hide and minimise. Or have little close X's at the corner of each window, a bit like Widgets do when in the "manage Widgets" mode. - [Flame retardent jacket on] A better way to handle the old "close the app or close the window?" question. Cwtnospam's "Applications closing when you close a window for example. That might have made sense decades ago, but with today's systems, why close an app if the user hasn't specifically requested it?" is perfectly valid, but so is "why not close an app when I've finished with it, and get it's menu bar out of the way?". But my point here is that it doesn't have to be one or the other, and this is one area where I think Windows gets it right while OS X doesn't: In Windows, I have a choice whether using keyboard, menu's or mouse (meaning clicking an icon). I can choose to close the window, or can choose to close the app. In OS X, I get that choice ONLY with keyboard or menu, not mouse. Except with obvious "only ever one window" apps like system preferences, I'm with others and don't want the red cross to close the app, but I do want a way to choose whether I close the app or close the window, without being forced to use a keyboard shortcut or the menu's. Windows solves it quite elegantly by giving me two crosses, one for the app and one for the window, and while I'm not fixed on OS X doing it the same way, I do want Apple to tackle this issue. [/Flame retardent jacket on] - NOT a request for a start menu, but I do like that in the start menu I could organise my apps the way I wanted to, into logical folders ("Music and video", "Office", "Games" etc), and wish that OS X could allow me to do something simillar. I can re-order them in the dock, but I have way too many apps to put them all in the dock. BTW, I agree enter isn't too logical for open, and think Cmd O is - it intuitively means "my Command is Open this file". On the other hand, enter isn't any more logical for rename. It's fine once you know, but there's no logic to tell you to expect that, and it remains inconsistent as it doesn't do that everywhere (open and save dialogues for example). Mark |
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Just my ideas...Chris |
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What's happening is that PC users are seeing that the Mac way is better, but then they want to change the Mac to work more like their PCs. It's like the woman who loves her husband but wants to fix him. He doesn't think he's broken, and we don't think the Mac's method of dealing with the last open file of an application needs fixing either. This is especially true since OS X came out. Lots of people keep many applications running all the time without realizing it, since there's no apparent drain on system performance when they do. Many don't ever notice all the little black triangles on their docks. There's just no need to close the application because it has no open windows, and there's no real benefit to doing so. There is a benefit to leaving it open though: speed. If the app is open, the only thing you need to load is the file, and since lots of Mac's have average uptimes measured in months, that additional speed will save a lot of time. |
I just think it's silly to jump all over people who want something to work like Windows, given all the features that Mac OS X has stolen from Windows over the years. Even Apple knows Mac OS X isn't gospel, and that makes it silly to be a Mac OS radical fundamentalist.
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Nobody's saying the Mac is Gospel. I'm saying that Windows isn't Gospel either. If it were a feature that had any real value, I wouldn't have a problem with it.
I think it's silly to want something to work like Windows when it doesn't make things better. |
Chabig,
Thanks for that. Sorting by kind doesn't work in columns view though, which is what I use a lot (and isn't in Windows BTW), and even in the other views it doesn't put folders at the top. File>Close and File>Quit are menu selections, available in both OS's. I tried to make it clear that by mouse I meant by clicking on a UI element; i.e. an icon. That's available in Windows but not OS X. Quote:
I've tried folders of aliases in the dock, but it's just too much work to maintain it. I'm using Overflow now, which gives me a kind of multi section dock, and that's pretty good, but I'd like to see the dock enhanced to allow me to organise my apps better. Mark |
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And saying that if Mac users wanted the Windows method, they'd buy PC's is just silly, because A) I don't want the PC method - I want Apple to solve the problem their own way, and B) even if I did want this item to work the Windows way, it's just one of many features, most of which I prefer on the Mac. You seam to suggest that it's herracy to like anything from Windows better than OS X? Finally, of course there's benefit to closing an app when it's not in use. Resources are NOT unlimited (try running AutoCAD under Parallels with a load of running apps under OS X, even with 2Gb RAM as I have, and you'll soon regret having anything else running), the menu bar hangs arround for no good purpose (yes you get used to it, but why should you have to?), and the dock fills up to the point where it's no longer any good as an application launcher. Mark |
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Close window = command-w Close application = command-q Quote:
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I think there's a difference between "I wish the MacOS had such-and-such feature" and "Why doesn't MacOS do such-and-such the normal (i.e., Windows) way"?
In some cases they may amount to the same inquiry but it does make a difference how you word it. The Mac experience for the most part is the OS, and the various Microsoft OS's have been the main threat to the continued healthy existence of the Mac for lo these 20 years. Aside from that, though, even when the comparison-OS is not a Microsoft OS, "Why doesn't OS X behave as it should which is how <other OS> does"? can be an abrasive way of expressing the inquiry. If you came in here and said, for instance, "How the hell do I get a Desktop to which I can drag files from any volume, like under MacOS 9, without it freaking copying the file? I just want my Desktop to contain the contents of every Desktop folder on every mounted volume, that's what a Desktop should be. Oh, and I should be able to select Put Back when I'm done and have the files all zip back to where I dragged them from"... if you posted that in here, you'd most likely get some people posting "OS X doesn't work like OS 9; there are reasons and advantages to the OS X way of doing 'Desktop', and even if there is some possible hack to make your Desktop behave like OS 9's, you should just get used to the OS X way". And perhaps some folks telling you to stick with OS 9 if the difference is such a dealbreaker for you. Likewise someone posting "I want to be able to select text and have the OS know I want it to copy so if I then click somewhere else it pastes there, just like a normal Unix environment". Same mixture of "OS X doesn't work that way and it would be complicated to hack it to do so, try to get used to the OSX way" and "Why don't you just install Linux then, if that's what you want?" Which is not to say you won't find the hacks if they matter that much to you. (I've got OS X looking and behaving and feeling a lot like OS 8/9, complete with no Dock at all. And no freaking Aqua, I hate the Aqua GUI). Put on your asbestos suit, try to phrase your questions so they don't diss OS X, anticipate some flack and don't get annoyed by it, and understand where OS X folks are coming from and why they don't warmly receive questions about how to make OS X look and feel like some other OS. |
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Mark |
See, it's really hard to argue that in the Mac world it's stupid to close the app by clicking a UI item, when in each version of OS X, more and more Apple apps do just that, and I've seen the inconsistency confuse new users. Apple forces Windows-style app closing behavior in some, but not all, iLife applications, for crying out loud. At least Windows is consistent. In this area.
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I don't want anything that would stop you working the way you want, and it's not up to you to decide whether the way I want to work is valid or not - that just demonstrates the arrogance of the "this is Mac so there can be no better way to do it" camp. I do wish you'd stop relating everything to Windows too, as you don't half sound defensive. I'd want what I'm asking for whether I'd ever used Windows or not, because it's simply logical. I have no fixed idea of the actual implimentation, which doesn't have to copy any other OS. I just want what I percieve as a problem to the way I work fixed. Computers are tools to help me work more efficiently. They're meant to suit me, not the other way arround. |
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Mark |
I thought you wanted a single click. ;)
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I am defensive. There are too many recent switchers who want the Mac to do things the Windows way for my taste, and I don't think it's good for the platform. It may be great for Apple in the short term, but in the long term it threatens to turn the Mac into just another variation on Windows. Quote:
1. The Windows way isn't necessarily intuitive or better simply because a bunch of recent switchers are familiar with it. 2. The Windows way is already available to them, and if they preferred it they could use it. Real arrogance is switching to a Mac and then asking to make it work more like your PC. Let's not pretend otherwise; that's what you're really asking, no matter how you disguise the request. |
Either be productive, or give it a rest, people. :rolleyes:
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In fact what I want is for Apple to solve a problem the PC has already solved. How many times would you like me to say that in my mind they don't need to do that by using the same method? You seriously underate the Apple engineers if you think they can't sove this little problem without ruining the experience! It's your loss - if you can't enter into a sensible discussion about what might or might not be an improvement, without dragging it back to a constant and rather petty "Mac vs Windows", you'll end up being labled a stick in the mud and ignored. OS X WILL change as time goes on, and a lot of the change WILL be in response to users feedback (new users as well as long time users), so if I were in your shoes I'd be entering into the discussion, rather than trying to block anything that looks to you like a request to "Windows-ise" OS X. Steve Jobs will, quite rightly, do whatever it takes to increase market share, within the limits of what he can be pursuaded is right. I can gurantee that'll never include "ignore what potential switchers from Windows want", so you'd be better off helping to work out what it is that people do like about Windows, what it is that then tempts them over to the Mac, and then how the two can be combined without compromising the "Macness" of the Mac. We could have talked about how my need for a single click way to choose whether to close the app or just a window could be achieved with Mac elegance, but you don't appear open minded enough to do that. Windows allows it, so it must be bad. Ridiculous. You might argue that Windows is as bloated and whatever else you (and I, but of course you won't believe that) dislike about it exactly because it's chased market share, and that therefore you don't WANT all those switchers on board, but that's not real world, and I for one have confidence that the Apple engineers are capable of appealing to a larger section of the population without compromising the superbly elegant OS they have now. For the benefit of others who may be a little more pragmatic and open minded, I should point out that I hate having to use Windows nowadays, and love 99.9% of OS X. The suggestion that because I don't like the remaining 0.1% I should switch back is ludicrous. As ludicrous as if I was to suggest that unless that 0.1% was changed, I'd be ditching my Mac. Mark |
Are we done now? Yup.
Thread closed. |
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