awesome app
Preview, the Mac app people forget about
211–220 of 337 posts
Re: Preview, the Mac app people forget about
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
What do you not like about the existing dialog?
Navigating is a pain. eg you cannot navigate to any "hidden" directories and cannot you type paths in the "address bar" nor the file name input selector. There's a few other little annoyances but I can't recall them right now (currently awaiting delivery of a new MacBook Pro so I'm back to running Linux for the time being). The dialogue annoys me enough that I've just gotten into the habit of opening everything from…
- Cmd-Shift-G opens a fuzzy complete path input
- “Show hidden files” is a preference you can change.
Once you’re comfortable with the CLI and know the paths you care about for a task, in what cases do you prefer a GUI open dialog on other systems?
Re: Preview, the Mac app people forget about
#213Preview is one of those essential things that sets macOS apart from the other operating systems, and contributes to that “Mac has good UX” vibe. Last time I opened the Windows equivalent, it tried to sell me on Microsoft’s PDF-alike format… and asked me to connect Office365. Another tiny macOS feature I love is that you can drop a file icon on any Open or Save dialog to select the file in the dialog. On other OSs, th…
> I’m hoping that the post-Ive Apple - an Apple more comfortable with “pro” users and beauty in utility versus form - will try to fix that one… and bring back all the good Mission Control stuff from Snow Leopard (which IMO is the greatest OS ever released). I wouldn't hold my breath. They've been gradually hiding controls behind buttons and popovers. The proxy icon (folder or document icon in the title bar of a windo…
> I can't remember the name of the guy everyone blames for this, but he talks about minimalism and reducing app UI in favor of putting content forward during OS feature reveals
I believe you might be referring to Jony Ive (who is named in the portion you quoted). He left Apple a few years ago, which is what the comment you quote is talking about.
Re: Preview, the Mac app people forget about
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It is not a browser, or a file manager. It is a file selector. But you're selecting the file in a file manager and then dragging it into your "file selector". That whole dialogue then becomes completely redundant because you might as well just drag that file into the application window without having to click "open". > I get bitten at least a couple of times a week on Windows when I stupidly drag and drop the file…
> But you're selecting the file in a file manager and then dragging it into your "file selector". That whole dialogue then becomes completely redundant because you might as well just drag that file into the application window without having to click "open". Sometimes. Others the dialog is how you set things like the format of the file or some import options. Or you need a multiple selection and dropping a bunch of fi…
> Sometimes
None of that prevents Apple from building a more featureful dialogue
> In theory, yes. In practice it’s hit and miss as developers don’t seem to care about using native widgets (that, and the fact that native widgets have vastly different capabilities on Windows thanks to years of cruft they cannot remove).
I agree it sucks when developers roll their own but that’s not really relevant because we are comparing two very specific dialogues and not the wider OS ecosystem. (I’d use macOS over Windows any day of the week. But that doesn’t mean I have to love everything about macOS).
> sorry if it sounded harsh
You didn’t and we are good :) It’s been really interesting hearing another viewpoint.
> It’s just that the file selection dialogs are a particular pain point on Windows and Linux.
For you. :) Personally I think KDE got it just about perfect.
I guess this just goes to show how completely different two peoples preferences can be.
Re: Preview, the Mac app people forget about
#215Preview is one of those essential things that sets macOS apart from the other operating systems, and contributes to that “Mac has good UX” vibe. Last time I opened the Windows equivalent, it tried to sell me on Microsoft’s PDF-alike format… and asked me to connect Office365. Another tiny macOS feature I love is that you can drop a file icon on any Open or Save dialog to select the file in the dialog. On other OSs, th…
If Mac OS spent two OS update cycles just fixing the usability kinks that plague window management, context switching across apps, mouse support, multi desktop support, and finder, then it would be the most pleasurable OS to work with out of the 3. As it is, these flaws make up most of the interactions I have with an OS moment to moment, and as a result Mac OS frustrates me in ways Windows and Linux (using Pop OS with Gnome) don't.
Re: Preview, the Mac app people forget about
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you tried switching that folder to "Gallery" view? It display a list of all images and then a large preview along with an info panel to the right. Seems like it should give you everything you need. You can then switch back to your normal view when done so it doesn't mess up how your folder is setup. https://media.idownloadblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/m...
I need list view, and proper preview... Gallery its not an option
Then why not use List View with Preview turned on?
What makes a “proper” preview?
Re: Preview, the Mac app people forget about
#217One massive I'd add to this list that got added recently - being able to copy and paste text out of images. I'm so often sent a screenshot with a url in the url bar, I can now copy and paste that screenshot of a url. It's been massively the past month since I noticed it. Not sure how long it's been there, I assume not long, maybe last OS update.
To get this functionality everywhere , I’ve taken using the TRex app: https://github.com/amebalabs/TRex I have it mapped to ctrl-alt-command-C. As more and more apps and webpages make text unselectable, it’s become invaluable. My favorite trick is to copy the URL when someone is screen sharing their browser in a virtual meeting!
Thanks for sharing, I didn't know about TRex! I've been using TextSniper (https://textsniper.app) for this functionality -- not sure how these two compare, feature-wise.
Re: Preview, the Mac app people forget about
#218Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s one of those transformative little features. But it’s especially great in PDFs where it’s not a “real” PDF but just a collection of page sized images so you couldn’t normally select the text before without OCR software of some sort. Having it built into the OS is so handy.
I tried it with one of these image-based PDFs and didn't get it to work. Is this Apple-Silicon-only? Or is there any other step you need to do?
It is possible that it is AS only. It may use the machine learning components of AS.
Edit: As of July of 2021, Live Text was available in beta on Intel Macs so by the time Monterey shipped it worked on both Intel and AS.
Whether it works on a given document may depend on how that app displays the image. I can see where it would be complicated in a PDF where you may have combinations of text, images, and OCR’d text behind images.
Re: Preview, the Mac app people forget about
#219Preview is one of those essential things that sets macOS apart from the other operating systems, and contributes to that “Mac has good UX” vibe. Last time I opened the Windows equivalent, it tried to sell me on Microsoft’s PDF-alike format… and asked me to connect Office365. Another tiny macOS feature I love is that you can drop a file icon on any Open or Save dialog to select the file in the dialog. On other OSs, th…
Absolutely. I recently tried switching to Linux, and realized how amazing Preview is. Tasks like "swap 2 pages in a PDF" or "crop this image" are much less intuitive and often require you to install a single-purpose command line utility, or fire up something like GIMP which has a steeper learning curve and feels like overkill