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Preview, the Mac app people forget about

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Re: Preview, the Mac app people forget about

#321

Post by nautilius »

cassianoleal wrote: post #311
SllX wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a shortcut that comes in handy when you operate in deep file hierarchies and can’t be bothered to memorize the path. That said there’s even easier ways to get there: Just navigate, the sidebar will reflect what’s in your Finder sidebar so you can use that as a shelf if you’re going into one specific directory a lot for your work. It’s a dynamic environment, you don’t have to treat it like it’s static. Or: hit Co…

> Dragging the folder in is for when you’re operating in the Finder and another application Not only Finder! You can hover over the filename on the top bar of any application and drag the icon from there as well. It works for any application where you have a file opened.

Is there a pattern to it? I find it an amazing feature, but also find that it doesn't always works. Do I have to do something before I can drag the icon?

Re: Preview, the Mac app people forget about

#322

Post by herodotus »

vestrigi wrote: post #254
herodotus wrote: post #53

I really enjoyed working with the Preview team before I retired from Apple. My small group created a private framework that added "document reconstruction" to PDF documents: basically an inferred DOM based on whatever information (mainly geometric) we could use in the PDF document. Our moment of fame game at WWDC 2009, when Bertrand Serlet talked about Snow Leopard during the Keynote. At around the 5:10 mark he talks…

Have you by chance written a blog post or another HN comment about this? I think I heard that story before with some more detail :)

yup.

Re: Preview, the Mac app people forget about

#323

Post by specialist »

kevinsundar wrote: post #18

People also forget that you can use Preview to scan documents from your scanner rather than using whatever shitty software came with yours. Also, Preview > File > Import from iPhone > Scan Documents gives you a virtual scanner instead of having to install one of those "scanner" apps on your phone. Its built into your iPhone already! I also use it frequently to change image file types. You can also make a digital vers…

> ...rather than using whatever shitty software came with yours.

I just helped a friend setup a Brother all-in-one for use with their newish Lenova Windows 11. Two hours. No way they could have figured this out on their own. So many hoops, glitches. Everything was ... so ... slow.

With Mac & iPhone, printing and scanning Just Work.

Having not used Windows for ages, I can't believe how bad that stack, ecosystem, tech culture remains. Just turrible.

Re: Preview, the Mac app people forget about

#324

Post by tencentshill »

GraphenePants wrote: post #115
wlesieutre wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't stand when I have to deal with a PDF on Windows on my office computer where I have the free copy of Acrobat. You can right click on a page and it's got "rotate" buttons up at the top. But when you click on one, it takes a second to think about it and then opens a popup to offer you a free 7-day trial of the Pro version. Rotating a page is too powerful a feature for Adobe to not try and sell it to you. https:/…

Correct, you get what you pay for. Acrobat Pro supports advanced rotations for only $14.99 per month. https://www.adobe.com/acrobat/pricing.html

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Re: Preview, the Mac app people forget about

#325

Post by kergonath »

nautilius wrote: post #321
cassianoleal wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Dragging the folder in is for when you’re operating in the Finder and another application Not only Finder! You can hover over the filename on the top bar of any application and drag the icon from there as well. It works for any application where you have a file opened.

Is there a pattern to it? I find it an amazing feature, but also find that it doesn't always works. Do I have to do something before I can drag the icon?

In recent versions you might have to hover for the icon to appear, which is infuriating.

Except for that, all proxy icons should be dragable without problem if they are from the native widgets (so no guarantee for misguided developers who reimplemented it to look like the native one without actually implementing its behaviour). There might be a small delay between the moment you click on it and the moment you can drag it, to avoid mistakes (I think that was the case at some point, not really sure now).

Re: Preview, the Mac app people forget about

#326

Post by haroldp »

johnwalkr wrote: post #314
kitsunesoba wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is sometimes true on a hardware level, too. For example, I was using a Bluetooth Plantronics headset for voice chat on my iMac G5 in 2005 because Macs had come standard with Bluetooth for a year or two at that point. It wouldn't be for another 5 years or so for midrange-and-above prebuilt laptops to start coming with BT and it wasn't until the past 5 or so years that enthusiast motherboards and desktops started…

When you buy a Logitech bluetooth mouse or keyboard, it comes with a proprietary 2.4Ghz dongle as well. Unless it's the mac version, that doesn't come with an extra dongle. Presumably because bluetooth is almost guaranteed to be available and work on a mac. It will even work when you reboot into recovery mode. AirPods plus a mac work well too. It's usually not a fun experience when using bluetooth headphones on a PC…

I have to say, the bluetooth experience is one of the worst pain points for me on macs these days. I'm always connected to the wrong source. Or it's connected to two sources, but playing sound from the wrong one. Or I skip an ad on youtube on my macbook and my headphones switch source to my phone in that instant. Or it just doesn't want to connect at all, and I end up turning BT off and on. Or one bud connects and the other doesn't. Or I walk out of range of my computer and my headphones connected to my phone tell me I've disconnected every ten seconds forever. Or I try to hit the pause button on my headphones and they think I want to skip forward 6 podcasts. Or my phone rings and my headphones are connected to my computer, and I can't switch them fast enough, so I just have to take them off and answer without them. Always something.

Re: Preview, the Mac app people forget about

#327

Post by em-bee »

xenadu02 wrote: post #237
em-bee wrote: post #58

every time i open a document with preview, it insists on opening all the documents i had open before. i must be doing something wrong, and find a different workflow, maybe instead of closing the app, i need to manually close each document that i don't need anymore. i guess it's not an issue if you use preview often and keep it running all the time, but i rarely need it since most of what i do is either terminal or br…

The Mac is document-centric, not app centric. The intended working model is you just open documents in Preview and close them when you're done. You don't concern yourself with whether Preview is running or not. If you Command-Q to quit Preview you are observing State Restoration - the intent there being that if the system is low on memory and the app is not visible or being used the system could quit the app then re-…

actually, the observed behavior makes macOS app centric. for a truly document centric system, opening a document should do exactly that and nothing more. what instead happens is that the preview app is started, and it remembers its previous state opening all the other documents it had open before. from an app-centric perspective that makes total sense. and i also approve of the concept of an app keeping its state.

to make the preview app and other apps document centric, the app itself needs to become less visible. for example the function to close the app could be replaced with one to close all documents. this would offer a document centric intent behind the close action. and for those cases where i don't actually want to close those documents, but just need to move them out of the way, different mechanisms are needed. functions like hide or suspend for starters that allow the OS to actually remove the apps and documents from memory but without changing their state to being closed. work spaces are also a possible concept.

another approach that preview could easily implement is to hide the documents that i didn't ask to be open at this moment. so the documents are still there, and their state is preserved, i just don't see it until i switch to that document. this would be similar to how at least firefox handles tabs. the tabs are there, but they are not loaded until i open each one of them. in the same way preview could remember all the recent documents, until i explicitly close a document just like i would close a tab.

a truly document centric system needs at least proper interface design and language, but parts may also need a redesign of core concepts. for example, when opening a document, i should be able to specify what kind of activity i want to do with it. depending on the chosen activity the right app that offers that activity will be started. currently i get to choose which app i open a document in, and there is one default app, and if i want another, i either open the app first, and then tell it to open the document, or i specifically choose the app that this document should be opened with. again this looks very app centric.

in a document centric system i expect that i open a document, and then all the possible actions on that document are available to me. but different actions can be provided by different applications which requires that apps interface with each other in a completely different way.

Re: Preview, the Mac app people forget about

#328

Post by Macha »

kjksf wrote: post #179
Macha wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SumatraPDF is what you want as a windows user (yes, ignore the website looks like it's from the 90s). No upsells like acrobat/foxit, better compatibility than pdf.js like your browser. Linux I mostly use evince (included if you use a Gnome based distro), but it's clearly the weakest of Preview/SumatraPDF/evince, as someone who uses all 3 regularly. Still better than Acrobat Reader though.

Hey, I just updated the website https://www.sumatrapdfreader.org (for reference, the old one: https://sumatra-website-preview.onrender.com/free-pdf-reader ). Does it look better? Maybe early 2000?

I was never one to be bothered by it personally, just responding to reactions others have had when I pointed to it previously (in particular I've often defended HN and Old Reddit design vs newer trends).

That said, I think the updates will reduce the number of people that react that way.

Re: Preview, the Mac app people forget about

#329

Post by nautilius »

kergonath wrote: post #325
nautilius wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a pattern to it? I find it an amazing feature, but also find that it doesn't always works. Do I have to do something before I can drag the icon?

In recent versions you might have to hover for the icon to appear, which is infuriating. Except for that, all proxy icons should be dragable without problem if they are from the native widgets (so no guarantee for misguided developers who reimplemented it to look like the native one without actually implementing its behaviour). There might be a small delay between the moment you click on it and the moment you can dra…

Awesome, thank you!

Re: Preview, the Mac app people forget about

#330

Post by [deleted] »

hnlmorg wrote: post #226
adrusi wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The macOS open/save dialog is almost identical to the Finder UI, what would you change about it? The reason it's helpful to be able to drag a file from somewhere else into the open/save dialog is that you often already have the file open somewhere. A common workflow: navigate to a document in finder, edit it in some app, save it, upload it to a web form. Similarly if you have a path to the file handy somewhere, you c…

I almost never have Finder open. I usually think "I want to create a spreadsheet" so I'll open Excel and then look for the document. Or I'll be doing some dev work so I'll navigate there in the terminal and then open code via `code .` I think some of that habit might have stemmed from the fact that I don't like Finder much. I don't like the hotkeys (eg [ENTER] to rename), I don't like it's layout. As much as I dislik…

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