Sunday, February 17, 2008

Leopard 10.5.2 Questions

(last updated by me at 18.48 on 22. Feb. 2008 *)

With the arrival of Leopard there are many changes in how the new interface performs. Some will be pleasing and others will be a challenge. You need to decide for yourself what works for you and enjoy the journey. Below is one member's experiences with the new system.
Linda McNeil

My personal major 'Leopard' grips (are mainly 'Finder' and the 'Dock' related):

Since 10.5.0 - Finders' 'Find' can no longer have its columns customized. Can you say "Finders' 'Find' is to Leopard, as 'Sherlock' is to Tiger?

( Some graphics may appear smaller than they actually are.
Click on the graphic to see it in full scale )


Figure 01. Finder's 'Find' in Tiger.

Figure 02. Finder's 'Find' in Leopard.

Since 10.5.0 - adding files to the '/Library/Contextual Menu Items/' or '~/Library/Contextual Menu Items/' folder, results in the contextual menu accessible via a 'More...' menu; thus, requiring un-needed additional sub-menu navigation. And now; to access 'Automator' workflows - one needs to navigate through two (2) contextual menu sub-menus!

Figure 03. Accessing the 'Snag path HFS' contextual menu item
('/Library/Contextual Menu Items') in Tiger.


Figure 04. Accessing the 'SayYes' 'Automator' workflow contextual menu item, in Tiger.

Figure 05. Accessing the 'Snag path HFS' contextual menu item
('/Library/Contextual Menu Items') in Leopard.

Figure 06. Accessing the 'SayYes' 'Automator' workflow contextual menu item, in Leopard.

With MacOS X 10.5.2 - adding a volume or folder, now requires individual configuring in order to navigate via the 'Dock'. Yes, you read that correctly - every time a volume or folder is added to the 'Dock', to navigate via it - you must configure it accordingly.

In 'Tiger' - clicking (pressing a releasing the mouse button) on a 'Dock' based volume or folder - will open the window of that volume or folder.
In 'Leopard' (MacOS X 10.5.2) the same action occurs - only if the volume or folder is empty; otherwise, a navigation menu appears.

In 'Tiger' - to present the navigation menu, one would press and keep pressed the mouse button (as has been the rule since MacOS X 10.0!). The noted pause, prior to the presentation of the navigation menu, could be eliminated by pressing or clicking the volume or folder icon (on the 'Dock') with the mouse right button.
In 'Leopard' (MacOS X 10.5.2) the same procedure merely presents the above mentioned configuration menu.

Like 'Tiger', 'Leopard' sometimes forgets how the user has configured 'Finder' windows to display. If you remove the 'Sidebar' and 'Toolbar' and close the window - do not be too surprised, if in the future - the 'Sidebar' and 'Toolbar' reappear when the window is opened.

Apple has yet to offer the ability to independently show / remove the 'Sidebar' and 'Toolbar'.

Oh yes, MacOS X 10.5.2 did bring one 'Dock' improvement, sub-menus of folder contents are no longer limited to 200+ items. I do not know, or have yet to test for, the new limit - if such now exists.

With MacOS X 10.5.2 - created 'alias'es now take up to 600 KB of hard drive space! Typically an 'alias' file contains less than 4 KB of actual data! With Tiger I have seen created 'alias'es to be mostly 4 KB, with some up to 64 KB; but none the size as those created with MacOS X 10.5.2.

And if that (excessive space for an 'alias' file) is not enough, when an 'alias' of a folder is selected, when navigating via a 'Dock' based volume or folder - the 'alias' is not rendered; thus, you cannot access the contents of the folder (of which the 'alias' points to)!



This post is subject by change by myself or any administator of the 'Macs@PACS on the Web' blog.

* - I created a free 'Windows Live' account (using 'FireFox' v. 2.0.0.10) which provides up to 5 GB of free storage. Added to it were the graphics of Figure 01. through Figure 06. of this article, The Figures were removed (which are stored in ones Google's accounts' 'Picasa Web Album' - which provides up to 1 GB of graphic storage space) from the above article, and then - references to those stored at 'Windows Live' were added (to this article). Thus, you (should) see no difference; but, I reclaim 'Picasa Web Album' space.

I intend to perform the above process to the Figures of 'Parallels Desktop 3.0 for Mac', and other previous posts. Each time reclaiming more and more 'Picasa Web Album' storage space.

Figures 07. through 11. were removed. It appears that the one (and only) of eight external FireWire hard disk drives I have, and was the available, and had a clone of MacOS X 10.5 (from the MacBook) via 'SuperDuper!' v. 2.5, was not correctly managed by MacOS X 10.5.2 when connected to the MacBook.
Investigating and / or explaining the possible reasons of the noted anomaly are beyond the any intentions.

Finally, I removed references to 'this weekend' (due to the PACS meetings being canceled, as Upper Moreland Middle School closing the facilities over the weekend); and, the line 'OS: operating system', since the sentence it referred to - was externally edited out.

No comments: