By Allison Sheridan:
This week I have the quintessential MacReviewcast application – the app that does one thing and does it well. This one doesn’t just do one thing, it does just one teensy tiny little thing, but it just makes that one thing that little bit easier. Mathew who listens to the NosillaCast sent one in that I thought was dumb when I read what it does. Then I installed it and I still thought it was dumb. and then I played with it and I continued to think it was dumb. then I had a need for it, and then I loved it!
Here’s the problem set up – how often do you find yourself wanting to drag a file from one window to the other? Pretty much every day at least, right? You have one window open, but you have to open the new window, but then it’s on top of the other window, and then you click back to the first window, slide it over to the left, bring in the right edge, then click back to the other window, make it more narrow so you can then slide it to the right side to make room to see the first window. Not that hard, but that’s probably 20 seconds you waste every time you try to move a file!
Well, Fiwi to the rescue! All Fiwi does is open two Finder windows in OSX and arrange them nice and tall and side by side, or nice and wide and horizontal. I know, sounds really stupid because it’s not that hard, but try Fiwi ONCE and you’ll be hooked. They suggest you put Fiwi in your sidebar or in the top of the Finder window so you have it at your finger tips at all times. I threw it in the sidebar where it takes up little room and now I’m using it all the time. It works well with launch programs like Quicksilver, or just using Spotlight too if you don’t want it in your finder window at all. Fiwi will work for the first 99 times for free, but they ask for a whopping $0.99 to activate it, so I whipped out my Paypal and paid them off after one use. Let’s see, 20 seconds probably twice a day, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year, that’s over 8 hours a year. Divide one dollar by 8 hours – is my time worth twelve cents an hour? I would say YES. It just takes once before you “get” this one! I know, it sounds stupid, but you’ll love it. Check it out at wordpower-software.com
One word: Exposé
Yep. Expose works, especially considering that when you drag any file from one window to the next, the next one will pop to the foreground automatically (even if started behind the first).
Say a file’s on the desktop: drag it to the hard drive icon, which flies open, and you can navigate through the whole thing without letting go the mouse. Better yet, I have my most common folders in the sidebar. They’ll cascade open too.
There are other examples. Suffice it to say, there’s rarely (never?) a need to formally open a second Finder window to move or copy a file. You can navigate your whole computer using Expose, automatically pop-open windows, windows that automatically come to the foreground, sidebar locations, etc.
Allison,
Here is a tip to save you that whooping $0.99 (anything count in this economy). Assume that you have both the source and destination windows open.
1. Click and drag the file(s) from the source Finder window
2. Still dragging, hit F10 to show all Finder’s windows
3. Still dragging, hover over the destination window for a second or two
4. The destination window will pop up, you can now drop the file(s) to it.
I love both Tim’s and Allison’s shows.
Hai
Same here – spring loaded folders seem to be the answer and they’re built in to OS X. I can appreciate that fiwi has a role but to say dragging between Finder windows is difficult is incorrect. I love the way they close thereafter.