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Collapsing Finder SideBar in Leopard

F

FreedomCoach

macrumors newbie
Original poster
In Tiger, it is possible to completely collapse or hide the sidebar in Finder Windows. However, it appears that this ability has been removed from Leopard.

This is very annoying to me since I often have the desire to just see a plain list of files in a folder without anything else obscuring or distracting my view of the documents. Collapsing the sidebar also saves screen real estate too when you have many folders open and you're using a small 13" macbook screen.

I'm hoping someone will come up with some way to add this ability back into Leopard perhaps as some terminal unix command or applescript or whatever. This would be a fantastic hint or tip for the MacOSHints site. All help appreciated!

Sincerely,
Howard
 
FreedomCoach said:
In Tiger, it is possible to completely collapse or hide the sidebar in Finder Windows. However, it appears that this ability has been removed from Leopard.

This is very annoying to me since I often have the desire to just see a plain list of files in a folder without anything else obscuring or distracting my view of the documents. Collapsing the sidebar also saves screen real estate too when you have many folders open and you're using a small 13" macbook screen.

I'm hoping someone will come up with some way to add this ability back into Leopard perhaps as some terminal unix command or applescript or whatever. This would be a fantastic hint or tip for the MacOSHints site. All help appreciated!

Sincerely,
Howard
Click to expand...

It's rather concerning that Apple would remove a useful piece of functionality like this. But after hearing about the other features which have been removed, I'm no longer surprised.
 
A Day in the Life of Steve Jobs:

Steve Jobs sits at his desk. His speaker phone chirps.

Steve: Y'ello!

Marketing Guy: Yo, Stevie. Got some news for you.

Steve: Give it to me, big guy.

Marketing Guy: Greenpeace and PETA are all up our noses because our products aren't environmentally friendly enough. The Goracle is having hissy fits in his meditation chamber.

Steve: Crap. What do you suggest we do? There's no way in hell I'm stopping those Quanta assembly lines in Taiwan. We'll lose too much money.

Marketing Guy: Hmmm. Wait! I got it. You know those monkeys that can sign?

Steve: Are you talking about Koko the Talking Gorilla?

Marketing Guy: Yeah, that one. What if we marketed our product to talking monkeys, Steve? That way Greenpeace and the Goracle will be satisfied for the time being. I mean, what's greener than selling product to an endangered species?

Steve: You know what? That sounds like a good idea. But...

Marketing Guy: But what?

Steve: OS X is a very advanced system. I don't think a talking monkey can use it...

Marketing Guy: Don't worry. I'll have a word with Fred in the Human User Interface department. I'm sure he can find ways to 'dumb' down the OS for monkeys.

Steve: Okay. But, uh, mum's the word, yeah? We don't want those other talking monkeys finding out.
 
FreedomCoach said:
In Tiger, it is possible to completely collapse or hide the sidebar in Finder Windows. However, it appears that this ability has been removed from Leopard.

This is very annoying to me since I often have the desire to just see a plain list of files in a folder without anything else obscuring or distracting my view of the documents. Collapsing the sidebar also saves screen real estate too when you have many folders open and you're using a small 13" macbook screen.

I'm hoping someone will come up with some way to add this ability back into Leopard perhaps as some terminal unix command or applescript or whatever. This would be a fantastic hint or tip for the MacOSHints site. All help appreciated!

Sincerely,
Howard
Click to expand...

Maybe Im missing something but in a finder window hit the wide button in the top right corner...
 
Mindcrime said:
A Day in the Life of Steve Jobs:

Steve Jobs sits at his desk. His speaker phone chirps.

Steve: Y'ello!

Marketing Guy: Yo, Stevie. Got some news for you.

Steve: Give it to me, big guy.

Marketing Guy: Greenpeace and PETA are all up our noses because our products aren't environmentally friendly enough. The Goracle is having hissy fits in his meditation chamber.

Steve: Crap. What do you suggest we do? There's no way in hell I'm stopping those Quanta assembly lines in Taiwan. We'll lose too much money.

Marketing Guy: Hmmm. Wait! I got it. You know those monkeys that can sign?

Steve: Are you talking about Koko the Talking Gorilla?

Marketing Guy: Yeah, that one. What if we marketed our product to talking monkeys, Steve? That way Greenpeace and the Goracle will be satisfied for the time being. I mean, what's greener than selling product to an endangered species?

Steve: You know what? That sounds like a good idea. But...

Marketing Guy: But what?

Steve: OS X is a very advanced system. I don't think a talking monkey can use it...

Marketing Guy: Don't worry. I'll have a word with Fred in the Human User Interface department. I'm sure he can find ways to 'dumb' down the OS for monkeys.

Steve: Okay. But, uh, mum's the word, yeah? We don't want those other talking monkeys finding out.
Click to expand...
WTH the does have to do with anything???
 
telf22 said:
WTH the does have to do with anything???
Click to expand...

Leopard has been dumbed down from a User Interface perspective. The OP was talking about the lose of functionality in Finder. Sometimes the people at Apple (and other companies for that matter) make really bizarre design decisions and one can only wonder about why.
 
Must be a Terminal Command that would work

What I'm hoping for is that some mac or unix techie will come up with a terminal command that collapses the sidebar.

There must be a parameter controlling the size of the sidebar. It is just that we cannot bring it to zero by dragging but hopefully unix can force it to be zero. Where's a techie when you need one?

Sincerely,
Howard
 
I'm kind of glad they took it away.

I was in a Mac store once with a bunch of Macs up for demo. I noticed that somebody had hidden the sidebar in the Finder on the systems (along with hiding the Dock and moving it to the left side of the screen). As you could imagine, people trying the Macs out kind of got frustrated because they had no idea there was a sidebar and it's almost impossible to use the Finder without it.

In the end, it seems the ability to hide it did more bad than good.
 
There's a little bug I just found.

Tick off all the side bar items (under Finder preferences). Now try and tick them all back. I can't tick Searches, my Home or Applications.
 
Side Bar Issues

FreedomCoach and mainstreetmark,

I agree with both of you.

And one more thing:

Why can't you keyboard navigate "Forward" and "Back" through folder browsing?

I minimize my menu buttons to nothing. I don't like clutter.

The Oval Icon on the upper right would be perfect if it didn't open folders in new windows.

I sent my comments to AppleSupport. Hopefully they listen.

-Pablo
 
While it's still there, if you drag the divider between the sidebar and the folder contents all the way to the left, you effectively remove it. Just the little vertical bar is left.
 
I sent a note to Apple Feedback like QuarterSweede suggested.

I've had the opportunity to help two friends switch to Mac and set up their new Leopard driven machines. Thanks to that experience I know not to hurry to "up"-grade my machines, primarily because of the failure to continue (I dared dream it might have improved) the option to close the useless Sidebar on Finder windows. It was bad enough that 10.4 didn't give the ability to have them closed by default, but now not be able to close them at all? And no, I'm not talking about the Toolbar which I use all the time. Toolbar open. Sidebar closed. Capisce?

I can appreciate that some people, especially those coming from DOS-XP or DOS Vista may find the Sidebar useful, and they are welcome to it. Some people can can have it open, some like me can have it closed. That's called having 'Options'. Mac use to be about the option to work how you work best. I hope some day it may be that way again.

P.S. Don't even get me started on 'Coverflow'!
Click to expand...

The more people bug them about this the better.
 
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