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Just wondering..could be useful

jbrown

jbrown

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
I love Mac and OS X, but one thing annoys me -- when opening folders for the first time - ( or holding the mouse over a folder icon in the dock ) - there is an annoying delay before the folder opens and displays is contents. I can only put this down to the computer finding out the folders contents. Once it has been opened, if I close it and then re-open it later, it opens instantly ( indexing already having been done ).

So it occurs to me that it would be great if the computer were to examine and index folders in the background ( doing this automatically from start up ), so then it would be ready when you want to see a folders contents. I realize that this may be a lot of folders, so one could set a " depth " - say 6 folders in.

Is there an application or applescript that does, or can do this??

cheers

Justin🙂 🙂
 
The reason it speeds up after the first time is (I think) because it stores the information in RAM, which is faster to access than HD. If it is put in RAM, it is only there until that part of RAM needs to be used again. So, if you want too much to be stored here, it will run out of space, so you'd need to limit how much you are doing. The depth idea is interesting, but a depth of 6 will most likely cover most of your hard disk, so you may want to decrease that number or only do it for various areas (eg not the System folders).

Whether it can be done though, I'm not sure, but you could make Applescipt tell Finder to actually open and close various folders, which will then put that information in RAM, if you don't mind the movements on your monitor.

Virividox, is the indexing that you're referring to the same is what jbrown is asking, or is this some other type of indexing? It could be the Content indexing, which indexes the contents of files so that files can be searched by content.
 
Don't think its the same -- I leave my machine on for long periods, but that doesn't seem to make a difference - only if I have opened the folder previously does it help. If the computer did what I suggested, it would make the system feel a lot snappier IMHO.
 
Have you tried adjusting the delay in Finder preferences too "short"?

Finder menu/preferences - spring loaded folders and windows - delay/short.
 
Originally posted by Chappers
Have you tried adjusting the delay in Finder preferences too "short"?
Click to expand...

thats what i was gonna say... dont know if thats what you mean or not... i dont realy mind the delay... my old g3 usually needs a little extra time to think about operations 😉
 
Use Launchbar!

You get easy access to anything and everything on your drive, like you want, (via a Command-Space keyboard shortcut and typing any possible abbreviation/permutation of the name) and it indexes stuff at login or whenever you want it to, in about 12 seconds. The best part is how freeform it is--no setup required, and it learns what programs you want when you type random things VERY quickly.

You can get it at www.obdev.at ... seriously, check it out; it'll do more than the Dock ever could, and it's faster.
 
Originally posted by virividox
indexing is done at like 430 am if you leave your machine on
Click to expand...

Not to sound defensive, but I hear this a lot, and the only maintenance I can find that is done daily is rotating logs.

Anyone have real proof of anything else?
 
Originally posted by Chappers
Have you tried adjusting the delay in Finder preferences too "short"?

Finder menu/preferences - spring loaded folders and windows - delay/short.
Click to expand...

The spring loaded folder delay is how long it takes for a folder to open when you have dragged a file on top of its icon. The delay jbrown is referring to is the time it takes for Finder to get all the information about the folder and display it, which is variable and is affected by folder contents, CPU speed, hard drive speed and amount of RAM (although I'd really like a preference that said 'Triple CPU power' 😀).
 
Hit the space bar to focus and the folder drive opens right up with minimal delay. The delay is just slop room so drive and folders don't pop open immediately.
 
The indexing virividox is talking about and the "indexing" in the original question aren't the same thing; the former is a content index of the files that the Finder uses to do "find by content" searches. The latter is really just a cache of the items in the folder and their icons that gets stored in RAM somewhere so the window displays more quickly the next time you open it.

I am a bit skeptical about the updating indexes at 4:30am, though I've heard that time elsewhere, since I've never noticed the system running anything but the normal cron jobs at that time of day.

There's actually one more thing that can cause a slight delay when opening folders; recent versions of OSX will update the prebindings (I think... either that or just the application-document binding) on Applications in the current folder if they're not up to date. This on-the-fly updating is why you don't need to rebuild the desktop of an OSX volume. So, if you've installed new applications, there will probably be a brief pause when you first open the folder that contains them.
 
I've noticed that the slower the computer is, the longer it takes the folders to display (especially in the Dock). A G4/400 DT took about half a second to display the contents; a G3/350 iMac took about two seconds; my iBook 933 takes about 1/4 of a second - on a folder with about 100 files in it.
 
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