What Happened to Piles?

[biscuit]

Re: Window Shade X

Originally posted by owlicks
Has anyone tried the latest version of Windowshade X by Unsanity perhaps? It's a Public preview of 3.0. Anyways, it has a feature very similar to piles in which you can minimize windows so they animate and shrink down, then when you mouseover they can expand to as big as you want, or you can click to make them full size. It's an interesting concept, but I'll stick with my window shading

This is Minimise in Place and it was a feature of some of the Jaguar builds. You can get it without Windowshade X by downloading the Dock program from one of those builds.

I've got it installed, doesn't cause any difficulties. But I don't find myself using MIP that much. The floating windows tend to get in the way a little bit because they are in front of everything. Also, they're usually too small to tell what's in them and there's no title when you mouse over either. I tend to forget that it's there to be honest, then I'll remember and use it for a day or so.

Might be nicer on a QE machine too, the animation can be a little dodgy on my iBook...

biscuit

 

[ssamani]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Better that we have Expose

Originally posted by sinclairZX81
]


the point is not the visual UI behaviour/representation of piles but the functionality. think iTunes smart playlists but for the finder.

I completely agree. The impression that I got was that Piles were originally not necessarily meant to be dynamic, but the combination of advanced meta data (think ID3 tags used for Smart Playlists in iTunes), Piles and Smart dynamic updating could do wonders for file organisation. I always have a headache trying to decide weather to have my data organised by project or by document type or some other way. If only I could cut it in multiple ways - like Lotus Notes (and an appallingly bad take on it in Outlook) - would be great.

Not exactly new user functionality though - it would take a bit of an advanced user to get used to the fact that file exists in one definite directory but can be seen in various smart folders or piles. In the end I think Piles will be a view option on a folder, rather than a separate entity as such. And then you'll have Smart (dynamic) and normal folders.

As for expose - it would do wonders for working on my PowerBook.

Sanj

 

[sigamy]

Exposé without QE?

Just wondering if anyone with the developer's preview has tried Exposé on older hardware--without QE support?

I'd love to use this on my 500mhz iBook....will I be able to?

Thanks,
Brian

 

[Stella]

Personally, I went to the Doctors and got my piles sorted out.

:-D

 

[slowtreme]

BeOS has a feature Similar to Piles.

You set a "folder" to have certain attributes. them that folder really just becomes a live search tool. Nothing is in a Pile but shortcuts to the actual files that you have defined as a set.

Like an "MP3 MIXes" folder (Search for MP# and file size over 10 mb). clicking it would actually contain no files, but would look like it's full of all the MP3s on my HD that are bigger than 10mb. they are really just simlinks to the real files. Even editing them will update the original file.

I dont have BeOS running anymore. but with the journaling of BeOS and the PoSIX Simlinks, this was easy to do.

 

[php]

Couldn't Apple have thought up a better name for a new feature than "piles"? "Piles" is a synonym for hemorrhoids.

 

[rmac]

Shelf

On a somewhat related note....anyone else remember reading about the "Shelf" GUI element? Think it was used in NeXT as a place to temporarily put a file you wanted to move. You would take it from the source folder and place it on the shelf. Then you could navigate to the destination folder and the item there from off the shelf.

Depending on how that new left sidebar is implemented on Finder windows, it may act like a shelf. Just another solution to go along with using multiple finder windows and/or spring loaded folders, but I could see myself using it sometimes.

 

[phrancpharmD]

What I interpreted "Piles" to be would have been interesting and I would have probably ended up using it - the problem being, of course, that creating "piles" of hard copies is my non-computer filing method of choice, and I can hardly ever find what I'm looking for. So "piles" on my Mac would have most certainly disabled my abilities to find ANYTHING, because I'd have one big "pile" of "crap!" Expose seems much more useful and less dangerous for me to use. . .

 

[rjstanford]

Originally posted by slowtreme
You set a "folder" to have certain attributes. them that folder really just becomes a live search tool. Nothing is in a Pile but shortcuts to the actual files that you have defined as a set.

I wouldn't be surprised to see this in the final release. The main requirement for it is the fast searching, which is already built in to Panther. Obviously there's an additional intercept layer in the filesystem code that ties in to a meta-data database of sorts. In fact, the addition of transparent encrypt/decrypt implies a different use of the same concept (to me at least). Once these are solid (may be so now), tying in Smart Folders to it wouldn't be that big a deal.

Personally, I would have them configurable... On a workstation you could have them update on file-save actions so that there'd be a little more overhead on each file-op but browsing would be immediate. On a large-scale shared system or file server, you could have them (using the fast searching) update on folder views, taking a little more time to use but without the extra hit on every file-op. But that's just me.

-Richard

-Richard

 

[kansaigaijin]

the name of the thing

is not Expos(the baseball team),
or Expose (to reveal),

it is Expos…~ (e†vk'spo†z-za†zf)…An.

1. An exposure or a revelation of something discreditable.
2. A formal exposition of facts.


[French, past participle of exposer, to expose, from Old French. See expose.]

to type it, option-e, then "e"

 

[stickman67]

Piles and long-document publishing

I can understand why many of you don't see the point of Piles (of the non-medical variety), but for me they would be a great alternative to conventional folders.

I edit and typeset books. Therefore I quite often have, say, 20 text files (for chapters), then 20 layout files, and often more than 100 scans. The text and scans often go into their own subfolders, or else things tend either to get messy, or it takes ages to scroll through the main publication folder. And if there are lots of scans, they might even be divided into subsubfolders within the scans subfolder. So we're beginning to talk about a multi-level navigation feat just at the finder level, let alone at the dialogue-box level within apps.

OK, since OS X things are much better than they were with regard to navigation, and they'll get better in Panther. But for me to have a single folder for each publication that has a pile of layout files, a pile of text files, and a pile of scans would make things easier for me. That simple.

It's just another tool, but it would have its uses.

 

[Sedulous]

Yeah, it would be great if expose will run on older hardware (such as the cube). Anyone have insight into this?

 

[ibookin']

Originally posted by Sedulous
Yeah, it would be great if expose will run on older hardware (such as the cube). Anyone have insight into this?

It runs on my iBook 800, so I expect that it will work on a Cube.

 

[whooleytoo]

Originally posted by slowtreme
BeOS has a feature Similar to Piles.

You set a "folder" to have certain attributes. them that folder really just becomes a live search tool. Nothing is in a Pile but shortcuts to the actual files that you have defined as a set.

Yup, Copland had these too, though I'm not sure which came first.
As someone else pointed out, it's very similar to iTunes dynamic playlists.

Speaking of which, one thing I'm pleased to see is the consistency across Mac apps now; iPhoto, iTunes, even the new Finder are similar in appearance and function.

Mike.