Comments on: Go To Folder

By: Michael Tsai's Weblog

Michael Tsai's Weblog — Thu, 04 Dec 2003 19:08:21 +0000

Open and Save in Panther

Eric Blair mentions that there’s a hidden Go To Folder command in Panther’s file choosing dialogs. It’s activated with Command-Shift-G, just like in the Finder. This came in handy a few weeks ago when I was explaining to a customer h...

By: Eric Blair

Eric Blair — Wed, 26 Nov 2003 07:20:56 +0000

Justin,

I'm seeing a sheet in the open panel (where the open panel is a modal dialog). I'm seeing a model dialog in the save panel (where the save panel is a sheet attached to the associated window).

By: Justin Williams

Justin Williams — Wed, 26 Nov 2003 06:32:12 +0000

You sure about safari using a sheet? I get the modal dialog on every app I have tested this on (except mail).

neat feature though. Muchas gracias for pointing it out.

By: Eric Blair

Eric Blair — Wed, 26 Nov 2003 06:06:13 +0000

Michael, my love for Apple varies on a day-to-day basis. Sometime, hour-to-hour even

I have to say that’s an interesting decision on Apple’s part. I’m not sure how I feel about a single key press triggering the opening of a panel while a text field has focus. Granted, most people aren’t going to type a ‘~’ or ‘/’ as the first character in their file name, but I don’t like the precedent.

By: Michael McCracken

Michael McCracken — Wed, 26 Nov 2003 05:47:49 +0000

Another way to get the path dialog/sheet to show up: start typing the path. If you type the characters '/' or '~', it guesses you want to type a path and throws up that path field.

I tried that on pure blind hope, and it worked just like I wanted. Don't you love Apple?

By: Chris Hanson

Chris Hanson — Wed, 26 Nov 2003 04:33:03 +0000

Actually, there's only one implementation of the standard Open panel and one implementation of the standard Save panel. Each implementation can be used as either a sheet or as a modal dialog, depending on the needs of the application. It's not a Carbon vs. Cocoa thing.

Essentially, it requires little work to bring up an application-modal dialog in either Carbon or Cocoa. The reason is that it blocks your entire application while it's up. However, a sheet is document-modal, which means while it's up you have to be able to handle actions across the rest of your application's human interface too. Some applications are easier to support this in than others.

Oh, for a sheet you also have to specify which window you want it attached to. That's not always reasonable, particularly in pro-level applications (Final Cut Pro for example) that may open a number of different windows for any open "document" where none of them are really "the document."