1. The iTunes Look & Feel
When iTunes 7 was released, along came another new interface. However, this time there had been a lot more thought put in. There were new widgets, new colors, and a distinct lack of “Aqua”.
My personal opinion, and that of many Mac enthusiasts, is this will start the transition. A transition away from the jelly bean, “reflections everywhere” look and feel that has been with OS X since day one. I think we will see this look and feel (or at least some sort of variation of it) across the board in Leopard.
2. Tabs Tabs Tabs
Tabs are something that Finder has been crying out for for a long time. When tabs exploded onto the browser scene a few years back, people took time to adjust to having multiple layers in one window. I think most people now find it hard to live without them. Tabs help stop window clutter and make it simple to see all of the locations you have open at one time.
I think Apple would be crazy to leave tabs out of a new Finder application.
3. Bread-crumb Navigation
This is something I would personally love to see. A Finder bread-crumb would represent a history of where you’ve been, rather than just a simple folder hierarchy. This would tie in nicely to the back and forward buttons, but also allow you the freedom of jumping to any point in the history. This may well break interface guidelines however, as it differs from the way it works in iTunes, so it’s probably a long shot.
4. Multi Views
Smart folders are great, I make them, use them for five minutes, and then forget about them.
What if Apple came up with some pre-made smart folders that would appear in a section at the top of each finder window? Most of the time I’m opening finder if get hold of a file I’ve edited pretty recently. If Finder presented me with my last five edited files, this would be a big time saver.
Apple could create other options such as “files with a red color label” or “files less than 5mb”. All this functionality already exists through smart folders. I’m just making it more useful for the average user.
5. Smart Folder / Burn Folder Button
Following on from before, smart folders and burn folders are hidden up in the “File” menu. Why not bring this into view by using a “cog” button on the main finder window?
6. New Folder Icons
Along with the new look and feel, I think we will see new folder icons. The current ones are very “pinstriped” and look dated. Maybe we will see folder icons along the same style as the new Adobe CS3 folder icons?
What are you thoughts on a new Finder?
You know, it’s something I haven’t previously given much thought to, but you propose some solid ideas. I like that they don’t radically change anything that we’re already used to, and simply incorporate things we already know from common apps like iTunes. In all honesty, I’ve been apathetic about Leopard… but if it brings smart thinking like your suggestions, I’m beginning to get excited about it.
Hey, I think you’ve done a very decent mockup. It’s actually the only somewhat realistic and logical mockup of the Finder interface I have seen to date. Some of your suggestions are also quite clever, although I don’t know if they will make it into Leopard – like you said. The folder icons are a bit non-Mac, though
Hey!
Lovely Finder window! I really hope it looks something like that.
But in the meantime. Do you know a utility which makes tabs in the finder possible?
Ola.
Great design. Well done!
[quote]This is something I would personally love to see. A Finder bread-crumb would represent a history of where you’ve been, rather than just a simple folder hierarchy. This would tie in nicely to the back and forward buttons, [/quote]
Noooo! That would be terrible. The back and forward buttons are for history purposes, a breadcrumb navigation symbolises hierarchy. Why turn the breadcrumb navigation into something inconsistent and redundant?
In every application, including iTunes and several websites, it represents how deep you are in the hierarchy.
Further, if it would represent history navigation, it wouldn’t be very handy to drop files onto.
With a “real” breadcrumb navigation I can imagine it would be easy to drop files onto parent folders by releasing it somewhere on the breadcrumb navigation bar.
I want spatial navigation… Tabs are for web browsers.
You weren’t too far off
Wow… so close! To be honest, I like yours better! Tabs would rock my socks. (And of course, your sidebar is so much prettier.) Kudos, on an awesome, useful-looking mockup, and for almost nailing the real Leopard finder! Hopefully 10.6 looks just like yours.
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What I need for apple to do is to add ‘sort by date added’ to finder windows. I can sort stacks so that most recently added to the folder items are at the bottom, but not finder windows.
The leopard finder does have breadcrumb navigation… Go to the finder, click the View menu, then click “show path bar”…
Or if you want a really killer feature, just control/right click on the finders windows Title
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