>Strange you should bring this topic up just now. I just sent an e-mail of >my opinions about the editorial in this months Macworld concerning the >upcoming changes in the Finder. Seems there will be a file viewer that >sounds suspiciously similar to 'Greg's Browser' that has been around for >many years. I find it much more efficient than using the Finder's folder >windows, which often cause one to loose track of where one is in the >hierarchy. But it is even more useful when combined with folder/disk >windows. Would hate to have only one way to operate! That is the crux of >the editorial.
The funny thing is that there is a reason that Greg's Browser looks like the "new Finder." And it's not likely to be what you seem to think :)
If you read Greg's Browser's docs and readme files, you'll see that he states something to the effect that he was trying to build a navigation program along the lines of the NeXTStep's file browser. This was WELL before Apple's purchase of NeXT corporation. The "New Finder" is little more than the old NeXT file browser in a MacOS Platinum shell, at least from the pictures I've seen of it on the net.
In effect, therefore, Greg's Browser is a copy of the New Finder, and not vice-versa...it's just a little name change :)
One thing that peeves me about the "New Finder" is my concept of the finder. In the current Mac, the "Finder" is fundamentally the Macintosh Window Manager, but it also interacts with the file system (HFS or HFS+) and the Mac Toolbox to direct the goings-on of the Mac. This new version based on the NeXT file browser is simply a file browser and nothing more, from what I can tell. I agree that OS X should allow Windowing, boring, and the other methods of navigating the file structure that are currently in OS 8.6.
I'll have another post in this regard in a moment.
