> Though this may sound a bit snarky, I mean it as a serious inquiry: have you actually used the Finder for more than 5 minutes since 10.4?

Your comment doesn't bother me at all because you are, at the same time, sharing some tips.

> View>Show Path Bar

Yes, I've been using it for a while.

I've had "Show Path Bar" enabled for some time. It doesn't really work --dare I say-- properly. For one thing, the whole drag and drop thing is a pain. If the window you are going to is covered it takes some work to drop what you are dragging. Also, I can't drag and drop a path into another Finder window (well, I couldn't figure it out after a few attempts).

I would much, much rather have a plain textbox with the path that I can copy into the clipboard. That is far more useful in my opinion. Or at least a way to get to a plain text path, say, right-click and "Copy path to clipboard".

The closest I've gotten is a right-click->Get Info and then you can copy the "where" plain-text path. To open a new Finder window in this directory you have to use "Go to folder...". Of course, you can also drag from the path bar into the "Go to folder" dialog box to achieve the same.

I am not comparing to Windows, it's just a convenient example. You can find similar examples in various Linux GUIs and other non-Windows OS's throughout time. In Windows Vista, for example, the path is easy to copy and paste as plain text. If you need another Explorer window at this path you simply paste the path into the address bar and hit enter.

There are at least a couple of other uses cases for this. You are working in Photoshop and need to open a file in a directory that Photoshop is not currently pointing to. However, you already have that directory open in a file browser. In Windows you use the "Open..." dialog in Photoshop and simply copy and paste the plain text path into the "Open File" dialog box. Done deal. With the Path Bar in Finder you have a similar mechanism but you have to drag-and-drop, which is, well, a pain in the ass. Why? I have three 24 inch monitors. Dragging and dropping across that much real-estate gets old very, very quickly. It can actually become physically painful. I avoid drag-and-drop like the plague.

> Use list view, pick Size as a column

I've also had this for quite some time. I didn't realize I could ask it to show directory sizes, which is what really bugged me when I was working with thousands of media files. I was exploring various compression schemes and had to constantly use "Get Info". Just didn't think to look in view options. Thanks.

>> Preview pane.

>Column view has it directly. Hit space in List view for QuickLook, move the QL panel off to >the side, and continue browsing. In Icon view: View>Show View Options; check "Show icon >previews"; resize them large enough (≥48x48, IIRC) and movies can even be played inline.

Maybe I want too much: Real-time previews in list view within Finder, not in a separate window. Frankly, I don't enjoy having a million little disconnected windows all over the place. Again, think three 24 inch monitors, center, left, right and ten to twenty open windows. The fact that the menu bar doesn't stick to the application window becomes a really bad problem once you start working this way. Single screen on a small laptop, no issues whatsoever, there's only so much you can do with that surface area.

But, yeah, QuickLook is a tool I've used a few times when I had no choice.

Of course, in general, there's nothing wrong with OSX and its GUI. It's a very capable and beautiful system. No arguments there of any kind. I think you might find that lots of people who've had experience with other systems might find some of the options Apple made either difficult to use or nonsensical. You can say the same about other systems. There is no such thing as perfection. From the perspective of anyone who's only been exposed to MacOS everything makes perfect sense. There are lots of people like that. In a sense, you don't know what you are missing (or what you have gained) unless you spend a non-trivial amount of time exploring and understanding other options.

Back to the tree view...no joy I guess. Looking for a third party app that might implement this and other concepts (tabs in Finder anyone?).

Thanks again for your pointers.