A reader who wishes to remain nameless forwarded these links to screenshots of the new Panther Finder, noting that apparently the new OS has the option to display the new side toolbar look or not:
If his surmise is correct, aas it seems to be, that’s good news. However, that “brushed metal” look is going to be awfully hard to take on every window. It’s bad enough have your eyeballs assaulted by it iSafari, QuickTime, and the iApps. Ug-leeeeeee!
Fortunately, there may be a solution to that.
Another anonymous reader writes:
Mad at platinum in Panther?
Someone mentioned in a previous Odyssey they didn’t like the Platinum look of Panther, and others are frustrated on some websites that there are supposedly no themes for Jaguar or Panther. I want to dispell both problems at once.
With it, you will be able to alter the theme of any part of the Finder and other applications. Chances are Panther compatible themes will come from this site shortly after Panther is released.
So don’t panic, you can even make the Mac look like Mac OS 7 or 9, or even Windows XP if you so desire when it comes to the look of the windows on Mac OS X.
A word of caution, revert back to the operating system default theme before upgrading the operating system as it may cause serious problems if you don’t.
Sincerely,
anonymous
Thanks, A.
That’s a relief
And Rob Hiller writes:
If Jaguar is anything to go by then I expect that the ‘places’ list on the left of the new Finder windows is optional, on by default, but optional. In Jaguar you can set the finder & desktop to behave pretty close to OS9, which is how I set it up at first, but after a while you realise that there are times when column view works best, just like icon or list views work for different folders in OS9, just 1 more choice. Same goes for the 1 window idea, which is my default setting now, holding down the command key will create another window when needed, my only gripe is that it doesn’t automatically resize to fit the new contents.
Looking at the Panther screen shots it seems they’ve just moved the icons from the toolbar to a collapsable side window, seeing that I only use the ‘back’ & search box that’s fine with me and if there’s something still wrong I can always grab a Haxie to fix it, its a Mac, stop worrying.
dD
Hope You’re right, Rob.
And from Jeremy Zimmerman:
I don’t know about the “new” Finder in Panther. But I do know that you can get the Finder in Jaguar to behave exactly like the Finder from MacOS 9.
Just open Finder prefs and set it to open a new window each time.
You can use “command J” to set the folder sizes globally or for each window.
I have each of my Finder windows set to it’s own preference - icon or list view. Each set to my desired size and rows.
To get rid of the “toolbar” just click the button on the top right.
Aside from having the icons set “extra large” in a few windows because I like the view, it is indistinguishable from Mac OS 9 in form and function. Only slower.
Slower indeed, at least if you don't have Quartz Extreme support. Thanks for your comments, Jeremy
***
And a final note on something completely different, I have rarely used my iBook on battery power in the six months I've owned it -- never longer than for a few minutes. However, Last evening a line of thunderstorms came through here, so I unplugged the modem and the AC power adapter overnight, leaving the iBook asleep.
This morning, when I went to wake it up, it had shut down in the night, and required booting. When I checked the battery charge, it was at 43%, which seems like it should have been plenty to keep the 'Book running in sleep mode.
My second observation is that losing 57% of it's charge in eight hours sleeping is not what one would expect to say the least.
I'm wondering if any other iBook owners have experienced anything similar.
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