8581 OS X offers some cool optional features for displaying icons and file information in the Finder.

One neat wrinkle in OS X that didn't obtain in the old Classic Mac OS is that you can specify icon display sizes in individual Finder windows. Just open a window, press Command > J or use the View Menu to summon the View Optons dialog, and adjust the Icon Size slider to the desired magnitude of icon display. You can have this preference apply to all windows, or just the one you're in.

While you're in the View Options dialog, you can also specify whether the text appears at the bottom or to the right of the icon, that file info be displayed in each file's text field, along with a thumbnail preview. With folder icons, the number of icons in each folder will be shown. On volume icons, the remaining free space will also be indicated. With QuickTime movie icons, the runtime will be displayed.

And last but not least, if you click "Show Icon Preview," generic graphics document icons will be replaced with cool little thumbnail preview renderings of the picture if the item is an image file. Very useful when you're rooting around in a large folder of images for the one you want.


Charles W. Moore

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