Product Reviews

Despite the improved Finder in Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther), users can still better it with Path Finder, the third version of which has just been released by CocoaTech.

The first thing you'll notice about version 3 is that it resembles the Panther Finder: it's clad in Apple's new brushed stainless steel livery. However, Path Finder also gives you the option to revert to the Aqua look if stainless steel isn't your bag.

Look on the left and you'll see the Shelf. This is where you store regularly-used files and folders and can access them with a single click, similar to Panther's 'Places' feature. Path Finder's implementation, however, goes a bit further: you can have multiple shelves so you can keep files and folders together related to their area of use. Shelves are swapped via a simple drop-down menu, and there's also a ready-made Shelf that contains the contents of your application folder. You might expect to find all your mounted disks in this Shelf, as in Panther, but they now appear in a separate slide-out tray along with Processes - all your running applications. This tray also contains a Trash icon for easy deletion of files - no more hunting around for Trash on your desktop, although if you want it, that capability is there too. Yes, Path Finder still gives you the option of restoring all those old Mac OS 9 features, like striping in Column and List views to aid readability, Labels, and also the Application menu and desktop Trash baskets, should you desire them. The older Shelf across the top of the browser window is still there, and it has been enhanced by the Documents button, which gives you instant, pop-out access to your Documents folder, and the Actions button, which gives the same list of options as a contextual menu for the currently selected item. And what options. As well as the standard Apple commands

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there are the useful Move To... and Copy To... and the ability to compress and decompress items in the Browser window, using the UNIX 'tar.gz' format. These items can then be widely distributed across most platforms.

Left on the Shelf

Immediately above the Shelf is another small, unassuming space called the Drop Stack. It may not look like much, but you'll be glad it's there. The Drop Stack simply allows you to pause file dragging operations. Drag a file or folder from its original location to the Drop Stack, then navigate to the destination location and drag the file off the Drop Stack. Simple, elegant and efficient. This also means that you can gather together files from multiple locations and send them off to a single destination much more easily than with Apple's Finder. Option-dragging to the Drop Stack will also copy the selected file. It's so brilliantly simple, you have to wonder why it's not present in Apple's own Finder.

Path Finder also uses slide-out trays for other functions. Previews of documents and folders reside in the Preview tray. However, because this is separate from the main Browser window you don't get that annoying feature of Apple's Finder where the Icon preview jumps under your mouse pointer when you're trying to double-click the original icon. The Preview tray also gives more information about a file or folder than Apple's Finder, and of course it gives full playback of QuickTime videos and viewing of PDF files. Speaking of PDFs, Path Finder 3 features a built-in PDF viewer. Why, you may ask? Well, it's more convenient than launching Acrobat Reader or Preview if you just want to view or print a PDF. Path Finder can be made the default application for opening PDFs or Acrobat or Preview can be chosen on-the-fly when opening a file via the 'Open With...' menu. There's also a text editor and basic image editor.

The only feature of the new Panther Finder that Path Finder doesn't have is 'live' searching, as found in iTunes and Mail. This feature will be implemented soon, according to CocoaTech, but at least Path Finder displays its results intelligently using the 'Path Navigator' (a strip that shows the path to the current item which allows easy 'snapping back' to any point in the path). If there's any criticism, it's that Path Finder can run slowly on older Macs. Other than that, we've said it before and we'll say it again: Path Finder is the Finder for grown-ups.