Mac OS X: The Missing Manual, Panther Edition

List View

In windows that contain a lot of icons, the list view is a powerful weapon in the battle against chaos. It shows you a tidy table of your files’ names, dates, sizes, and so on.

You have complete control over your columns, in that you get to decide how wide they should be, which of them should appear, and in what order (except that Name is always the first column). Here’s how to master these columns:

Sorting the List

Most of the world’s list view fans like their files listed alphabetically. It’s occasionally useful, however, to view the newest files first, largest first, or whatever.

When a desktop window displays its icons in a list view, a convenient new strip of column headings appears (Figure 1-17). These column headings aren’t just signposts; they’re buttons, too. Click Name for alphabetical order, Date Modified to view newest first, Size to view largest files at the top, and so on.

Figure 1-17. You control the sorting order of a list view by clicking the column headings (top). Click a second time to reverse the sorting order (bottom). You’ll find the identical triangle—indicating the identical information —in email programs, in Sherlock (Chapter 20), and anywhere else where reversing the sorting order of the list can be useful.

It’s especially important to note the tiny, dark gray triangle that appears in the column you’ve most recently clicked. It shows you which way the ...