Finder and its Preview function

Ok, I have to admit it. Finder is my file manager of choice. And I tried many. I used Norton commander on DOS, than Windows Commander (later changed its name to Total Commander) on Windows 3.1, then I switch to Windows Explorer on Win 95 because it used a better font (I didn’t like everything in bold in TC), I tried to switch back to Total Commander a year later but went back to Explorer, then I used midnight commander in Linux terminal, Nautilus on my desktop PC and Thunar on my laptop. I even tried some exotic ones like  BumpTop, FSV and StepTree. Nowadays I use Finder and I like it a lot. I’m not sure if tabs would work for me (there is a huge fuss on the web to add tabs to Finder) in a file manager but I would give ’em a try (I use Nautilus on my desktop that has tabs but I never used them). 

One function that I really like is the quick preview (pressing a space key brings up a quick preview of a file). But there are some things that annoy me:

  • When I’m previewing images in a folder I select the first image, press the space key and then scroll down image by image with the down arrow key. It works fine if quick preview is not in full screen more. If it is in full screen then switching between images is not working anymore!!!
  • When I’m previewing a pdf document (or doc) I often want to see all pages of it and quick preview one of them. Finder allows me to switch between pages clicking on left or right arrow on the thumbnail (see the image above). It takes me some clicking to get to the desired page (be aware that this is still in Finder) and when pressing a space the first page of that document shows up instead of one I’m looking at its thumbnail in Finder.

If Finder knows all thumbnails of a document, why is not showing them all at once like in the image below (which I made quickly). I would rather scroll all pages (and see more than one page at a time) than click on the thumbnail every time I want to switch page. And selecting one thumbnail page could preview it as well.

But I agree to what you are going to say – use the "real" Preview app. I use real Preview to do what I just described with documents. And I use Sequential to scroll images in full screen mode. But every one has their own ways of doing things. That’s what makes us unique. And nonetheless I would expect to be able to switch between quick previewed images in full screen mode as well and quick preview a page that I’m looking at in the thumbnail.

Edit 2. 6. 2011: I just realized that quick preview show what it is selected – this is the icon in a list of files (left side of the above image). Even if the thumbnail on the right is for example on the page 8, the icon thumbnail of the file on the left is still on the first page. And that is what quick preview shows.