It’s the sincere hope of many a pro Mac user that the next version of OS X (10.5 Leopard) will herald an all new Finder.  The reasons for this vitriol are too numerous and esoteric to go into here but suffice to say it spawned the acronym FTFF (Fix The Fucking Finder).  That said, until that hollowed day we still have to use it and there are a couple of tricks worth talking about.

Finder windows can display three different views; Icon, List and Column.  Icon and List view are familiar to most people from earlier Mac systems and Windows.  List view is great for finding the most recent version of a file by clicking on the Date Modified column to sort by that parameter.  The really interesting view is Columns.  In this view you can see the path of folders from the root level (Hard Drive) to the one you are in.

From left to right, each folder shows it’s contents in the column to the right.  If you select a file or an application you get information displayed to the right.  In fact, if it’s a picture, text or PDF you can see a thumbnail sample of it and if it’s an audio or video file you can actually play it.  Double clicking on the info image launches it, app or file.

The way I use this is I create two column view windows as wide as my screen, tiled one over the other.  This way I can navigate to two different folders and drag and drop files between them.  I will occasionally generate additional windows if I don’t want to lose my place in my main two but otherwise stick with the two.  If you want to see a particular folder in a different view without losing your column layout you can hold in the Command Key and double click on it to spawn a new window.  This view works best when you use Spirited Away or some similar program to hid the Finder when you’re not using it.

Last, you can set the default window size and appearance fairly easily by spawning a fresh window (Command + N or from the File menu) setting it’s view (Icons, List or Columns) and it’s size and then closing it without having clicked on any files or folders.  Then when you create a new window it will match that every time.