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Comment by mjcl | Hacker News Reader

I really miss the System 7 Finder, the 'spatial' nature[1] really clicked with me and other file browsers still sort of bug me because of that.

[1] http://archive.arstechnica.com/paedia/f/finder/finder-3.htm

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Nautilus (GNOME Files) used to have a spatial mode, I was rather perturbed when they didn't bring it forward for GNOME 3. Obviously Apple killed the spatial finder with OS X, though it's always had the quasi-spatial mode with the pill button (remember that? I'm a little miffed about that one too, especially now that they've gotten rid of the dedicated full screen button that gave it the boot to make me hold Option every time I want to zoom a window instead of full screening it).

You can still enable the spatial mode by hiding the toolbar via the "View" menu

Or command-option-T.

Unfortunately the browser view has a habit of coming back - when you connect to a new network drive, or insert a USB stick, or just randomly. If there were a defaults bool I could set to turn it off forever, that'd be wonderful.

But unfortunately you then lose the actually-somewhat-useful sidebar.

It makes sense to me that the sidebar is incompatible with spatial browsing. It changes the size/shape of the window, and the items there are a list of aliases that don't exist in that space.

You make a good point, and I don't disagree. But it does come in handy occasionally.

Fun fact: Nautilus was written by a company founded by Andy Hertzfeld and many of the initial employees were also alums from Apple's original Macintosh team.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eazel

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