Finder Renaming Issues
My roommate Daniel has found another bug with the Mac - that’s two in as many weeks. Previously he found the Dash Row / Front Board bug, where you launch both Dashboard and Front Row at the same time and you get an odd merging of the two. This time it’s a renaming issue in Finder.
When he found the bug we were on campus in different rooms. Suddenly, Dan burst in looking rather shocked before brandishing his PowerBook into my face and saying “Look!” repeatedly. He had tried to rename a file he was working on however the renaming box had appeared on his desktop rather than in the Finder window. I quickly tried to repeat the bug on my machine — and it worked.
This can’t be a new bug, it’s just that I’ve never heard of or seen it before so I thought I’d give it a mention. As a picture is worth a thousand words, here are some to try and further explain the issue:
Let’s start with highlighting Calculator, simply clicking on the application to do this.
Now, if we scroll down so that Calculator is no longer in the Finder window and press Enter to rename it, see what happens.
In this image you can see that when trying to rename Calculator, by pressing return while it’s off the screen, the renaming box appears on the desktop.
Again with another application named Alarm Clock.
It’s an interesting little bug but as I said, it’s the first time I’ve seen it so even if it is old, I still find it odd.
Edit: Seems this only works in icon view in Finder, thanks to Jean-Francois for helping notice that.
11:06 pm
Wow!
That’s amazing.
11:36 pm
Unable to reproduce the issue here.
In icon view, nothing happens when I press enter. If I scroll back so that the icon is visible, it’s still as it was before
In list view, when I press enter, the list focus on the file and the renaming box appears.
11:41 pm
Really, Jean-Francois?
To make sure it was actually an issue I’ve tested this on both my iMac (Intel) and PowerBook (PowerPC) and got the same results. I wonder what’s wrong here then.
In list view, the focus jumps back to the file and the renaming box appears for me too - so there’s no issues here.
Definitely odd if you can’t replicate it though! Try again but only scroll the item *just* off the Finder window (and make sure the Finder window is in the middle of the screen, so you can see above it) and then press enter. It could be that you scrolled too far and the item you were highlighting would appear off the screen (if that makes sense).
I’d be interested to know the results and if anyone else can actually replicate this.
11:47 pm
Ahhh, works now!
You have to scroll the finder so that the selected file is still “inside” your screen. The file renaming box will appear at the same place the icon has moved outside of the icon list. (I hope that makes any sense!)
Nice bug, I wonder why this is happening. It would appear as if the finder was full-screen even though it can visually be represented inside a window.
JF
2:25 am
[...] found an oddity with the Finder in Mac OS X the other day [...]
5:22 am
Hmm, same thing here. Good work to notice that!