Panther is Installed

It's really nice. It's fast in a snappy responsive sense ...and in the productive better computer using sense too. With each new version of OS X (10.1, 10.2, and now 10.3) Apple has constantly managed to address some of the biggest problems/annoyances I find.

This time around, the new Finder perfectly solves a constant problem of quickly jumping between often used folders. Previously, I'd put aliases to these folders on the dock (the lack of small icons and the horizontal nature of 10.2's Finder toolbar made it impossible to fit them all there). This was fast... But I don't want to keep track of whether or not I've already opened folder x.... Or worse, If I've clicked away from the desired target after opening it. At various points throughout the day I'd have to stop what I was doing, close everything, and start fresh. Now, with 10.3's roomy sidebar (and the old favorite Spring Loaded Folders), I can use a single Finder window to jump back and forth between everything I need.

Another regular annoyance, has been keeping track of open windows. Minimizing to the dock is good in theory... But in practice it a) involves too much extra clicking and b) my dock is too small to quickly tell one BBEdit window from another (I don't think it could ever be big enough). Expose solves this problem beautifully. A quick tap of F9 and every open windows scales to fit on the screen, with no overlap. Hitting F10 does the same, but for the current application's windows only. I've set the same options up for the never used click action on my mouse's scroll wheel (The Mouse and Keyboard Preference Pane natively supports creating these bindings). Now I can quickly switch between windows or just get a view of what I've got going on, without lifting my hands from the keyboard or the mouse.

Thanks Apple.

(BTW: So far, there's been no sign of Mr. Twitty)