Show HN: My First OSS Project, Classic Finder

22 12 9 years ago

I have been working on creating a replica of the classic MacOS Finder in Cocoa/Objective-C. After about two years of hacking and doodling, I have finally gotten it to a point where I think it's worth showing.

Hope you all like it!

Apocryphon• 9 years ago

Still on 10.11, sadly, but this project looks very neat.

smashingfiasco6• 9 years ago

Ahh yes. There's nothing really groundbreaking in there (in terms of API usage), so I should probably be able to set the build to an earlier version. ... let me see! :)

neuromantik8086• 9 years ago

Can't resize windows yet, but nice start! I look forward to cluttering up my monitor with intermediate folders leading to various leaves. :)

smashingfiasco6• 9 years ago

Thanks! And yes, getting window resizing is on my list!

I have a new appreciation for how tricky it is to get even some of the most basic controls and their functions right. Basic scrolling and scrollbars felt like a hurculean achievement.

stuaxo• 9 years ago

Great work ! I wonder if this will build on any of the libraries that let you use Objective C, X-platform - maybe on GNUStep ?

smashingfiasco6• 9 years ago

Thanks! :)

I think that it would probably build mostly fine on GNUStep or Cocoatron. It's not dependent on any of the macOS UI controls - since all of them are drawn from scratch. And the APIs this is calling into... they've been around forever.

The file system operations themselves, well, they are mostly just NSTask's that hand off to the command-line programs in /bin with a few arg's attached to them. (I know, I could do some of these with NSFileManager and it'd be better, but I wanted to be consistent.)

The only hangups I can think of (for building cross platform) would be maybe some of the syntactic sugar and ARC.

e1ven• 9 years ago

I think it's a fun project!

It's obviously early, but since you've posted it, I'm guessing you're looking for feedback?

The look is great, it's a fun way to browse the FS, and once this is further along I might use it.

It looks like the menu items (Label, etc) don't work yet?

If I close the main window (/) there doesn't seem to be a way to get it back - Even if I click the app in the dock, I need to re-launch the app.

It displays apps as directories. I get this, because of the way modern apps are packaged, but something you might want to consider.

As someone else points out, it's not resizable.

You can't seem to move the icons.

It doesn't seem to remember window position. This is a big one. Part of what made the classic Finder distinctive was that metaphorically a file browser, it WAS the files.

When you open a folder in a specific spot, it should remember that spot you put it, and open there again next time. This (combined with other tricks) helped it feel like the folder WAS the files, not just a window to finding them.

The icons should work this way as well - I might want to store all my work files on the left side of the folder - Every time I open that folder, it should display them on the left again, so I know which are which.

Keyboard shortcuts and mousewheel aren't setup yet.

It's a cool project! I hope you keep going with it.

If you haven't, I'd read John Siracusa's articles on ArsTechnica - He talked a lot about the classic MacOS Finder, and what made it interesting and special.

smashingfiasco6• 9 years ago

Yes, I love the feedback!

This is a great list! I _completely_ forgot about the saved positioning of the windows.

I'm definitely going to keep working on this and fleshing it out. I'll be using your feedback as a guide! Thanks! :)

52-6F-62• 9 years ago

Haha this is fun! I want more! I guess I could find set up an emulator...

but seriously, good fun. Keep it up.

smashingfiasco6• 9 years ago

More will be coming, and I won't stop until Classic Finder reaches parity with the original. Thanks for giving it a try! :)

barlog• 9 years ago

sweeet

Show HN: My First OSS Project, Classic Finder

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