Mac 101: Dragging onto the Open dialog

Hold down alt while drag n dropping into the upload dialog, and violá the file is selected!

I like that it does that, I have used it for years also.
But it behaves a little weird sometimes. As Adrian pointed out it does select the file also if you make it. But it sometimes selects it even on the first drag (no, I'm not in the Folder already) - and what is also very confusing is the little green plus you get (the copying sign) when just draggin in there. I always wonder why it does that when it's not copying something...

I'm with Adrian. It should select the file too, not just navigate to the folder.

If you've ever tried to do this in Windows, then you propably noticed that windows does support drag and drop to the open dialog but instead of selecting the dropped file, the open dialog acts as a explorer window and you end up copying the file to wherever you are with the open dialog.

Annoys me every time and I wonder who actually needs this behaviour that way. :)

Folks, you could instead try Default Folder which makes this type of action even easier as you just run your mouse over a Finder window and click to select that folder... Plus you can set a default folder for an app etc. etc.

http://www.stclairsw.com/DefaultFolderX/index.html
http://macupdate.com/info.php/id/7214/default-folder-x

Pardon me, I meant to say dragdropupload, not DragdeGo.

If you first drag&drop a file, the folder it resides in will be seleted, if you drag&rop again, the file itself will be selected too.

Thi is pretty dumb since it should'ave been selected in th first place.

Unfortunately, the article is incorrect.

"Although you can't drag and drop onto Internet sites"

You CAN drag and drop to internet sites.
Use Firefox and install the DragdeGo extension.
Now you can just drag a file directly over an upload link in a web page.

A related tip to this: you can switch the Open or Save dialog to any folder just by dragging the folder alias (in the title bar of another window) into it. For example, you've got a Finder window open showing the "Stuff" folder. You're in an app, and you do a save or open, and it's pointing to your desktop, a different folder, or a whole different drive. Just grab the tiny icon for "Stuff" from the title bar of the Finder window and drag it into the file list area of your save or open dialog box. Poof, you're there, without any navigating at all. I use this daily.

Use this all the time. You can do a lot during a file drag, my favorite drag and drop trick is hitting command-tab or expose while dragging a file. While holding the mouse button down you can also command-` to switch app windows.