Filed under: Tips and tricks, Mac 101
Mac 101: Dragging onto the Open dialog
These days, people do a lot of uploading to the Internet. Whether you're adding videos to YouTube, or sending pictures to your favorite hosting site, OS X offers a simple feature that really helps you locate your files. Although you can't drag and drop onto Internet sites, you can drag and drop files onto the Open dialog. The dialog automatically updates to the proper folder, saving you some navigating time by quickly getting you to the right place. Then it's just a matter of click your upload button to get things going. Give it a try. You may be surprised by the effort it saves you, particularly if you do a lot of uploads to websites and weblogs.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
E-Rock said 12:47PM on 4-25-2007
sweet tip! i can remember all the times that i've lost a file that i've wanted to upload and had to go searching for it
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ThunkDifferent.com said 12:46PM on 4-25-2007
Useful. i was wondering how big a file you can drop and drag, or is it like most systems on a mac, simply drop and drag for everything?
http://ThunkDifferent.com
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russell said 1:02PM on 4-25-2007
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.
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Scott said 1:13PM on 4-25-2007
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.
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Guy Bike said 1:24PM on 4-25-2007
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.
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Adrian vG said 1:27PM on 4-25-2007
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.
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Guy Bike said 1:28PM on 4-25-2007
Pardon me, I meant to say dragdropupload, not DragdeGo.
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thebimbo said 1:49PM on 4-25-2007
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
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Adrian said 1:54PM on 4-25-2007
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. :)
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itchytooth said 2:02PM on 4-25-2007
I'm with Adrian. It should select the file too, not just navigate to the folder.
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Jon said 7:10PM on 4-25-2007
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...
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Somez said 2:16AM on 4-26-2007
Hold down alt while drag n dropping into the upload dialog, and violá the file is selected!
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