Quick Look is a beautiful thing, and in my view practically itself worth the cost of admission to Leopard. Unfortunately, the more you get used to it, the more annoying it is when you get to a file format that Quick Look doesn't support. Fortunately, Apple was smart enough to design Quick Look with an open architecture that allows developers to write their own plugins and support more file formats, which Japanese developer Taiyo used to write two excellent plugins.
The first addresses a serious annoyance with the default Quick Look implementation on folders. If you invoke Quick Look with a folder selected in the Finder you'll get...a picture of the folder icon. Frankly, that's pretty stupid. Taiyo's Folder Quick Look Plugin fixes this by displaying the folder's contents, which is how it should have been done in the first place. Likewise, Taiyo's Zip Quick Look Plugin displays the contents of zip files.
I'm sure we'll be seeing more and more of these expansions of Quick Look in the days ahead, which will make this quintessential Leopard feature that much more useful. Both the Folder Quick Look Plugin and the Zip Quick Look Plugin are free downloads. Place them in your /Library/QuickLook/ or ~/Library/QuickLook/ folders and they should work immediately.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
11-27-2007 @ 11:21AM
SomeOtherGuy said...
There's also a QuickLook PlugIn for EPS files:
www.eternalstorms.at/utilities/epsqlplg
That's the one I'd been waiting for.
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11-27-2007 @ 11:25AM
daenney said...
They don't work immediately, you need to relaunch the Finder either by hitting Command+Option+Escape, select the Finder and click on relaunch or type in: killall Finder in a terminal
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11-27-2007 @ 11:37AM
Rhys said...
Quick Look didn't get everything that Apple initially demonstrated. Have a look at this where they preview a Keynote file, and try to do the same yourself.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ti9NehCxhDQ
You have to scroll through like a PDF.
It also has the arrows appear on the icon in Cover Flow so you can flick through the slides... but alas, try to do it... and it doesn't work. Yet it works fine with PDF and Pages docuemnts (haven't bothered to test others).
WHY DOESN'T IT WORK!?!
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11-27-2007 @ 11:43AM
Chris P. said...
WOW! Now I really am in love with QuickLook. Not until I installed this plugin did I actually appreciate the tool. Thanks TUAW & Taiyo :)
BTW, when is someone coming out with a "Spaces" desktop switcher that not only allows you change desktops, but also have all the icons on the desktop removed too, like a totally new desktop each time you move.
You could potentially have a trillion icons on the desktop (not ideal, but practical sometimes given the amount of work you're doing) Maybe Taiyo could whip up something like that too ;)
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11-27-2007 @ 11:44AM
Andrew said...
@daenney
Worked immediately for me. I really like these plug-ins and I share Rhys frustration with Keynote/PowerPoint files.
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11-27-2007 @ 11:58AM
david gregoire said...
@#3
You can flick through your keynote files if when you save them you save them with a preview.
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11-27-2007 @ 11:59AM
david gregoire said...
I've dropped them in the right folders and killed finder but still no luck
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11-27-2007 @ 11:59AM
Johnny said...
SomeOtherGuy: Thanks for the link. The EPS plugin is a thing of beauty. I've been waiting for EPS previews in OS X since its original introduction and now it's even better than I imagined with Quick Look. The folder and zip plugins are also outstanding. Now, I can't wait for an InDesign plugin.
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11-27-2007 @ 12:05PM
Hugo said...
I am anxiously waiting for a Quicklook Plug-in for Xvid Matroska Video Containers. It seems most movie files found on bittorrent these days is in this format and at least for me Quicklook won't realize its full potential until a .mkv plug-in is developed. On the VLC forum they say that such a plug-in is on their roadmap, but a lot of (in the development team’s opinion) much more pressing Leopard issues has pressed the Quicklook plug-in far down the feature list.
Quicktime with Perian Codecs stutters through High-Def Matroska Video-files with a metallic sound so going down that lane seems to mount even bigger problems, at least momentarily.
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11-27-2007 @ 12:06PM
Tyrone Rugen said...
@ Rhys, Andrew
I don't have PowerPoint, but as for Keynote, when you save a presentation you have to check the "Include preview" option. That drops a PDF of the presentation into the .key package, and now that's what you'll flip through in Quick Look, complete with thumbnails like in the video.
I've also found that my files last saved in Pages 1.0 weren't Quick Lookable, and Pages docs with lots of text boxes or tables didn't appear properly—but a re-save with "Include preview" on fixes that. Couldn't work out an Automator workflow to update all my stuff for me though. :(
And yes, since including previews means adding a PDF, it does increase the file size. I've found it to be on average 1.5x, which is perfectly acceptable.
Hope that addresses your issue. Now is there a Quick Look plug-in for .xcf?
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11-27-2007 @ 12:08PM
superC said...
@ 3 and 5
you need to save the Keynote file using the latest version of Keynote (iWork 08) to see the keynote file in QuickLook.
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11-27-2007 @ 12:45PM
bankrobber said...
non-transparent and with a plain ol' finder scrollbar?
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11-27-2007 @ 12:46PM
Ian said...
I love this -- absolutely love it. Kudos to the developers, and to TUAW for finding and bringing it to our attention.
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11-27-2007 @ 12:54PM
Jack Welde said...
There's an updated version of these plug-ins (with leopard-friendly scrollbars, etc), credited to the original developer, at http://www.szilveszter.ca/gallery-themes.shtml
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11-27-2007 @ 1:12PM
GQmacguy said...
Love this. The FLV plugin is great! I had searched everywhere the other day trying to find something like that.
Now, what would be nice is a PS brushes quickview!!!! I know quite a few people, including myself, that would pay good money for that!!
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11-27-2007 @ 1:21PM
admartinator said...
I've made a list of all know QuickLook-Plugins. Take a (quick)look at...
http://www.apfelquak.de/2007/11/26/sammelsurium-quicklook-plugins/
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11-27-2007 @ 2:14PM
Mystic said...
WoW! Great plugins!
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11-27-2007 @ 2:44PM
Xanthor said...
Loving this post. Damn, I may need to browse this way now!
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11-27-2007 @ 2:50PM
Jeff said...
Any word on getting Quick Look to stay open in the background? It seems like an obvious way to listen to music without opening itunes...
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11-27-2007 @ 3:26PM
Inge said...
I can't get these plugins to work. I've followed the instructions but nothing happens :S
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