Path Finder

I thought the first post to this blog should be one of my personal favorite pieces of Open Source software for the mac, Path Finder. Basically this is a finder replacement. It has many of the features which I know some mac users have been crying out for, and some of which I know they are going to implement in the version of finder that is coming out with Leopard, e.g. tabbed finder windows. This software has so much more though as it can be customized for each individual user very easily. I had heard a lot of rave reviews of Path Finder before I actually demoed it, but once I had demoed it, I immediately purchased it (a mere US$34.95 which is about 17 pounds in the UK) and never looked back. I also found that I don't really use my dock anymore. Probably the best way to explain why I prefer Path Finder to finder is to list my personal top five features;

1. Apart from tabbed browsing, which anyone who has every used Firefox will know is a huge time saver, Path Finder has a feature called the 'Drop Stack' which is extremely useful when moving files around. It's a small pane where you can drag any number of files into a 'stack', then drag them back out into another tab. This eliminates the need to have more than one Path Finder window open, ever.

2. Path Finder has a built in terminal pane. This means I can quickly type in and execute any shell scripts with minimum fuss.

3. Path Finder has a built in text editor. You can also create new text and HTML files from inside of Path Finder.

4. Built in image viewer that also views PDFs. This eliminates the need to have Apples preview open or Adobe Acrobat.

5. The search facility in Path Finder is so much more powerful than spotlight. It enables you to hone your search a lot more and also add in if statements.

Try Path Finder out for yourself here - Cocoatech.com