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Submission details

-2 +4/-6 votes

Finder: select files with with mouse

Submitted by mojo2012 on May 19, 2009 to Annoyance

If you are using the keyboard to select files shift+arrow keys) you can't unselect files via keyboard, eg. using shift-down selects the orginal file + the file "below", but shift-up, doesn't unselect that last selected file.

Selecting with the mouse uses a different behaviour. If you click and hold down the left mouse button and then move over a file, the file get's selected. If you move the mouse back (while still holding the button), the file gets unselected. This is true for more files as well.

Either use the "select-only" mode (addition model of selection?), which allows no unselection (Finder keyboard selection mode) or use allow unselection, both with mouse and keyboard (fixed-point-selection model?, like in konquerero or dolphin) for everything (I'd prefer that).
This should be really unified in all apps!

Low

Low

Not fixed

Discussion (2 comments)

mojo2012 wrote on May 19, 2009, 11:43am

Changed solution description.

ebaur wrote on May 19, 2009, 3:23pm

I don't quite understand what the problem is. When using keyboard navigation, there is no pointer like the mouse, so the single selected file is kind of a marker as to where the focus is. As far as I know, there is always a current focus.

I just did some testing and, if you've used Shift-Arrow to select multiple files, you can actually hit ESC to deselect the files... although technically it ends up selecting the parent folder. I am usually in column mode, and that acts the same as hitting the left arrow key. I actually like this behavior.

mojo2012 wrote on May 19, 2009, 3:56pm

Well, pressing ESC to go back in collumn mode has nothing to do with this topic. Why make two different behaviours? That is the qestion.
In in keyboard mode, the first file is the "marker" and then you can just add files to the selection. In mouse mode you can add and remove.

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