What does this mean in Finder windows?

[freeradical]

10.6.8

I see this question mark in every finder window. I never noticed it before.




When I click on it, I see this:

[M A V I C]

It means you had something you dragged and dropped there, but it's no longer there. You can probably command click on it and drag it off.

[freeradical]

Thanks!

[jdc]

I keep apps in mine, just drag and drop. But you can put just about anything you want there -- files, scripts, folders, etc

[freeradical]

jdc wrote:
I keep apps in mine, just drag and drop. But you can put just about anything you want there -- files, scripts, folders, etc

Hmm, I've never intentionally put something there. That's interesting. Does this work like the old desktop icons where you could drop a file on an icon and an action occurs?

[gabester]

freeradical wrote:
[quote=jdc]
I keep apps in mine, just drag and drop. But you can put just about anything you want there -- files, scripts, folders, etc

Hmm, I've never intentionally put something there. That's interesting. Does this work like the old desktop icons where you could drop a file on an icon and an action occurs?
In practice it should; I've had just enough problems trying to do that and ending up putting the item I'm trying to drag and drop onto one of the Finder Window icons ending up as another Finder Window icon that I've generally given up and prefer to put things that important in the Dock where they will also be spatially consistent so I can rely more on muscle memory. (Because Finder Windows are always moving around my screen... The benefit of being in-window is it can be a much shorter drag path.)

[Speedy]

freeradical wrote: Hmm, I've never intentionally put something there.

My wife says the same. She accidentally drops things there. The "?" Appears because the item probably got trashed.

[GGD]

Speedy wrote:
[quote=freeradical]Hmm, I've never intentionally put something there.

My wife says the same. She accidentally drops things there.
I thought "I fell on it" was the usual excuse.

[jdc]

Problem with the dock is that its ever changing depending on how many apps you have open, or windows minimized. its not intuitive at all.

I suppose I could put *every* app in the dock, but I dont use them all regularly.

Im still a big fan of Dragthing, which is what the dock wants to be when it grows up -- but in my last nuke and pave I just didnt reinstall it.

Working files are in a finder window, so shorter to drag from the Finder window to the top of the finder than to the dock.

Not shown in my screen shot, but I also have Mail up there -- works just like the dock -- drag and drop.

[gabester]

jdc wrote:
Problem with the dock is that its ever changing depending on how many apps you have open, or windows minimized. its not intuitive at all.

Silly me... For the most part my uses are browsers, mail, textedit/textwrangler, IM, preview, a productivity suite. I rarely try out new apps; as a result, my Dock's app side is fairly constant and I keep my doc at a fairly small pixel icon size so it doesn't move around much; usually I have about as many minimized docs in my workflow as apps, so it's balanced. I put the apps and the folders I want to drag and drop to most at the divider, so they're usually in the middle of the screen.

I've heard DragThing is great; after running and efficient and customized Mac for years however, I'd decided to stay as vanilla as possible in terms of system enhancements going forward since I never can be sure which machine I might be using.