Navigating in Tracker Windows

Main Menu

Installation

System

Preferences

Applications

Demos

Development

Advanced

Related Topics
Add-Ons Desktop Shortcuts SVM Trash

OpenTracker
OpenTracker.sf.net offers free, open-source versions of Tracker and Deskbar, the two applications that power the BeOS desktop.

Navigating in Tracker Windows

Once you have a Tracker window open in front of you, you can use it to navigate or "move around" in the file system. Specifically, you can open the window's "parent" folder (ascending), or open a "child" folder (descending).

As mentioned earlier, if you hold down the Option (or Windows) key when opening a folder, the original Tracker window is replaced by the new one.

Ascending
There are three ways to open the parent folder of the Tracker window that you're currently working in:

- By choosing Open Parent from the Window menu.
- By pressing Alt+up arrow.
- By clicking the lower-left edge of the window to pop open a list that describes the "path" to your current folder, as shown below. You can open any folder from the list by clicking on it.

Descending
In addition to simply double-clicking a displayed folder, you can descend the file system--and descend it by more than one folder at a time--by using a folder's context menu. Press down the right mouse button on a folder and its context menu will pop open. What you get up when choosing the first option in the context menu, is a hierarchical folder menu. With this menu you can slide through subdirectories until you reach your destination. All of the files in the destination folder will appear, and you can select the wanted file or folder in this menu.

You can also pop open a folder's context menu by dragging and holding some other file (or folder) icon over it. While navigating the target folder's contents, you can drop the dragged icon onto a folder in the menu to move the dragged file/folder into the dropped-upon folder, or drop a dragged file onto an application icon to open the file with that app.

As you can see in the illustration above, the menus double back on themselves--and will even sprout scrollers, if necessary--to keep from spilling off the screen. For a complete list of keyboard shortcuts that you can use to navigate Tracker windows, see Shortcuts.

©2003-2004 by yellowTAB GmbH