The file list window contains a list of items which are placed there as a result any one of a number of actions. See Adding to the List for details.
Selecting and Deselecting
Click on an unselected item to select it and deselect everything else. Command-click to toggle the selection state of individual items. Shift-click to extend the selection to a range of items. Click in the left margin to deselect all items. Type Command-A to select all items. Use the Select submenu to do special selections.
Expanding Folders
Folders in the file list can be expanded by clicking the little triangles. See Expanding Folders for a detailed discussion.
The Buttons
Use Balloon Help to get a description of any individual button with the exception of the Special Popup button.
See Special Popup Menu for more details.
Key Scrolling
The file list supports key scrolling. I.e., the list scrolls to match characters you type in. Typing characters less than 2/3 of a second apart concatenates them together and looks for the string. After 2/3 second without additional characters, the string starts over.
Sorting
Clicking a file list heading sorts the list by that heading. Option-clicking a heading sorts the list in the reverse order. The heading is drawn in italics to denote the fact that sort order is reversed.
Secondary Sorts
The file list supports sorting by a second criteria. For instance, you can sort the items by name, and then sort them so items with the same name are sorted by modified date. Command-click a heading other than the current sort heading (which is underlined) to do a secondary sort.
Saving Lists
The textual contents of a file list can be saved to a tab delimited text file. Only info under visible headings is saved. The entire list can be saved, or just the selected items.
A list can also be saved to disk for recreation later. As before, the entire list can be saved, or just the selected items.
The file list has an absolute limitation of 16,000 items. However, performance may slow down before that, and there may be other considerations which I have not encoutered that impose a lower limit.
Holding down the Option key while doing anything that initiates an action to items in the list will signal File Buddy to quit or close the file list window (a preference in the Preferences dialog) after taking the action. For example, if you hold down the option key while clicking the Show button, File Buddy will quit (or close the window) after sending a show message to Finder.
