Panther network connectivity (long)

[John Crane]

On Nov 22, 2003, at 6:46 AM, PowerBook G4 Titanium List wrote:
> Once you have a share mounted, you can simply drag it to the Dock, or
> to the "startup items" section in the System Prefs under your account
> information.  It will then let you either single click it to mount from
> the Dock, or auto-mount on login.

Thank you for the input. but...

It appears, at least, the way Jaguar accomplishes/displays network 
activity vs. the way Panther does represents a significant change. I'm 
also beginning to think there's something wrong with the way my network 
settings are shown on the Powerbook under Panther. I've deleted 
NetworkInterfaces.plist with no noticeable effect.

Jaguar network connectivity:
1. In Jaguar, at the Finder, when you select Go/Connect to Server, I 
get the window that says: Choose a server from the list or enter a 
server address," and all of my servers are shown as blue globes in the 
left pane.
2. When I click one, it shows me the shares available in that 
workgroup. The available shares are not aliases, but disk images. 3. 
When I follow through with connecting to one, the disk image mounts on 
the desktop and life is good. I am not, however, able to drag this to 
the Dock and alias it. The mounted disk image shows in the left pane as 
it should, and it's just like working off another disk.

Panther network connectivity:
When I attempt the same thing using Panther, it's a completely 
different world:
1. When I click on Go/Connect to Server (Cmd-K) I get a similar window 
as in Jaguar, but no drop-down with "At:" prefacing it, only 1 shown 
pane (as opposed to 2 in Jaguar), and most importantly, no available 
servers to connect to. In other words, it doesn't seem to "go out and 
look for" available computers to connect to. Clicking the browse button 
opens a new, brushed Finder window with Network selected in the 
left-most pane, and the available network workgroup options shown in 
icon view in the right pane. I switch to panes view and click a 
Workgroup.
2. This opens a new pane which shows me an alias of the machine's name 
within that workgroup. In other words, I could have done this to begin 
with-I didn't have to use the Go/Connect to server menu drop-down.
3. I connect (same, wrong user name with password empty, despite the 
fact I've asked Keychain to remember it).
4. I'm shown aliases of all available shared drives on the remote 
machine. The aliases stop, and turn into actual files when I click on 
the shared drive's name (and expose its contents).
5. No disk images mount in the left-most pane of the Finder window, 
(despite the fact I have the Pane preference checked to do this), nor 
on the desktop ala Jaguar.

More Panther constructive criticisms:
Also, I don't like the way when you click on the Trash to see what's in 
the trash can, you get a pane in what looks like just another finder 
window, with no visual cue that you're actually looking into the trash 
can other than the black text atop the window. It could be an interface 
improvement to add the trash can as an option in the sidebar. If we're 
being trained to use the brushed metal finder window using the visual 
cues, rounding out those visual cues with this component would be more 
consistent. In the Finder preferences I see no option to include the 
trash icon.

PowerBook 17" running os 10.3.1
Any suggestions or pointers are, as always, appreciated.

Best regards,
John B. Crane
Principal
CraneDigital, LLC
Visual Communications for All Media
jbcrane at cranedigital.com
+1 (970) 229-1462
www.cranedigital.com

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