Finally discovered why people don't like column view

[jr5]

I bought Supercharge, and it’s great! The Finder column view auto-width function doesn’t work 100% of the time (it didn’t work today when I viewed Library folders, for example), but it works almost all the time. I’m using several of its other features, as well. Solid and lightweight. Highly recommended!

[neonate]

Did you try closing the window and opening up again? That seems to work for me. (but with limited testing).

[rlivingston]

Not consistently. Just tried it and it failed.

[karlnyhus]

@rlivingston

and it failed.

I continue to have much better luck than you report.

EDIT TO ADD a screenshot:

[rlivingston]

I communicated with the developer.

1. He answered, which in itself is fantastic and I am very happy to support small developers who invite feedback and respond to it.
2. The “bugs” that I have ( occasionally non-automatic expansion) are related to Apple APIs and not directly under his control so are, in this sense, unfixable by the developer.
3. He is exploring the possibility of a setting that would allow the user to choose to have a Shortcut-Key to manually rather than automatically invoke the column resizing. This is what I have achieved with the Keyboard Maestro that I shared. His solution is in beta, and I will be trying it out. The primary advantage over the use of a KM shortcut is that fact that you need not own KM or have it running.
4. The functionality that he already has — totally automatic expansion — has some attraction to me the more I use it. I don’t know where I will ultimately land. For now, I will be trying his keyboard shortcut setting to see how it works for me.

[rlivingston]

Isn’t there an example of a non-expansion in your screenshot?

[karlnyhus]

@rlivingston

example of a non-expansion in your screenshot?

Yes, I have already agreed that the automatic expansion is imperfect.

@rlivingston

The “bugs” that I have ( occasionally non-automatic expansion) are related to Apple APIs and not directly under his control so are, in this sense, unfixable by the developer.

But, to me at least, column mode is much better with the Supercharge app than without.

@rlivingston

… allow the user to choose to have a Shortcut-Key to manually rather than automatically invoke the column resizing

This seems like an improvement over Apple’s way of having to click at the bottom of column divider and select “Right size columns individually.”

[rlivingston]

@karlnyhus

But, to me at least, column mode is much better with the Supercharge app than without.

Agree.

But it would still be nice if Apple would take this on and make it a little more powerful. As the app sits currently, it usually works in the FInder. It would be nice if it would also worked in Open and Save Dialogs, but I suspect that it is not possible for a third party to include this functionality as well.