Dr. Mac's OS X Tip-of-the-Day 
Dr. Mac - Kiss Chris For This...
By Bob LeVitus
Pre-Jag it was easy to have a Trash can in your Finder toolbar. In
those days, all you had to do was drag the proxy icon -- the little
tiny Trash icon in the titlebar of the open Trash window -- onto the
Toolbar of any Finder window. From then on, to trash a file you need
only drag it to the trash icon in the toolbar of any window. Slick.
Alas, Apple didn't sanction such behavior and as is their wont,
stripped it out of Jaguar.
Now I like that particular "hack" and was royally ticked off when I
discovered it had fallen victim to Avi's OS. But I've been looking
around, and asking around, and until yesterday could not for the life
of me figure out a way to do it in Jaguar.
But yesterday, the December issue of Macworld arrived. In addition to a
fabulous illustration of Sal "Dr. AppleScript" Soghoian pulling an
AppleScript out of a hat, and the Amazing AppleScript article, (penned
by Sal and almost certainly the best introduction to AppleScript I've
ever read), Chris Breen had the answer in his Mac 911 column.
According to Chris, to get the same effect in Jaguar, you need to use
the Finder's Find command (File: Find or Command-F). Search your boot
disk for items whose name contains "Trash" and are invisible. You'll
see several .Trash entries in the upper half of the Search Results
window; select the one that displays a small Trash icon in the lower
half of the window when selected.
According to Chris and confirmed by moi, the correct little Trash icon
will stand alone in the lower half, and not show any path to a folder
higher up in the hierarchy.
Once you figure out which .Trash folder in the upper half is the right
one, drag it onto the Toolbar.
That's it.
There is one more thing... it won't display a Trash icon, just a
generic folder icon named .Trash. And even if you change the icon (or
name), if you log out and in, you'll find that it has transmogrified
into a folder named .Trash again.
Still, I'd rather have a generic folder named .Trash in my Toolbar than
none.
Like fine cheese, Chris Breen just gets better and better with age.
Thanks, Chris.
To discuss this tip (or anything you like) in Dr. Mac's OSXFAQ Forum, click
here:
http://forums.osxfaq.com/viewtopic.php?t=3472
Bob LeVitus is a leading authority on Mac OS and the author of 39 books,
including Mac OS X For Dummies and The Little iTunes Book.
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