This is a really trivial DT annoyance, but it’s always bugged me and does somewhat slow down my workflow…
When creating a new group, the behavior in DT seems to be to create the new group as a peer of the currently selected group (the one highlighted). Even after years of using DT this always takes me by surprise, since pretty much every other app I’ve ever used will create the new group (or folder or whatever) as a child of the selected group/folder.
Is there some reason for this? It makes creating group hierarchies much more tedious, since the only way to create a new group as a child of an empty group is to create one as a peer and then move it into the parent. In other words, I can only create a group as a child of another group if there is something already IN that parent group that I can select: so I cannot create a child group in an empty group, but I CAN create a child group of a non-empty group. This strikes me as odd.
It would seem to me a more sensible behavior would be to create the new group as a peer if the selected item was NOT a group (e.g. a document), but to create the new group as a child if the selected item WAS a group.
If you are using a view that has disclosure triangles to reveal the contents of the groups (Split, Three Panes, etc.), then clicking the triangle or typing the right arrow key to reveal the contents of the group first, will give you the results that you want. In other words, reveal the contents of the group and then create the new group. The new group will be a child of the currently selected group.
I never realised this annoyed me - always assumed I was missing something - but now that you mention it, I too (FWIW) would welcome the expected behaviour (in the absence of there being some reason for why it does what it does currently).
The current solution is a compromise as this has been endlessly discussed & changed in the past. And each time we changed it the other crowd started to shout A future release will revise the user interface and this will fix it en passant.
korm has posted a link to a script to handle this, but what I do is create a group (Command-Shift-N) and then give this group the child name. I then ‘Group Items’ with Option-Shift-G. This creates the parent group with the first group created as a child.
Ah, nice work-around Greg, it’s certainly smoother than my manual drag+drop … great tip!
And as I said, this is just a minor annoyance, but I bet I’m not the first person to be a bit confused/surprised by this behavior (sounds like it’s been debated before!).
Interesting that there is some UI rework being done, I shall watch for the updates with great interest.
I came to the forums this morning to make this very same observation and request, only to see you beat me to it. I support this change and would love to see it in a future update.
A future release will revise the user interface and this will fix it en passant.