TUAW Tip: "Right Sizing" in the Open Dialog

A few weeks back, Dave Caolo wrote about double-clicking the pipes at the bottom of Finder's column view to automatically resize a column to accommodate long file names. This feature isn't just in Finder. You might be surprised to learn that the Open File dialog supports "right sizing" and it does so far better than Finder browser windows.

To switch to column view in the Open dialog, click the column icon, just to the left of the location pop-up.

As in Finder, you can double-click the double-pipe to right-size the selected column.

Alternatively, right-click (control-click) the double-pipe to open a contextual pop-up menu (shown above) that allows you to choose from several options. Select right-sizing the selected column (as if you'd double-clicked the double-pipe), right-sizing all columns individually (each column sizes to its longest element), and right-sizing all columns equally (each column sizes to match the right-sizing of the current column). I'm not sure why Apple built this behavior into the Open dialog and not into Finder windows. It's certainly useful. Perhaps it will make it into Leopard.

Update: A few more tips, courtesy of our fabulous readers:

* In Finder, Option-Drag the pipes to resize all columns at once. Option-Double-Click the pipes to "Right Size all Columns equally"

* Option+doubleclicking will 'right size' all the columns, not just the root one.

* This menu appears to be a Cocoa-only feature, which is why it doesn't work in iTunes, Finder, Office or Adobe apps.