<b>Mac OS 8 selection glitch annoys readers

Several readers have now written to me with this problem. Here is Robert Hammen's description of the issue:

Suppose you are trying to merge the contents of two folders (maybe these are two different Extensions folders, one "previous" and one new). You put the two windows "side-by-side" and begin to select items from the "old" folder to be moved over to the "new" (using the "new folder as a reference for what not to copy). The "old" folder is the active window. In Finder 7.x, you could click inside the scroll bar of a different window (i.e. the "new" window) to make it temporarily active, scroll down (page down), and then click back on the scroll bar/title bar of the other window, and still retain your Finder selections. This feature is gone in Mac OS 8.

Update: A reader replies: "I share to some extent the reader's annoyance with this "bug." However, it is obviated by a new feature in OS 8. In previous systems, if you wanted to drag items into a folder in a different window - and that folder was not visible in the window, you were forced to temporarily switch windows in order to make the target folder visible. Under OS 8, you can now drag files down to the bottom of the target window, causing the window to scroll down until your target folder is visible)."