the main reason i put up with TotalFinder’s various quirks is because dual mode is so handy, and i use it all the time (currently with OS X 10.9.2).
however i work almost exclusively in list mode, and a frustrating flaw in the dual mode implementation is that when you link a pair of tabs in dual mode, the list view columns are not sensibly resized to fit. my workflow is: create a new (very wide) window, then add a new tab, then go into dual mode. this always results in a pair of tabs that show only the file names, with all the other attribute columns hidden. both tabs then need to be resized manually, by scrolling across and dragging the column boundary, which is very tedious when you have to do it dozens of times a day.
it would make much more sense if the columns were resized automatically to fit into the halved width so that all the originally visible attributes remain visible…
okay, i’ve realised that i can work around the non-resizing by setting the default name column width of the big wide single-tabbed Finder window to a narrower setting…
I suspect that your column width problem is actually a fairly well known Apple Finder bug and not caused by TotalFinder. I had researched the Internet a while back and found an AppleScript to readjust the width of the name column and then I modified it to readjust 2 tabs at once and restart TotalFinder. I saved it as an application and put a link to it in my sidebar for easy access. Occasionally the script refuses to change the width of the first (left) column and since my AppleScript knowledge is in it’s infancy, I haven’t debugged the problem. I hope this temporary work around helps.
-- Reset the width of the Finder's Name column to something sensible.
tell application "Finder"
set thisFolder to target of front Finder window
set the current view of front Finder window to list view
-- In previous versions of OS X, the next line would tell the Finder to set the width
-- to exactly 350. In Mavericks, the Finder uses it as a *minimum* width.
set width of column id name column of list view options of Finder window 1 to 350
set width of column id name column of list view options of Finder window 2 to 350
-- The following kludge is necessary to get the changes to "take". I got it from
-- Dr. Drang at www.leancrew.com/all-this/2013/10/quick-switch-to-big-finder-icons
close front Finder window
open thisFolder
end tell
-- Restart TotalFinder
tell application "System Events"
tell application "Finder" to activate
keystroke "u" using {command down}
end tell*
the problem i have is that TotalFinder doesn’t resize columns in list view the way the standard Finder does. in the standard Finder when a window is resized, the contents auto-resize to fit. with TotalFinder, when you resize the window manually (or change to dual mode), no resizing is done and contents become hidden…