Re: [Usability] The New File Selector

[Gregory Merchan <merchan phys lsu edu>]

On Wed, Mar 10, 2004 at 09:33:16PM -0700, Ryan McDougall wrote:
> On Wed, 2004-03-10 at 21:19 +0100, gabor wrote:
> [snip]
> 
> > and when someone writes, that he misses the textfield, because he can
> > work faster with that (btw. i think everyone agrees that you can find a
> > file faster with a text entry + tab completion, if you're looking for a
> > filename (and not a thumbnail picture)),
> 
> No one disagrees that for some users, and some file systems, text entry
> is was faster than constant clicking. Just because the text entry is one
> extra keystroke away doesn't mean its "bad" UI, or some stupid designer
> actually thinks anything command line is evil.

If you'll look at the bottom of this page:

  http://www.gnome.org/~seth/filechooser-spec/tasks.html
  
you'll see under "Deferred" that the file list will have "typeahead".
In other words, you'll be able to type to jump to matching filenames.
(I presume that this will be always on.) Once that is implemented, and
maybe it has been in CVS HEAD, there should be fewer keystrokes than
there would be with "text entry + tab completion".

Also, if you're using the last version I compiled, you may have been
distressed by focus starting about 5 tabs away from the file list.
If I understand the ChangeLog correctly, this has been fixed.


Cheers,
Greg