Re: [Usability]Nautilus tree sidebar / location field

[Reinout van Schouwen <reinout cs vu nl>]

Hello Daniel,

On 2 Aug 2002, Daniel Borgmann wrote:

> - If you have many windows open, the applet wouldn't know which window
> to open the location in. So the only sane way would be to open new
> windows all the time you type something in there.

Really? I don't think the way gnome_moz_remote works currently is insane.
When you hand it an URL it will use the last focused instance of the URL
handler (e.g.  Mozilla) to show it.

In any case, there's nothing intrinsically wrong in opening new Nautilus
views. This is a very similar issue as discussed in the thread "Nautilus
design choices redux" on the desktop-devel mailinglist. Read Michael
Toomim's post
(http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2002-July/msg00389.html).
I believe he's right in his remark that the differences between 'open in
new window' and 'open in current window' are not all that consequential.

> - It doesn't provide you an easy view of your current location in the
> window you are working in. That's IMO the more usefull feature of the
> location bar. Everyone likes to know where she is.

See my reply to Sunnanvind - the location of the last Nautilus window that
gained focus could still be showed in the applet-location bar. I'm also
assuming that the tree side pane will always highlight the current
location (bug 82884).

> - It takes time to travel from the window you are working in to the
> applet, unless you are running maximized.

1. not if you use a keyboard shortcut, 2. with the mouse, perhaps even
Fitt's Law provides an argument having the location bar on top of the
screen? Perhaps someone who knows more about Fitt's Law than I do can
comment.

> - It permanently takes valuable space on your panel, although you will
> only use it from time to time.

The same goes for all applets and launchers on the panel. In any case, I
already said in my original post that whether or not it should be showed
on the panel by default is still open for discussion.

> 1) It takes a lot of space for open windows, so you have to make them
> larger. On small resolutions this can be a real DND killer (how can you

> 2) It makes the locationbar look like something terribly important,
> which it most probably isn't.

I second both of these points. =)

thanks for your input,

-- 

Reinout van Schouwen			Artificial Intelligence student
email: reinout cs vu nl			mobile phone: +31-6-44360778
GPG public key http://www.cs.vu.nl/~reinout/reinout.asc