Re: [Usability] New Nautilus File Exists Dialog

[Dan Zlotnikov <dzlotnik perpugilliam csclub uwaterloo ca>]

I agree that the mockup probably has room for simplification, however
Stephan has some excellent ideas in the design.

1) Displaying the changes in a thumbnail. This is not just for graphics,
incidentally. Don't you just love the "file has been changed" error
dialogue? What the devil have you changed in it again? Do you really want
to keep those changes?
A review window of these changes as compared to the existing file would be
a Very Good Thing (tm).
I realize that this is going to be non-trivial, since the computer would
have to distinguish between significant changes (extra paragraph in the
middle) and insignificant ones (the remaining text in the file is shifted
lower due to the new paragraph being inserted). I've no suggestions at
this time as to how to handle that.

2) I object to the idea of automatic decision on whether the file should
be overwritten or not. There is no way I can see that will allow the
computer to predict what the goal of the user's action is when it comes to
overwriting files.

The rest, for the moment, are small nitpicks. Still...

Stephan, you seem to have misplaced or deliberately discarded the
dialogue title. I see no clues which indicate what the new mockup is
actually trying to do.
Also, with the larger size of the dialogue window, a title inside the
dialogue itself (instead of the title bar) would be more visible.

Dan

On Mon, 7 Jul 2003, Alan Horkan wrote:

>
> On 7 Jul 2003, Stephan Bayer wrote:
>
>
> Your mockup looks very complicated.
>
> There are probably better ways to handle this situation than asking the
> user.  (Such as checking if more than just the name is identical, creation
> date, time last modified, size and more).
>
> > i have no time to code and no idea where i should start at the
>
> if the nautilus developers like your idea a lot they might code it
> themselves, but I expect they have other features they want to work on
> first.
>
> If you dont have time to code then all you can do is file an enhancement
> request in bugzilla, ask very politely and wait patiently until a
> developer is willing to work on it.
>
> Sincerely
>
> Alan H.
>
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