[Usability] Proposal to solve some drawbacks of the current spatial implementation

[Maurizio Colucci <seguso forever tin it>]

Hello,

Although I agree with the principles of spatiality, there's something I 
don't like with the actual way the spatial paradigm in GNOME is 
implemented. The problem is two-fold, depending on your style of usage:

1. if you do not use middle-click or similar technique, the problem is 
that you get a proliferation of open windows, most of which are useless. 
This makes it more difficult to switch between windows in the 
window-list. (Of course, periodically closing useless windows by hand is 
a non-solution --- it's like doing your own garbage collection; it's 
simply something you would not want to do.)

2. OTOH, if you do use middle click, you don't get a proliferation of 
open windows, but you are forced too decide too early whether the 
current folder must be closed or kept visible. This is annoying because, 
when you have an objective in mind which you are pursuing (like reaching 
a precise window), you don't want to have to think about secondary 
issues like whether the intermediate windows must be closed. That 
decision must be postponeable.

I am proposing the following change, which solves both problems in one shot:

In the gnome panel, add a global dropdown button called "recent 
folders". when clicked, it simply pops up a menu with the most recently 
visited locations, SORTED BY LAST VISITING TIME. It is GLOBAL because it 
contains locations visited from ANY nautilus window; it is not relative 
to one window. If you select a folder from the menu, a nautilus window 
relative to that directory is opened (or brought on top if already opened).

What is interesting about this solution is that it solves both problems:

1. It solves problem 1 because, although there will still be many open 
windows in the window-list, nonetheless it will be easy to switch 
between windows, because of the sorting: the useless folders will 
quickly end up in the bottom of the "recent list", so you will rarely 
have to look at them. Almost always, you'll only have to scan the first 
few items in the list (tested).    Especially, continuously toggling 
between two windows (a very frequent operation) is trivial with the 
"recent list" but terribly difficult with the current wnidow-list.

2. It solves problem 2 because you can always use only middle click, yet 
quickly reach a recent folders. So you are no more forced to an early 
decision about the importance of intermediate folders.

-----

Then, optionally, in nautilus, you could swap the behavior of middle 
click and left click (i.e. default to "close parent window"), since 
there would not be a reason for left clicking anymore (or at least it 
would be very rarely needed). This would make sense because if you only 
introduce complexity, without removing any, you are not really doing a 
simplification.

----

In case you want to try this paradigm, a working implementation can be 
found in the file manager http://onefinger.sf.net.

I am very interested in exactly what problems do you think this 
navigation style could have. (I have been using it for months and I 
still can't find a drawback.)

Maurizio