Re: [Usability] Spatiality does not mean that navigational facilities cannot exist

[Maurizio Colucci <seguso forever tin it>]

Kalle Vahlman wrote:
> On Tue, 01 Feb 2005 10:46:38 +0100, Maurizio Colucci
> <seguso forever tin it> wrote:
>
> > Kalle Vahlman wrote:
> >
> > > Why should it be a sidebar?
> >
> > Look at it this way. Do you use tabbed browsing? I suppose so. Would you
> > like it if the tab-bar became a popup list? I guess not:
>
>
> Actually, yes. Or at least sort of. :)
>
> FWIW, I have not used the task bar for a long time. Instead I use the
> drop-down list to select windows and it has worked well.

I agree that this works. I've used this system too for a while (BTW, if 
the windows were sorted by recent usage, it would work much better IMHO. 
I also developed a window list on KDE that exploits this technique).

On the other hand, IMHO my there is no comparison with the sidebar 
approach. See below for the reason.

> > Secondly, as someone who regularly uses the history sidebar in
> > nonspatial nautilus, I am of the opinion that the space the sidebar
> > takes is not missed, since the sidebar is only visible when you are
> > browsing files.
>
>
> In the browser, you'll probably have 1 or 2 windows open at the same
> time

Wait. In nonspatial nautilus with history sidebar, why would I have more 
than one window open? I never had to do that. If I need to quickly 
switch between two location, I simply click the right location on the 
history.

And please note that, if the list were popup, this would not be 
tolerable. The switch would be too slow, and YOU WOULD BE FORCED TO KEEP 
MORE THAN ONE WINDOW OPEN. Can you see? Having a sidebar that is always 
visible removed the need to have more than one nautilus window open.

And this is not all. An always visible sidebar would allow more 
simplifications: the "back" and "forward" buttons on the toolbar could 
be removed, because it is much more intuitive to click on the target 
location *directly*. And the "back" button could be removed too (I did 
this in my program "onefinger" for KDE).

So, an always-visible sidebar would give us a big deal of 
simplifications, with no drawback (as experience proves).

> so duplication is not an issue. But in spatial there are more
> windows and so more duplication.

No, wait. The "spatial sidebar" should close the previous window, thus 
always keeping one nautilus open window at any given time. What would be 
the reason to keep more than one nautilus window open?

cheers
Maurizio