Re: [Usability] Interacting with open folders

[Daniel Borgmann <spark-mailinglists web de>]

On Sat, 2005-02-12 at 08:28 +0100, Maurizio Colucci wrote:
>Daniel F Moisset wrote:
>> On Thu, 2005-02-10 at 14:52 +0100, Maurizio Colucci wrote:
>> 
>>>Hello there,
>>>
>>>   I have always wondered why, in order to act upon a folder F, I must
>>>   be viewing not F, but its *parent*.
>>>
>>>   Example: Suppose I have a nautilus window displaying folder
>>>   /foo/bar. In order to delete "bar", I have to go to the *parent*
>>>   folder (foo).
>>>
>>>   This seems illogical to me.  And the problem is even more apparent
>>>   with spatial nautilus: here, a window and a folder are strongly
>>>   identified, so I should be able to act on a folder when I am viewing
>>>   its window.
>>>
>> 
>> 
>> It doesn't seem *so* illogical* to me. The structure of container/items
>> is ubiquitous in the desktop,
>
>
>I still believe this is illogical, because if I see an open chocolate 
>box on my table I can still throw it in the thrashcan. The fact that 
>it's open does not limit me in any way.

"Opening" an icon does not limit you either, as the original icon handle
is still available. If we'd want to get rid of the icon->window
separation, then it wouldn't be logical that the icon still gets
displayed after "opening" it. So I'm not convinced that just adding a
drag handle to opened object windows will be much of an improvement in
terms of logical behavior, but I can see its usefulness.

>
>However, you are completely right when you let us notice the current 
>behavior is consistent with the rest of the apps (e.g. openoffice). That 
>was an insightful remark.

Yes, and please let's get the "big picture" right before we do
substantial work on this. It is wrong to assume, that a text document
for example would be fundamentally different to a folder. It's not. It
just happens that we have the best object-representation for folders,
but we should always consider applications striving for a similarly
ideal representation. 
So, if I'd want to do this in my document-oriented application in a way
that is consistent to folders (and other applications), how should I do
this? I don't think that adding a button to the status-bar would be a
great solution in this case, because I have no history to pop up on a
left click. Or should I create one? It wouldn't be impossible to display
the parent folders of the document and then open them in Nautilus when
clicked. Maybe this would even be useful occasionally. Hm, now this got
me thinking and I'm almost considering to implement this for my
application, just to see how it works. However, I still have a feeling
in my gut that there must be a better solution.

-- 
Daniel Borgmann <spark mayl de>