Re: Nautilus File Properties / Permissions GUI (was: Re: [Usability] Right-alignment of labels)

[Sebastian Rittau <srittau jroger in-berlin de>]

Am Sonntag, den 01.01.2006, 23:02 +0100 schrieb Christian Neumair:

> Sounds like a good idea. I'd also like to point out that I made some
> experiemts in my blog [1,2] and not everybody seems to like them. I'm
> still convinced that a simple mode that hides away details and an
> advanced mode which is a chmod GUI (maybe just an entry, with some
> tooltips?), which might also provide the symbolic and octal
> representation of the permissions is the way to go. Some guys just know
> what they're doing and others don't, let's satisfy both.

I wonder whether an ACL-like interface might be a better idea. See [1]
for a mockup. Such an interface has the advantage that it is consistent
with an interface for a filesystem that supports ACLs. Also, it is
possibly easier to understand. The "Add" and "Remove" buttons are
disabled, since this set of users is not modifiable. Of course the
user/group names are. This could for example be accomplished by
providing a drop-down menu next to the user/group name. Also, this
mockup does not yet consider recursive operations.

Also, this is the view for a regular file on a filesystem with
traditional Unix permissions. A directory would have "Executable"
replaced with "Enterable" (or another, better name). Files on
filesystems with ACL support can have more diversified options and also
allow users and group to be added. We should also have a look at the
dialogs from KDE and MacOS X to see what they have done.

Personally, I would recommend to use an ACL-like interface for a
consistent user experience.

 - Sebastian

[1] http://www.rittau.org/images/GNOME/acl-permission-editor.png