Re: [Usability] Saving to open Nautilus windows

[Sven Jaborek <sven lug-dorsten gmx de>]

Hi, just my 2 cent about this great idea:

Am Montag, den 19.12.2005, 11:54 +0000 schrieb Joachim Noreiko:
> One criticism levelled at the current File save dialog
> is that it's not very useful in its collapsed form.
> The folders it suggests aren't necessarily the ones
> you want.

... or the ones i can use. Volumes i am not able to write to because
they are not mounted should not appear. (in the List as well as in the
sidebar)

> Another idea that's been floating around is that there
> should be an action that lets you save to an open
> Nautilus window. The user is probably already looking
> at the folder she wants to save to. One suggestion is
> that you should be able to drag something from the
> document window to the nautilus folder to save it.

I would really like to drag drop the save icon from the toolbar to a
nautilus window [1], and then beeing in the rename-mode there. One could
show this gtk save icon inside the save dialog as well for drag drop
possibility there. [2]

> One nice and simple way to tackle both of these things
> would be for the 'Save in folder' drop-down list to
> show all folders current open in Nautilus.

Thats a nice idea man!

Problems turn up if users have lots of windows opened.
>From a usability point of view all opened nautilus windows should be in
the list, because the feature turns to be useless if users cant rely
they will find the opened folder there.
This requirement conflicts with the recommondation to not have more than
7 items in a list (due to human brain limit), but if you define a limit
- from what criterion would you decide witch one to drop?

My idea for this conflict would be to _not_ add the list with the
currently opened nautilus paths, _if_ there are more than 7 nautilus
windows opened. Completly disable the feature if there would be to much
items.

> You'd get:
> 
> Documents
> Home
> Desktop
> (mounted drives)

As said aboive, it would be better to remove volumes that are not
accessable
(disable and show them greyed out, or remove from the list - this would
harmonize its behavior with the panel places menu)

> -----
> (bookmarked folders)
> ----
> (any folder that currently has an open window in
> nautilus)

minus those folders allready shown above

> This would vastly increase the usefulness of the
> collapsed dialog, and provide a way to save to open
> folders without having to devise new UI conventions
> (which we can always do later :)
> 
> What do you all think?
great idea!

regards, Sven

[1] http://poweroftwo.de/gedit_save.jpg
[2] http://poweroftwo.de/save_as_dragbutton.jpg