Re: Nautilus 2.6 - We're going all spatial

[Arik Devens <arik danieltiger com>]

On Tuesday, September 16, 2003, at 01:14  am, Ettore Perazzoli wrote:

> Then it would be nice to have at least some proof that those users are 
> a
> minority.  As far as I can see, the overwhelming majority of computer
> users out there very happily uses the navigation model.
>
> Even better, Windows and Mac used to have an OO model, and both 
> switched
> to a navigation model.  Did they do that just for fun or was it a
> horrible mistake?  (And if so, why aren't they fixing it?)

As Seth pointed out, Windows never really had a true spatial model for 
Explorer at all. It was always a weird mix of many things with very 
little apparent thought put into the mechanics of it.

As for Mac OS X, the loss of the spatial Finder from previous versions 
of the OS is probably the most frequently heard complaint amongst Mac 
pundits and users. I have heard many many many old time users complain 
endlessly about the death of the original spatial Finder and the only 
people I have seen who say they like it better are new users to the 
platform who came from Windows or Linux.

To make matters more interesting, Apple is actually adding spatial 
support back in for Mac OS 10.3 Panther. They are, in fact, doing 
basically what is being suggested here, except that the navigation 
model will still be the default. One click of a button or so and you 
will be back in a spatial one-to-one Finder.

So I don't think it would be appropriate to assume that any serious HIC 
testing was involved in the choice to get rid of the old spatial Finder 
and replace it with the weird NeXT/Finder hybrid we have now.

Oh, btw, one of the ways that the old Mac Finder made spatial easier 
for more advanced users was the inclusion of the tree view. You could 
open one window at the root level of the drive that was in tree view 
and see the contents of the entire drive. It unfolded to even include 
the files in the various folders. When you would double click on any of 
the folders though, it would open in its own window, and close the 
expanded view in the Finder window in tree view mode. This way the 
spatial model was still being followed, while allowing a more advanced 
view of the filesystem. Could be a useful thing to have in Nautilus, 
and less likely to be patented then spring-loaded folders.

Arik