filesel dialogs

[Manuel Amador <amadorm zeus usm edu ec>]

Having seen the latest screen shot of the suggested dialog box in GNOME 2, i 
have only one thing to say (for the nth time).

   PLEASE DO AWAY WITH THE AWFUL FILESELECTION DIALOGS

I deploy free software workstations and servers.  A MAJOR gripe with GNOME apps 
is that file selection dialogs are enigmatic.  People DON\'T understand \"left is 
directories/right is files\".  That\'s why (mostly) I end up using KDE.

Why can\'t you make a simple dialog like KDE, Windows or StarOffice?

Copy either Windows\' or Mac\'s file selection dialog.  Both have been studied 
for ease of use.  And don\'t you tell me that GNOME\'s filesel is easier to use, 
because it\'s not.  It\'s unnavigable with a keyboard.  Finding a directory takes 
tons of time, it\'s difficult to double-click a target directory (due to the 
small height of the file), you don\'t have icons identifying file types, or 
sensible filters.  It\'s the most contrived filesel dialog I\'ve ever seen - a 
direct copy of Motif\'s or Netscape\'s.

GNOME is, I concede, gorgeous.  But these kinds of things makes it unusable as 
a desktop platform.

sorry for the gripe.  I continually find myself irritated by the fileselection 
dialog.  I understand that GTK+ does not have enough components to build a 
windows-like filesel (although its usability and organization still sucks - a 
simple reordering of components could do much better).  But a GNOME filesel 
should be 1. developed with all available GNOME power (nautilus views, 
etcetera) 2. its use encouraged extensively on every GNOME application.

thanks for your time.