Constructive Ideas for Improving Spacial Nautilus

[Brian Gosnell <dbrian soniccommerce com>]

Let me start of by saying I really like Spatial Nautilus. I find it much
easier to use, however everyone I helped install Gnome 2.6 seems to
think it's a pain.  Let me try to explain why I think this is and
suggest a few ways we might improve things.  This is meant to be
constructive so please comment...  :-)

Problem #1

In my experience the main problem people have is they find it annoying
to navigating to deeply nested folders (even not so deeply nested).  Say
I'm copying a file from a folder 3 folders deep to another folder 3
folders deep.  Once the task is done I have 6 windows open requiring 6
more clicks to close them all out.  Thats what people see when they
first try it (hell that was the first thing I saw) and seems to be what
annoys people most.

There are features that make this better, but people don't think to
double middle click on a folder to close the parent.  It's not
intuitive.  It's not something people try because they're not used to
using their middle button for anything except scrolling windows.

We either need a better way to educate users (I still like the "TIP of
the Day" idea) or give them a more obvious way of doing this.  The
general rule is the fewer clicks to accomplish something the better, the
problem is people aren't clicking right (err..  most efficiently). 

Problem #2

Navigating backwards through windows.  I've seen people go over a month
without realizing there was a parent window button in the bottom left
corner.  Again this goes back to what people are used to.  People don't
think to click in the status bar to accomplish something. 

Moving this to the top right corner would make it much more obvious.
Also adding a "back" button next to it might help eliminate some of the
"I want my browser" backlash.

Problem #3

Spatial Nautilus remembers the size and position of windows, which is
nice, except when the folder I need to copy something to, is overlapped
by the window I'm copying from.  Seems to happen more than you would
think.  

It would be nice, if when dragging a file from one window to another,
the destination window would raise after a short delay.  This would keep
me from having to move windows around so much.  Fewer clicks to
accomplish the task.  XP does this by holding the mouse over the task on
the taskbar but not everyone keeps a taskbar it their panel.

Like I said I'm trying to be constructive rather that critical..  

so.. comments?


-----------------
D. Brian Gosnell