Re: GNOME "Save as" dialog - defective by design

[Jan Claeys <lists janc be>]

Op woensdag 28-03-2007 om 11:47 uur [tijdzone +0100], schreef Emmanuele
Bassi:
> On Wed, 2007-03-28 at 12:21 +0200, Tomasz Sterna wrote:
> 
> > > > Users expect all the file manager functionality from the dialog, so
> > > no, "users" don't expect this. and nautilus is a file *manager*, that is
> > > an application to move, copy and generally view the file system; at
> > > best, it could replace an *open* dialog.
> > 
> > Oh yes, they do.
> > Don't you want to be able to create a directory to place the file you're
> > saving in? Or rename/or move away a file to make place for the file
> > you're saving? Most users do want at least these two functionalities.
> > And they want it to behave the same way as in their file manager.
> 
> "most users"?  where?  do you have *any* usability study or even tests
> that demonstrate the need to move/copy files when saving another file?

I have had that "need" frequently too, but if you don't want to bloat
the file dialog (which I understand), I would be happy with anything
that allows me to open the default "file manager" in the current
directory.

(One example is where you create a new directory but then you see a
spelling error.  Having to open Nautilus & drill down a deep directory
tree isn't really productive...)


> > And when these works, they expect all the other functionality of file
> > manager to be there. "It looks like Nautilus, it works like Nautilus,
> > but copying is broken... Why?"
> 
> because it's *not* nautilus. it looks very different from nautilus, it
> doesn't at all work like nautilus and, above all, it shouldn't work as
> nautilus. the users aren't using nautilus: they are using an application
> and saving a file.
> 
> what's more important: no platform GTK+ runs on has a file dialog which
> behaves like that; win32, os-x: they all have a file selector dialog
> which doesn't at all work like their file manager applications. 

Actually, since Win98 & Win2k Microsoft embeds the same component in
explorer & the file dialogs, which means that you can copy, move,
rename, ... files just like in explorer.


-- 
Jan Claeys