Re: File selector UI proposal

[Michael L Torrie <torriem chem byu edu>]

Here are some non-scientific, non-HIG-expert points about his design:

- If there are more than 10 or so folders in the directory, you won't
see any file until you scroll down.  Many users could find it confusing
when they don't see any files.  With a file folder view and a file view,
you don't ever have this problem.  That said, average users probably are
confused by the directory view and the file view in separate panes.
- the Pickbox at the top of the dialog has always been useless, in my
opinion, for anything but determining where you currently are.  A
windows-style "look in" combo box might be better so you could have the
best of both worlds and be able to type in a path and press enter
(Currently the gtk selector only lets you type in a path name in the
selection input if the underlying application traps the "activate"
signal and detects that you have a directory and then resets the file
selector widget accordingly)
- What would the "More" button do?  I can guess, but it's not a very
obvious thing.
- The shortcut buttons would take up less space if they were layed out
horizontally above the file list view.
- Much of the layout won't matter to me as long as tab-completion is
still a part of the widget (no I don't want windows-style drop-down
completion, although there are probably many who would use it).

Many of these things will just not find agreement out there amongst even
HIG experts.  I debated the file selector on this list several years
ago, and we didn't get anywhere.  Didn't have any HIG back then either,
though.

Perhaps more important than the layout of the dialog box is a robust api
that could potentially support whatever direction the HIG people want us
to go (and of course we could hack together the features that us
non-HIG-inclined people want as an unsupported version of the widget). 
Until the API is sorted out, I think designing the widget visually is
kind of counter-productive until we know what we want from it.

Michael


On Thu, 2003-09-11 at 02:48, Artur Brodowski wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> This is my proposal for new file chooser look. It's a really basic
> mockup, needs at least one more button (Add to Shortcuts, maybe also
> D&D functionality?).
> I thought that preview could be put on the right, as usual, with 
> a 'arrow button' to hide it optionally.
> Also i'm not happy with shortcuts - i'll try to work on it more 
> if you like my ideas.
> This is how it looks:
> http://ai.pjwstk.edu.pl/~moose/fsmockup.png
> (i'm not subscribing gtk-devel, please CC me when replying).
> 
> best regards,
> artb.
-- 
Michael L Torrie <torriem chem byu edu>