Re: The future direction of the Nautilus UI

["Shahms E. King" <shahms shahms com>]

Additionally, a "pure" OO model Nautilus would be next to useless for a
large number of users (myself included) that really, really don't like
opening dozens of windows just to navigate the directory heirarchy.  If
Nautlis *does* move to an OO model, it really should not be an
"exclusive" choice, possibly have a difference between an navigational
OO and "pure" OO with "pure" being the default.  In the navigational
(i.e. open in same window) dialect, you'd have exactly the same features
as the OO, except rather than opening a new window it simply replaces
the current one.  I do think things like the views and such probably
don't belong in the File Manager to begin with (well, wrt specifc file
viewers, rather than say, the Music view, which is really just another
way of looking at a list of files anyway).

Having the pure model be the default with a "hybrid" model that
1)opens directories in the current window
2)has a tree sidebar (or a tree view, or some heirarchical view of the 
filesystem)and 
3)has a navigation bar 

are a requirement for me to find a file manager even basically
functional (with the tree view being the lowest on that list, but very
nice).  

In the pure OO model, let's try navigating to a useful, location, say,
/usr/share/pixmaps/backgrouns:
1)Click "username's Home"
2)click up, get a new window
3)click up, get a new window
4)click /usr, get new window
5)click share, get a new window 
... you get the idea, by the time I get where I'm going I have 7 windows
open, all of which I need to close after (probably) selecting the
background I want to view, edit, something . . . which is just unwieldy,
and possibly 100x less efficient than even the long route of
"Applications -> System Tools -> Terminals" (rather than Actions -> Run
or right-click desktop -> New Terminal) and just typing in the command
that I want (which could theorectically be "nautilus
/usr/share/pixmaps/backgrounds", but that kind of defeats the purpose of
having a graphical file-manager to begin with, now doesn't it?)

--Shahms

On Wed, 2002-09-04 at 13:48, Havoc Pennington wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> If nothing else, it's clear a transition to an OO model can't be
> completed in a 2.2 timeframe... you could only start on it.
> So you need to find some intermediate state that would be shippable to
> move in that direction.
> 
> I'm not sure I'd take "navigation model is confusing" as gospel, given
> that nearly all computer users use a web browser as one of their
> primary applications. This is something we can probably expect nearly
> everyone has gotten used to and roughly figured out.
> 
> Havoc
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