Re: Volume handling proposal

[Alexander Larsson <alexl redhat com>]

On Wed, 2003-09-17 at 17:46, David Adam Bordoley wrote:
> Hi Alex, 
> 
> In the interest in keeping down the spam I'm going to reply to a bunch of 
> comments of yours from different emails in one. Hope you don't mind :) 
> 
>  
> 
> > 
> > So, my proposal handles this by only showing mounted CDs on the desktop,
> > to not waste space there, but show unmounted cd drives in "Computer",
> > where clicking on them would mount the cd.
> 
> This sounds good. I'd also suggest always showing the Floppy Disk Icon (as 
> oppose to only in Computer) on the desktop as well, for systems that still 
> have them. I recommend this mainly due to the sad fact that on pc's we can't 
> autodetect floppies, but we still want the floppy folder to be very easily 
> accessible and not hidden in a subfolder. 

I don't agree. Floppies are very seldom used these days, so i think
having the "empty floppy drive" icon only in "Computer" is enough.

> > I don't like this idea. The reason we went to ~/Desktop was to have the
> > desktop directory visible. Having it sometimes there and sometimes not
> > (people might not immediately grasp the reasons its sometimes hidden)
> > can be frustrating when you're looking for it and you know it was there
> > before. 
> > 
> > I think that while the desktop->home->desktop loop is a bit "strange" it
> > doesn't really affect the mental model, because you probably see the
> > home icon and the other volume as links, a concept we expose at various
> > places in the desktop.  
> > 
> 
> Wasn't the switch more to make saving files to the desktop from the file 
> selector easier? At least in the object file manager i think the "Desktop" 
> directory should be hidden. If not clicking on the "desktop" icon in the 
> home folder should show the desktop. If you open another window representing 
> the "Desktop" directory you break the model because you now have two visible 
> folders for the folder "Desktop" (the actual desktop and a window, breaking 
> the one-to-one relationship between a file-system folder and its window). 

Well, the change was to make the Desktop directory more visible from
various kinds of file selectors etc. I dunno if clicking on ~/Desktop
should show the desktop, this needs experimenting.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
 Alexander Larsson                                            Red Hat, Inc 
                   alexl redhat com    alla lysator liu se 
He's a maverick overambitious hairdresser with no name. She's an artistic 
winged schoolgirl in the wrong place at the wrong time. They fight crime!