Re: Gnome 2.6: What were you thinking?

[Ingo Ruhnke <grumbel gmx de>]

"Manuel Amador (Rudd-O)" <amadorm usm edu ec> writes:

> It is better for the tasks which comprise most of the percentile for
> file management. If it provided an improvement of 50% on task "A"
> and caused a 50% loss of productivity on task "B", but task "A" is
> performed 80% of the time, it is simply better.

Well, I personally don't manage files much at all, I browse my files
90% of the time. A need to move them around happens seldomly,
especially when saving them to the right folder at save-time.

> Suffice it to say, it's harder for the average person to manage
> files with a browser, because the skills used differ from those used
> when browsing the Web.

Actually I would consider the browsing stuff pretty much the same,
there is not much difference between browsing files and browsing the
web. When it comes to manageing files and moving them around, then
yep, its different.

> (and your argument is moot anyway, typeahead find is available in
> Nautilus, it has text input as well.  Please *use* it before talking
> about it like you know what you're talking about.)

The type-ahead find in Nautilus is pretty useless and sucky
implemented, timeout is far to short and not much visible, there is no
easy way to type across directories and such.

>> Well, quite a few people don't think that was a 'very good idea'.
>
> Yes, those that are accustomed to the browser interface. Those
> comprise a minority of the world's inhabitants, fortunately.

And the majority of the current Gnome users I guess and I doubt that
this will change in the next years.

>>> * Each folder you open *always* opens in the same exact location and
>>> with the same size
>> 
>> Doesn't hurt of course, but doesn't really matter much either for most
>> people.
>
> It matters a LOT.

I personally have currently 40'000 folders in the depths of my home
directory, if the size is the same or not doesn't really matter for
most of them, since I couldn't remember them anyway.

> I don't. As you can see, it's just a matter of taste. Screen clutter
> is on the eyes of the beholder. And you can use your middle mouse
> button to reduce it.

I can tab-complete my way in a few seconds through very deep and
crowded directory structures, even middle click is a LOT slower then
that. A good tree view can help here again a lot, since it seperates
the files from the directories.

> Thus rendering most of the uses for the toolbar moot.

There is stuff like showing hidden files that is currently deeply
hidden in the Preferences dialog, such stuff really must be placed in
a easy to reach way, without a toolbar however this isn't really
possbile.

>>> * Looking for files and getting to them is *faster*
>> 
>> How that? Spatial view provides NO text input (the fasted may to
>> navigate through lots of files when you know them), clutters the
>> screen with my browse history and provides really nothing to speed up
>> browsing (no back-button or such). So I would says that spatial view
>> is a good slowdown for browsing files.
>> 
>> > Once you get used to it (which can take up to a week), you'll discover
>> > you work faster. 
>> 
>> Again, that would be worth a bit of explanation.
>
> For you perhaps, for most of the people not.  They just need to know why
> the change has been done, not technical explanations.

Well, there are a lot of people out there that just doesn't like
spatial view, if you come and tell them that its faster, yet, their
own experince shows that it is slower, you should really take the time
and explain why you think its faster and what fatal fault the users
are doing that slows them down.

As said, spatial view might be easier with a few files and reasonably
flat directories, but I don't see it being faster in any way.

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