Re: Suggestion: The option to open a folder in a New Tab instead of a New Window.

[Alexander Larsson <alexl redhat com>]

On Thu, 2007-08-30 at 19:23 +1000, Mark Thiele wrote:
> 
> Alexander Larsson wrote:
> > Now, I realize that for some experienced users with loads of directories
> > tabs might be somewhat useful (although I don't think it will be nearly
> > as useful as in firefox). However, adding tabs would be a significant
> > restructuring of the code (which assumes one view per window), and its
> > not even clear how this would interact with things like spatial
> > navigation or exactly how the user interaction model will work. So,
> > adding this as an option is a large cost for a low gain for most users
> 
> So what you're actually saying is that "good enough" is the goal and 
> that as soon as a user actually needs to use his/her computer for 
> anything more complicated than checking emails, they should upgrade to a 
> desktop environment that caters for their needs? That's disgusting.

There is nothing wrong in not being everything to everyone. Nor is there
anything wrong with using another file manager (or even a shell) when
you want to do something special. Both Windows and Mac do this (and
neither of their default file managers does tabs). You don't have to
switch desktop environment for this. 

There is a cost that all users have to bear when you add complex
features to the UI, so for each feature its a tradeoff you have to make
between how it affects the majority of users and how much it gains the
people who use the feature. 

Of course, nobody has done the work of actually implementing tabs and
designing the user interaction model. So perhaps its possible to do it
such that it doesn't affect the non-tab-user much and doesn't cause too
much strain on the rest of the codebase. If that is the case, and the
patch is clean it might be accepted. But I am not gonna spend time on it
personally.

> Both gedit and gnome-terminal, the most basic user apps after the panel, 
> both support tabs, so obviously it fits in with gnome's "Human" 
> philosophy. Gedit uses the gtknotebook subclass for tabs. Nothing new or 
> special in the code there. Not sure what gnome-terminal uses.

Picking what widget to use is not really the hard part. 

Tabs are a form of MDI, and here is what the gnome HIG says about MDI:

        MDI has several inherent usability problems, so its use is
        discouraged in applications. It is better to open each document
        in a new primary window, with its own menubar, toolbars and
        statusbar, or allow multiple instances of your application to be
        run simultaneously. In either case, this leaves it for the
        window manager (acting on the user's preferences) rather than
        your application to decide how to group and present document
        windows from the same application.
        
Gnome-terminal is a rather special case, its users are generally
specialists and its interaction model is very simple (i.e. the content
of the tabs are totally independent from each other and the GUI outside
of the tabs). 

For nautils it would be different, as much of the widgetry around the
view is context-dependant on what is in the view, so there is a much
more complicated interaction model. For instance, the menus, toolbars,
uri bars etc would change as you switch views. Not impossible to code,
but it surely makes the UI model more complex. Not to mention how it
totally breaks the spatial model (although one could support tabs just
in browse mode).

I don't know why gedit uses tabs, but I'd say that its more likely that
you have massive amount of text files open than massive amount of
directories, as gedit is often used as a programming editor. So, the
gain there is likely much larger. Still, tabs in gedit bug me because
opening a new file not giving me a new window just seems weird and
unexpected. As a causual gedit user I would prefer it to not use tabs,
as I've seen only pain from it and no gain.