[Usability]Nautilus tree sidebar / location field

[Reinout van Schouwen <reinout cs vu nl>]

Following up on my message from July 10th:

> Well, I've found it. All we need is something like the Web Control applet
> that's already in GNOME 1.4. Just type whatever URL and a Nautilus window
> will open with it.

I received no feedback on this idea. I'm still toying around with it in my
head however, and I like it better and better. :)

To recap, the discussion was about whether we could afford to remove the
location bar from Nautilus (also discussed in bug 82107). An argument
against it was that advanced users need a way to quickly reach their
target. I proposed an incremental search feature in the Tree view (I
believe that is already known as bug 41599), but that still wouldn't allow
to arbitrarily open non-filesystem URLs nor would it allow to paste paths
in a textfield. For the latter problem, a "File > Open location...
[Ctl+L]" menu item was suggested (bug 82112).  Currently, Nautilus focuses
the location bar (and shows it if it was hidden) when you press Ctl+L, but
something new would of course be required if we lost the location bar. For
the first problem, I "discovered" that we already have a solution in GNOME
1.x, namely the Web Control applet. When ported to GNOME2, it could well
take away all the objections to removing the location bar that are still
standing. Whether or not to show the applet by default on the panel is
open for discussion.

My question is if the people on these lists like this idea or can at least
agree to posting it as a to-be-evaluated bug on bugzilla. I'm eager to
hear your comments! =)

regards,

-- 

Reinout van Schouwen			Artificial Intelligence student
email: reinout cs vu nl			mobile phone: +31-6-44360778
GPG public key http://www.cs.vu.nl/~reinout/reinout.asc