Re: [Usability]Re: Tabs for Nautilus ?

[David Moles <david moles vykor com>]

On Tue, 2002-05-21 at 14:41, Havoc Pennington wrote:
> 
> Steve Tyler <styler mimiburns com> writes:
> > One could argue that for consistency, Nautilus should have tabbed
> > capability simply because Galeon, Gnome-Terminal, Gedit, etc all have
> > it.  If I can view tabbed web pages in galeon and I browse (using
> > nautilus) to a directory containing documents, I am already familiar
> > with the concept of 'right-click/open in a new tab' in order to view a
> > document and my first reaction would be to do the same thing.  I think
> > these are the kind of UI consistency issues that really matter, that as
> > a user, I can learn how to use gnome not how to use Nautilus, Galeon,
> > Evolution, Gnucash, Gnumeric, Abiword....hopefully you get my point.
> > 
> > I'd love to backup my opinion with code, but I haven't made it all the
> > way through my 'C Primer' book yet, but I'm working on it ;-)
> > 
> > [I've cc'd usability gnome org cos this is a usabilty issue...hope
> > nobody minds]
> > 
> 
> There's perhaps some truth to the viewpoint that tabs are a workaround
> for inadequate window manager integration/functionality... just a
> thought.

I'd also argue that a good tree view might make tabs less necessary
for browsing local files. You need it for the web because there's no
logical arrangement or grouping of stuff out there, but at least for
local files it should be relatively easy to navigate between them.

(That said, I just had to temporarily switch here at work from a Java
IDE with tabs to Visual Studio with a tree view and a Window menu, and
it drove me absolutely bats. -- Of course it wasn't the only thing in
Visual Studio that drove me absolutely bats.)