Re: [Usability] File operations dialog redesign

[Kirk Bridger <kbridger shaw ca>]

I agree, I think d&d would be really cool, and elegant, etc, but entirely overkill.  I think the "Pause all others" idea actually suits the use case well, without treading into download manager territory.  The re-prioritizing via d&d also implies some kind of throttling, whereas in reality I think it is more likely to just be a pause of everything else. 

I agree it should not be visible by default - it is not the typical flow of things.  I might reword the command to something less indirect and more direct: "click here to affect everything else" might better be worded as "do this one first" for example.  When I click something, the associated "thing" should be the recipient of the action, not everything else.  That way when I choose something I don't have to do reverse math (like playing minefield almost).

Could we use some kind of metaphor like stat in a medical sense, or courier shipping options (next day versus 3-5 business days), or some other mental model to make it clear what this is doing?  Just throwing early-morning ideas out there.

Kirk




Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:

On Apr 28, 2008, at 3:56 PM, Kirk Bridger wrote:
  

 The only use case I can think of (because I've experienced it) is 
using pause to prioritize specific copying.  If we have multiple 
things going over the wire, and suddenly I want one to be the only 
thing going, to make it get there as fast as possible, I'd pause the 
lower priority ones.
    

Interesting. For that purpose, how about a "Pause All Others" button 
instead of a "Pause" button? That way if you wanted one task to be the 
only one going, instead of having to click a button for each of the 
*other* tasks, you'd click only one button in the section for *that* 
task.

(If Nautilus included such a button, probably it would be in the 
expandable section, since it would be needed infrequently.)

  

Now maybe that introduces the need for explicit prioritizing, but that 
seems quite a complicated solution and concept.
...
    

One possibility (which might be silly) is to allow drag-and-drop 
rearrangement of tasks in the progress window. That might avoid having 
to add extra visible elements for reordering (though there would be the 
usual problem with drag-and-drop, of how to make the function 
keyboard-accessible).

It would be easy to let this drift into something complicated that 
looked like a download manager, which would be ugly and cramped in the 
usual case of presenting just one move or copy at a time.

Cheers