[Thunar-dev] Random thoughts

[Benedikt Meurer]

Francois Le Clainche wrote:
> Hi,

Hey Francois,

> URL BAR
> I vote for no location toolbar but an open location dialog

...or the location bar will be optional and disabled by default.

> TOOLBAR
> The buttons I couldn't live without in the toolbar:
> - back
> - up
> - reload
> - home
> - change icons size
> - iconview/listview switch
> - show hidden files
> - show thumbnails
> 
> Plus
> - desktop?
> - bookmarks?
> - show/hide menu?
> 
> All that in an optional customizable toolbar like in Terminal.

Desktop is probably not very useful as a toolbar-shortcut, since its 
always visible behind your windows (thats were we need the showdesktop 
plugin).

And for the 'show thumbnails': Is it really worth to make a per-window 
switch for this? I thought about a global option 'Show thumbnails', 
which applies to all windows. I never understood why ROX has that as a 
per-window option. Thumbnails don't take up additional time once you 
have first visited a given folder with Thunar or any other program, like 
GQView, etc., that generates thumbnails, so it doesn't seem to be very 
useful to me.

> TREE VIEW
> I've never used the tree view, even under Windows, and never missed it,
> so my opinion would be that it's not really required in thunar.
> We would need a $HOME and a Desktop shorcuts, no / shortcut. The Desktop
> would allow to reach the content of the ~/Desktop folder, which could
> include "virtual" links to the detected removable media?

Having the `virtual links' to the auto-detected media on the desktop is 
one of the most annoying things in Nautilus (IMHO), and thats why I'd 
prefer the Removable Media branch.

> MENU
> 
> A menu bar similar to what's currently in the prototype, plus a "sort 
> by..." items in the View menu; the alternative will be using the row
> "headers" from of list-view mode

Agreed.

> A right clic menu with the following items:
> - new directory
> - select all
> - properties
> - find
> - copy/cut/paste
> - send to (customizable list of apps)

That will be a list of 'Open With...' entries (with a default one), that 
is build of the Mime applications on your system (using the MimeType 
information in the .desktop files). This system is currently used by 
Nautilus, but is expected to become the standard in the future.

> +/- STOLEN FROM ROX
> - Use the great copy/move DND popup

Something similar, yep.

> - I'm Old School, so I don't like spatial mode, and vote for a unique
> window with a fixed size and one clic navigation,

Yep, tho probably configurable and default to double-click (as thats the 
most common for file managers).

> but with the ability
> of auto-resizing the window using a double clic on the window
> background.

Did I mention that I consider this behaviour a bug in ROX (probably 
based on my experience that this never worked properly with Xinerama)? ;-)

Nah, but seriously, maybe as a hidden/expert option. It's really a very 
unintuitive feature, especially if you meant to double-click a 
directory, but hit the background and the file manager resizes its window.

> Finally, I really like the "open new window" action using a
> middle clic, which works on the toolbar, and maybe could work from the
> bookmarks menu?

Probably, yes.

> STOLEN FROM WEB BROWSERS
> - I'd like to see a "bookmarks" menu and/or a shortcut to the bookmarks
> from a toolbar button

Hm, dunno, but maybe a good idea.

> - If spatial mode isn't used, why not implementing tabs??

Hm, that wouldn't be compatible with 'simple' I guess.

> XFCE INTEGRATION
> - Find a way to add a file/folder/application from thunar to the panel
> using DND, in order to create a launcher (a usual launcher, or a
> launcher which would be part of a dedicated panel plugin), eg using the
> data stored in thunar, like the application used to open a particular
> file?

Easy to do.

I really appreciate your suggestions, they're very welcome. But we 
shouldn't loose the focus on the 'simple file manager'. Don't get me 
wrong, but some parts of your mail look to me like you want to clone 
ROX. ;-)

> Cheers
> François

greets,
Benedikt