[Thunar-dev] UI proposal: actions folders

[Benedikt Meurer]

Brian J. Tarricone wrote:
> Agostino Russo wrote:
> 
>> It would be nice to have an interface where one could use the 
>> directional buttons both for navigating AND for choosing an action for 
>> the selected item.
>>
>> It would only imply a minor modification on a usual directory tree: 
>> the addition of an "actions folders" as the first child of each item 
>> of the tree. Such actions folder would contain the same items that 
>> would normally go in the context menu of its parent.
>>
>> So, to access the available actions of any item in the tree you only 
>> need to press the right directional button twice, and you cancel such 
>> menu by pressing left. Very very quick to use. The mouse interace 
>> works as usual, with the advantage that now you do not need  rightclicks.
>>
>> A typical tree could be:
>>
>> Filesystem (/)
>> --ACTIONS
>> --bin
>> --boot
> 
> Ick.  So what happens if someone has a folder named ACTIONS?  I don't 
> really see what's wrong with right-clicks (no, "I use a Mac and don't 
> have a right mouse button," isn't an excuse: get a reasonable pointing 
> device).  This feels like the kind of "unbreak my software" options 
> Benny hates.  It just sounds overly complicated and totally 
> unnecessary.  If you want to make the argument that you don't want to 
> use a mouse at all, then the right answer is keybindings for the more 
> oft-used items, and the less-used items should be in a menu that can be 
> accessed via keyboard navigation.
> 
> Can I klemmer this?

I agree with Brian. Your feature request doesn't seem to be inline with 
Thunar's major goals of being simple and easy-to-use. It looks more like 
a feature request for xffm to me; maybe try to ask edscott about this?

>    -brian

greets,
Benedikt