[Thunar-dev] Proposed Feature: "Spring Loaded" directories.

[Ori Bernstein]

While I agree with Benedikt about Thunar not being ROX, I still think that ROX
has some very good ideas that can be sto^H^H^Hinnovated. One of them is their
"Directories Spring Open" feature.

This feature makes file management a great deal easier for both the advanced
user and the intermediate user (in my experience, for the beginner, file
management in general is a flop - they don't understand the concept of a
filesystem.) by allowing them to quickly drag files between nested directories.
Often, I've seen relatively advanced users (myself included) wanting to drag a
file to drop it, but not having the destination in sight, meaning that the drag
has to be cancelled and restarted after setup. (Incidentally, this feature
might work better with a tiny bit of cooperation with the pager panel plugin -
hover over a desktop with a drag in progress and the pager switches to it)

I propose that Thunar includes this feature, but implemented in a simpler to
use manner. Since "Easier to use" is sort of meaningless, I'll include a
description of the sort of behavior I'd like to see below.

The behavior I propose is as follows:
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When the user first selects a file for dragging, and holds it over a directory
for a predetermined amount of time (200-300 ms?) it will change to that
directory, allowing dragging to subdirectories of it.

Similarly, the path bar buttons would be "spring loaded" as well, in lieu of a
back button or "up" shortcut. Should the buttons need to be scrolled, hovering
over the arrow buttons at the side should scroll the buttons.

Whem the file is released, then the default drag action is performed, and the
drag target stays in place (Benny's main complaint with Konqeror was that it
changed back to the source directory).

The filer should *NOT* open a new window for dragging, but merely change within
the same window, except in the case that the drag target is a desktop icon or
some other form of directory that can't be navigated in-place, in which case a
new window should open.

As for returning to the source directory, the pathbar buttons act as a history
well enough.


I sincerely hope that this feature will make it into Thunar, since it's really
a great help to filemanagement.