[Thunar-dev] next step in thunar development

[David Feldman]

OK, I'm new here so I hope I'm not stepping on any toes, but here's  
my thoughts on what seems to be the direction of Thunar and how I  
might be able to contribute if people are interested.

Xfce's strength, overall, is that it's a fairly easy-to-use desktop  
environment that is small enough to run quickly on older hardware but  
attractive enough not to feel like a compromise. It also often does a  
good job of conforming to de facto Mac/Windows user interaction  
paradigms without simply mimicking those environments to the degree  
that KDE and GNOME sometimes do...so Xfce has its own look.

xffm, in my opinion, doesn't currently live up to what the rest of  
Xfce already is. It seems a bit too complex and is likely to seem  
foreign to new users in a way that Xfce doesn't overall. Same with  
rox. (I'm not trying to insult either of these file managers, but  
only saying that they don't really fit with Xfce well as I see it.)

I recently made an attempt to switch my girlfriend from Windows to  
Linux - in part because her computer was showing her age. I set her  
up with GNOME, KDE, Xfce, and icewm as well as several file managers  
and let her pick. She selected Xfce with Nautilus. Also, due to the  
fact that there isn't a good Xfce-based distro, the whole thing  
ultimately fell apart due to lack of integration. Had there been,  
say, an Xfce-buntu, she might have stuck with it. I bring this up not  
just to praise Xfce, but to say that Nautilus wasn't the ideal option  
- it was much slower and didn't integrate well with Xfce - but merely  
the best one available. I'd like to see Thunar fill the gap.

Therefore (and this is in line with the goals on Thunar's wiki), I  
would think Thunar's goal is to create a usable, fast, attractive  
file manager that is similar enough to existing file managers to be  
comfortable for new users, but perhaps a bit better and simpler to use.

Anyway, I'm a user interface designer. If there's still a decent  
amount of flexibility in the UI, I would be happy to do a little  
usability evaluation/critique of the python mockups in the next week  
or so, and perhaps my suggestions will be useful.

Just my 2 cents...hope it's helpful...

--Dave