[Thunar-dev] Spatial or not-spatial?

[Francois Le Clainche]

Le Tuesday 01 March 2005 à 10:50, Brian J. Tarricone a écrit:

> Exactly.  I don't want lots of windows open (if I wanted that, I'd just 
> open a bunch of terminals, like I do now).  I want one window that 
> allows me to browse (navigate, if you will) my filesystem.
> 
> >I guess most users would just right-click the file, select 'Cut file', 
> >use the treeview (or probably the up/back buttons) to navigate to the 
> >destination folder and choose 'Paste files' if they are used to/forced 
> >to use a browser like file manager.
> 
> Or, assuming a sane DnD model (where the treeview items expand when you 
> hover over them, and the view scrolls when you hover over the top and 
> bottom of the list), you drag and drop files where you want to copy/move 
> them.  Frankly, Windows Explorer has it pretty much dead-on here.

hm... I would have thought that most Linus users open two windows and
use DnD today. But I'm probably wrong.

> Agreed.  I'm just about as far from undecided as you can get, just in 
> the opposite direction as Benny.  I see the value in a spatial file 
> manager (esp for new users), but 1) that's not how I work, and I don't 
> want to work on or use a file manager that doesn't fit my workflow, and 
> 2) I think there are some serious usability problems (such as the large 
> number of windows you tend to end up with when you work spatially) that 
> haven't been adequately addressed.

hm... what I personnaly miss in the existing spatial file managers is a
toolbar, which would include a "close parent windows" and a "close all
other windows" buttons, instead of a menu option or a keyboard shortcut
for that. This way, you browse the files the spatial way, and when you
have found your file or folder, you just press the right button... Yes,
I know that a spatial fm is not supposed to have a toolbar :P

Btw, the "tree view in a right clic menu" idea of benny in the spatial
prototype is nice.

> I fully agree with that, but, as I said above, I want to create 
> something that *I'll* want to use, first and foremost.  Well, maybe not 
> first and foremost, but it's up there near the top of the list.

hm... I understand that, but if in the particular case of a file
manager, each dev wanna code the version that he would use, Xfce won't
have a file manager before a long time, imho. Or about a dozen, hehe ;)

> Anyway, I don't want to beat this to death, but I really hate the use of 
> analogies when they don't really make sense.  I love analogies, but only 
> when they work.  IMO, this doesn't work.
> 
> >And remember, its for the user (!= 24/7 geek), not for you (well, 
> >maybe its for you as well, but that doesn't matter).

Correct analogy or not, /me dreams about a BeOS-like query interface...

> As I said before, from my perspective, it's not for the user.  It's for 
> me.  I don't get paid to write software, and I'm mostly only going to 
> work on things that I'd want to use myself.  That's not to say I'm not 
> going to add features to make it more accessible and usable by 
> less-advanced users.
> 
> >Ok, even that appendix is too long. Hm, too late already...
> 
> Yeah, I think we all just have too much to think about/say on this 
> topic.  But I think it's better to have too many ideas than too few.

My 2cts
François
-- 
Francois Le Clainche - http://perso.wanadoo.fr/flc.web/files/PGP_key.txt