[Thunar-dev] Learning from Xffm

[Scott Horowitz]

Hopefully no one minds me weighing into the discussion a bit, as I'm 
just a lowly Xfce user (I'm no Human Interaction Designer ;) ), but I've 
been excitedly following thunar development thus far. While I think that 
starting from scratch is admirable and has may benefits, it's also 
obviously important to learn from user feedback from the existing file 
manager - something that I haven't seen much of.

The first thing that comes to mind with Xffm is that a user's initial 
perception is VERY important. I personally think this is Xffm's weakest 
point. The application should present itself in as simple of a manner as 
possible. No extra features, no two-way split screen with sides that are 
largely not connected, no loads of icons (like quit and preferences?), 
no large menu system integrated into a single, vague menu item ("Main 
menu"), and so on. If a user feels initially overwhelmed or confused, 
there is little incentive to trying to figure things out. I know there's 
been a lot of recent discussion about spacial vs. non-spatial, and while 
I greatly prefer a navigational tree of some sort to keep me "grounded", 
there's a lot to be said for the simple spatial look.

Don't get me wrong though, I do use Xffm and actually enjoy it a lot - I 
find it fits me better than any other file manager. But I use it in its 
very simplest sense (see screenshot below). One pane, few file/dir 
details, no icons, etc. If it came like this by default, I think more 
people would warm up to it.

One of my favorite things about Xffm is its hybrid navigational system - 
where you can use the tree arrows to expand/collapse and maintain the 
tree structure or you can double-click a dir and have that become the 
tree's "base". In many ways, this is a hyrbid of the spatial and tree 
structure. Continually double-clicking directories acts like the spatial 
system (not display-wise, but "jumping" from one folder to another) 
whereas using the arrows preserves the hierarchy. I find it very 
interesting. If you assume that "new" users double-click things by 
default, well, then you basically have the spatial view. For advanced 
users that figure out the arrows provide advanced manuevering, you have 
the tree view.

Just my incoherent thoughts on the subject :) There are a lot of quirks 
with Xffm (right-clicking on icons brings up a subset of icons, etc.), 
but to be honest, if thunar or xffm simply used this one-pane hybrid 
navigational system, had a more intuitive file menu, and a few choice 
icons, it would be perfect for myself and many others, I would argue.

Sorry in advance if this wasted anyone's time ;)

http://www.theskyiscrape.com/scott/xffm.png

-- 
-Scott Horowitz
http://www.theskyiscrape.com