[Thunar-dev] Some GUI Suggestions.

[Benedikt Meurer]

Jeff Franks wrote:
> Benny,

Hey Jeff,

> Here are some mock up images that show you my idea of a clean, simple
> and well laid out file manager. I posted these recently to xfce-dev as a
> suggestion for the next version of xffm.
> 
> http://xfc.xfce.org/tmp/xfce4-fm-menubar.png
> http://xfc.xfce.org/tmp/xfce4-fm-no-menubar1.png
> http://xfc.xfce.org/tmp/xfce4-fm-no-menubar2.png

Yeah, I read your notes on xfce4-dev already. The general idea is nice, 
but there are a few concerns *I* have about your screenshots:

a) Placing the whole menu bar into a single menu causes confusion, since 
its pretty uncommon.
b) The menu bar is a bit overloaded; I dunno what you planned for 
'Tools' and 'Options', but those two look like they don't belong there 
(in a simple file manager).
c) Atleast the default toolbar layout should never include an 'Open 
terminal' nor a 'Quit' button; but since the toolbars will be editable, 
there's no problem for freaks to add those tool items later.
d) Having an entry "/" or ".." in the main view doesn't make much sense, 
since you expose details of the file system implementation to the user; 
from the usability point, there's already the 'Up' tool button, and if 
you disable the toolbar, the ".." won't be very useful afterall, since 
you'd always need to scroll to the beginning of the list just to go up 
one directory.

Personally, *I* like your design (pretty much the same as the very first 
Filer design), plus adding an optional shortcuts list in the sidebar and 
plus some nicely integrated query-interface. But I'm sure somebody will 
complain about the missing treeview or the missing location bar (or to 
sum up: the UI is too easy to use), yannow...

> The design is based on the way I like to use a file manager and uses
> just an icon view, no tree view or side bar. It has a menu bar, toolbar
> and statusbar. The second and third images show you how space saving and
> convenient it would be, to be able to optionally display the menubar as
> a popup menu from the toolbar. Users expect to be able to access all
> application functionality from the menubar so the new file manager
> should have a proper menubar.

As said, that 'menubar compression' is confusion, since its not the 
expected behaviour of a menubar.

> Users also expect to be able to access
> commonly used functions from a toolbar so the new file manager should
> also have a toolbar.

The toolbar (for navigational mode) will be editable and optional (just 
like with Terminal).

> Personally, I don't like file treeviews because I
> find then cumbersome, but side bars can be useful. And there is always
> konqueror or nautilus for those occassions a user might need to use a
> file tree.

I've said enough on this topic already.

> Spatial vs Non-Spatial. I've thought a lot about this and followed the
> pros and cons on several news sites. Spatial file management is not the
> "new" concept the thunar web site suggests. Not only did previous Mac
> OS's use the concept in there finder but beta versions of Windows 95
> used it as well. Have a look at this Microsoft study report from back
> then. The relevent subsections are "Early Findings" and "A Change of
> Direction":
> 
> http://www.acm.org/sigchi/chi96/proceedings/desbrief/Sullivan/kds_txt.htm
> 
> Essentially the report says that there was a Program folder on the
> Windows 95 desktop, like My Computer. Folders in the Program folder were
> opened in separate windows. Apparently beta users were confused by all
> the separate windows opened on the desktop, and not knowing whether the
> file icons in the folder referred to a link, or the real disk file. So
> the program folder became a Programs menu item on the start menu.

As you might have noticed, I wrote "new" instead of new to make clear 
that its not a new concept, but its just that many potential users have 
never seen nor tried it before (where 'tried' does not mean 'start a 
spatial file manager, complain, quit!').

> Both navigational and spatial file management have their pros and cons,
> and I think there must be a near 40:60, 50:50 or 60:40 user preference
> split. So how do you keep the majority of users happy? One way would be
> to make "spatiality" a property of the folder, not the entire file
> manager. Spatial file windows could be used for special folders, such as
> My Music, My Device, My Pictures, My Downloads etc. Users could
> optionally create a spatial folder knowing that its location and size
> will always be the same. Usually you shouldn't need to navigate from a
> spatial window but if you did, you should be able to, but any changes
> made wouldn't be saved. Spatial folders would especially be suitable for
> use in the panel, on the desktop, or from the Xfce menu. The Xfce4
> settings dialog would make a good spatial folder.

Thunar should be consistent, so adding both worlds within a single file 
manager is confusing. You'd need some magic to allow the user to easily 
differentiate between spatial views and navigational views. It would be 
hard to get used to such a file manager, and it is *IMHO* the opposite 
of being intuitive.

As for the menu and preferences: For a spatial file manager, that would 
be perfect to integrate the menu and the preferences with the file 
manager. Esp. the menu editing would be very easy, since the user 
already knows how to use the file manager, and so he can easily edit the 
menu just like he'd move around files. The preferences are just part of 
the menu. Ok, and now I'll be flamed for this paragraph...

> Well, those are a few of my ideas.
> Jeff.

greets,
Benedikt