[Thunar-dev] GtkFileChooser-like UI

[Auke Kok]

Jeff Franks wrote:

> Benedikt Meurer wrote:
>
>> Jeff Franks wrote:
>>
>>>> As requested by Auke, here's a mockup with an UI that mimics the 
>>>> GtkFileChooser:
>>>>
>>>> http://www.xfce.org/~benny/tmp/thunar-gtkfilechooser-like.png
>>>>
>>> No!
>>
>>
>>
>> Jeff, can you please explain what you dislike about this mockup exactly?
>>
> That's was a kneejerk but heartfelt No! I was hoping we could do 
> better than that. The old GtkFileSelector was dreadful but functional. 
> The new GtkFileChooser is a big improvement but still not the best GUI 
> design I've seen to base a file manager on. And in either GTK+ 2.8 or 
> 2.10 GtkFileChooser will have an icon view, so then the above file 
> chooser design will look just like a GtkFileChooser widget. The row of 
> location buttons at the top of the icon view will take up unnecessary 
> space if the window also has a toolbar. The functionality of the 
> buttons could easly be implemented as a drop down list


That sucks IMO. Windows Explorer uses that (drop down list) and it's a 
pain in the ass to work with. Seeing the mockups now as they are there 
is hardly "unnecessary space" taken up. As a matter of fact, the whole 
desing looks very clean to me.

To me a drop-down lists stands for 'hiding an expert feature'. I don't 
think this is very intuitive too, since a list should provide items in a 
certain category, not something in a hierarchy.

> on an optional location bar, or as an optional tool item on the 
> toolbar. The sidebar looks fixed but it should be optional.


maybe, I don't care personally about that. I actually would think that 
turning on/off some of the UI features is useful, making the desing 
almost look 'modular'. With these path buttons available, I would even 
go as far as to remove the sidebar and the toolbar. Toolbars are a 
highly overrated UI featur anyway. A properly setup menu is much better.

> I think a simple default layout with optional features (treeview, 
> sidebar, toolbar, etc) would be best. Whatever the final Thunar design 
> though, it should reflect the Xfce user's needs rather than the Xfce 
> programmer's preferences. And it should let users have control of how 
> they interact with Thunar and Xfce.


The idea I am getting from the path buttons is that even geeks and nerds 
like them (seeing the responses on the ML). I get the feeling they could 
bridge the new user to the experts out there. They certainly receive a 
positive response....

sofar