[Thunar-dev] Classic UI

[Adam Scheinberg]

I know I'm new to this list, and I'd hate to chime in at the last
second with zero earned credibility and lots of opinions, but might as
well share, right?  The screenshot looks very nice, but I guess I
would ask this - and I ask seriously, but semi-rhetorically - what's
the draw of a new file manager if it doesn't have something to make it
truly unique from a user standpoint?  In other words - what about
Thunar will define it as something worthwhile? Or is it supposed to be
intentionally oversimplified - should it be the "lynx" of file
managers?

Distributions like the apparently-on-hiatus Cobind ran XFCE 4.0 w/
Nautilus by default.  If the fm feels and looks like Nautilus, then
why would someone want to learn where the options and preferences have
been organized in a new fm?  Why not just actually use Nautilus? I
hope the only answer isn't speed or "bloat." On my system, everything
is fast.  Those terms don't mean much to anyone outside of the current
Linux community anyway.

For me, it would have to be features, or even just one good feature. 
For example, I always liked the BeOS Tracker style "Copy To...," "Move
To...," and "Create Link..." subtrees in the right click menu.   Those
are extremely useful features I think it's rightful for the file
manager to include.  The column view, which I see in the wiki (in
mockup format) looks great too.

Address bar - yes! Fantastic! Don't lose it.  For the majority of the
world (trust me, I am an admin for hundreds of users), the difference
between a file manager and a web browser is unnoticed.  The more they
look alike, the more likely that people can and will figure things out
for themselves.  Address bars are a good thing!

Anyway, I'm getting off topic, my point is, I wouldn't use Nautilus,
XFFM, Konq, Finder, Explorer, Tracker, Rox, or MC as a baseline for a
new fm - I'd use them only to assess their best features and knick
them foir Thunar as painlessly as possible.  While Thunar looks great,
I'd hate to see it creep closer to something that already exists.

Apologies if this stuff has been covered, I haven't peroused the list
archives, but I've read the wiki, and I'm very excited.

Adam  




On Tue, 15 Mar 2005 23:47:24 +0100, Benedikt Meurer
<benedikt.meurer at unix-ag.uni-siegen.de> wrote:
> Benedikt Meurer wrote:
> > I tried to get my hands on improving the classic UI today. It looks
> > pretty similar to navigational Nautilus now.
> >
> > http://www.xfce.org/~benny/tmp/thunar-classic-20050315.png
> >
> > I guess this is what most people would expect when they think about a
> > file manager in the first place. Opinions?
> 
> BTW: I realized that it's important to test the mockups with different
> icon themes. E.g. the GtkFileChooser like UI looked really neat with
> Gartoon, but looks less good with Gnome or Rodent icon themes. The
> latter look better with the classic UI, *IMHO*.
> 
> greets,
> Benedikt
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-- 
Adam Scheinberg
ascheinberg at gmail.com