[Thunar-dev] Classic UI

[Erik Harrison]

On Tue, 15 Mar 2005 18:35:41 -0500, Adam Scheinberg
<ascheinberg at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.

I would agree with you in principle, though I'd call you on the later points.

Thunar is meant to be simple and fast. It is to Nautilus what all of
Xfce is to Gnome.

The goal is not to so much do something new, but do something right -
learnable and simple UI, fast, functional. Lots of UI design going on
here, as you may notice, and on the Wiki there is some solid generic
implementation discussion.

Bloat is a silly term. But having to install and entire desktop
environment, much like Cobind does, just to get Nautilus is also
silly. Startup times in the several seconds for reading that desktop
environment libraries into memory to start just a file manager also
seems silly.
> 
> 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
> > _______________________________________________
> > Thunar-dev mailing list
> > Thunar-dev at xfce.org
> > http://foo-projects.org/mailman/listinfo/thunar-dev
> >
> 
> --
> Adam Scheinberg
> ascheinberg at gmail.com
> _______________________________________________
> Thunar-dev mailing list
> Thunar-dev at xfce.org
> http://foo-projects.org/mailman/listinfo/thunar-dev
> 


-- 
CAPS LOCK: ITS LIKE THE CRUISE CONTROL FOR AWESOME
-Erik