[Thunar-dev] Classic UI

[Brian]

Adam Scheinberg 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?  
>  
>
Heh, that's what I plan to do.

>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!
>  
>
Yes.

>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
>>
>>    
>>
Just signed up for the mailing list to tell you that this is looking 
great. It's shaping up to be the file manager I've always dreamed of but 
could never find. Nautilus looked good, but it took ages to start and 
drew the desktop. Rox was fast, but it was not user-friendly. Showing  
the user the output of rm, cp, and mv shell commands would confuse a lot 
of people. (Not to mention that resizing the window per directory is the 
default behavior)

The features I'm looking for in a file manager are:
*   Gtk based.
*   Simplicity. It moves files, works with drag and drop, deletes files, 
launches programs, and makes image thumbnails. I don't really need much 
else.
*   Icon view. I spend much less time searching for things in an icon 
view. It just fits more files in the same amount of screen space than a 
list in my opinion.
*    Find as you type. Highlight files as their names are typed so that 
a simple enter key will open them. Firefox does this really well.
*   Tab-completion enabled address bar. Steal Firefox's ideas again and 
use "Control + L" to jump to the location bar. Possibly combine this 
with the find as you type. The address bar is my favorite feature of Rox.
*   Middle click opens folders in a new window. The only way that 
drag-and-drop is really effective is when you have two windows open. 
Hunting through a right-click menu takes time.
*   Light weight.
*   Doesn't require a lot of libraries. (This probably comes from using 
Gentoo)

That new mockup looks very nice. (I suppose this is a good excuse to 
learn Python. I'm getting the urge to tinker)

By the way, I tried the GtkFileSelector mockup and it's pretty effective 
and easy to use. But I worry a little about it and the address bar being 
redundant.

Brian Schott