[Thunar-dev] Classic UI

[Erik Harrison]

On Wed, 16 Mar 2005 12:16:49 +0100, Benedikt Meurer
<benedikt.meurer at unix-ag.uni-siegen.de> wrote:
> Benedikt Meurer wrote:
> >>> 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!
> >
> > This is the important question: Location bar or path bar?
> 
> To be exact, the question is, do we want:
> 
>   a) http://www.xfce.org/~benny/tmp/20050316-thunar-pathbar.png
>   b) http://www.xfce.org/~benny/tmp/20050316-thunar-locationbar.png
> 
>  From my POV, b) offers the advantage that (desktop) search can be
> integrated as "search://" in the location bar and a search pane on the
> left.

b) is great, but I prefer a).

It provides the same information as a location bar (where am I?), but
I think makes it clearer by breaking down the path into component
objects. It performs many of the task of a tree view in a much simpler
interface. Using it does not require the user switch from mouse to
keyboard.

Location bars have the advantage of being able to instantly plunge
deep into the a hierarchy, but 9 times out of ten bookmarks optimize
better for that case. The only other advantage that I see of the
location bar is what you said Benny, that it provides a way to move
across different name spaces (file:// or search://) but I don't think
it's the case to optimize for.

If I had to pick one or the other, I'd pick the path bar. But I'd love
a FileChooser like UI where both are available.

> 
> greets,
> Benedikt
> _______________________________________________
> 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