[Thunar-dev] Location Bar ala Firefox

[Benedikt Meurer]

Jeff Franks wrote:
>> Hm, how about one of these?
>>
>> http://www.xfce.org/~benny/tmp/20050319-thunar_go1.png
>> http://www.xfce.org/~benny/tmp/20050319-thunar_go2.png
>>
>> Because having both the close and the go button in front of the entry 
>> widget looks really odd to me.
>>
> I'm sorry, but I really have to asked this. You are trying to design an 
> a simple and easy to use file manager with a clean GUI. Why are you even 
> considering a design with duplicate GUI functionality? You leave out the 
> toolbar, a very basic and essential GUI widget that users expect to be 
> able to use to access frequently used functions, ...

The toolbars are optional and disabled by default.

> If its worth anything, I prefer the path bar, but not at the bottom. 

Let's use the term "path bar" (as that's also the name of the class in 
Gtk) to refer to the location buttons and the term "location bar" to 
refer to the entry widget.

The "location bar" is visible on the bottom after you activated the 
"Open Location" action (e.g. File->Open Location or Ctrl+L). It's not 
something that's visible all the time.

> It's position should optional. One annoying thing about Firefox is the 
> search bar poping up at the bottom of the window. Like many users I use 
> tend to use my mouse rather than keyboard shortcuts. I click on the find 
> menu item at the top of a maximized Firefox window and then have to move 
> my mouse all the way down to the bottom left hand corner of the window 
> to enter the search text. It's a long way to travel on a large monitor 
> and gets rather annoying after a while. I think having the path bar 
> fixed at the bottom would not be a good idea.

It's not fixed (see above).

I wonder why you need the mouse to find in Firefox; once you pressed 
Ctrl+F, selected Edit->Find in page or started to type with typeahead, 
the entry widget gets focus and you can start to type the search string 
immediatly without the need for a mouse.

Btw: I'm still open for the separate 'Open Location' dialog idea. This 
would offer atleast one advantage: User's know how to handle (and get 
rid of dialogs).

> Jeff.

greets,
Benedikt