[Thunar-dev] Location Bar ala Firefox

[Jeff Franks]

Auke Kok wrote:

> [snip]
>
> I still contest that. When I want to type a path I'll open up a 
> Terminal-0.2.4, not a file manager. The average user will become 
> dissatisfied with a lack of navigational features of a file manager if 
> it doesn't allow him to move from one location to another quickly and 
> without (more importantly) typos.
>
> In my history as system administrator I have seen many users use file 
> managers in all sorts and kinds, and the ****ONLY*** people I have 
> ever seen _TYPING_ a pathname into a dialog ox or file manager were 
> colleague system administrators. I dare all developers to ask their 
> moms to use a location bar to copy a file from a CD to their home 
> directories.
>
> bottom line: a location bar is for a web browser or a skilled person, 
> but not for the meek and plebs. Make it optional, but not the default. 
> The path buttons are far more understandable then a location bar that 
> begs to be filled in (I think it should be at the bottom too, since it 
> bears no relation to the content displayed in the right pane _at all_, 
> but that's optional).
>
> with these arguments, the following mockup fit the best:
>
> http://www.xfce.org/~benny/tmp/20050319-thunar_go1.png
>
> arguably the location bar can be below the menu as well, but must be 
> the full width, not the width of the right pane, as this would suggest 
> a relation between the location displayed in the right panel as well.

If you have followed this thread from the beginning, surely it must be 
obvious by now that we all have our own way of working. We all have our 
likes and dislikes and these may not the same as yours. One thing is for 
certain. You will never get full agreement on the best GUI design. IMO 
the bottom-line would be to choose a reasonable default layout (possibly 
just an icon view) and select the most popular and useful features asked 
for and included these as options.

One thing mentioned recently was layouts. I had thought about this 
earlier and wondered whether including a set of alternative layouts a 
user could select from would be useful.  Konqueror does something like 
this but they are called "Profiles". Each profile can save the window 
layout and/or size (placement also would be great) and can be passed to 
the executable as a command line argument.

Jeff