[Thunar-dev] user interface ideas

[Erlend Davidson]

DINH Viêt Hoà wrote:
>     Hello !
>
>   I am just starting to use xfce (after having used ctwm for years)  
> and it looks that this is a nice user interface for Desktop use.
> Things remains simple and this is less buggy than gnome things  
> themselves.
> Note that I am also a user of Mac OS X.
>
> Especially, through XFCE, I am using thunar, the file manager of XFCE.  
> This is nice but I have some user interface ideas to improve it :
> 1 - That would be nice if there was a search text field just next to  
> the Pathbar,
> so that we can filter the current directory content. The directory  
> content view would show filenames that contains what was entered in  
> the search (that has to be displayed as the user type in the text  
> entry).
>   
Gtk has by standard a filtering feature like this.  It works in Thunar.  
When you're in a directory start typing (like you would in Windows 
Explorer to find a file) and you'll see a textbox appear at the bottom 
right containing whatever you're typing.  The contents of the directory 
will be filtered accordingly.
> 2 - Sorting of filenames could be also improved if they were sorted  
> non-case sensitively.
>   
Yes!  I very much agree with this - it's the main reason I used Rox for 
so long.  People don't remember the exact filename and often don't 
remember the case of the first letter.

I'd quite like it to be easier to change between the Location Selector 
between the pathbar and toolbar styles - perhaps if you roll the 
mouse-wheel over it then it switches between being a pathbar and a 
toolbar.  This is useful when you want to copy and paste the path of the 
directory you are in.

I remember reading about the MacOSX Filer columns-view in thunar a while 
ago - will this be implemented one day?  It's very good for 
copying/moving files around.  Can a plugin do something like this?

Also, is thunar going to have some kind of search feature?  Would 
integration with Beagle or locate be a plugin rather than a feature?