[Thunar-dev] columns UI

[Ian Katz]

> I'm sure we got your email, man. If you don't get a response, maybe no
> one has an answer. :) We (I use that term with a looseness
> unparalleled) are in the middle of release right now, time is already
> strained.

Understood.  I know how that can get.


> I'm not particularly found of drill down mode myself, but I can see
> how it might fit some workflows where treeview is the current closest
> fit. I don't have any actual data on the Finder usability.

My personal take on it was that the columns UI puts 2-dimensional data
in 2 dimensions (instead of only one dimension).  In other words, the
file manager shows a folder's parents AND siblings.  In a tree view,
this is done by expanding both parents and siblings in the vertical
direction.  In the columns view, parents are expanded horizontally and
siblings are expanded vertically.  You end up doing a lot less
scrolling.

The eureka moment for me was trading mp3s with a friend.  We both have
different ideas for organizing our folders, but the columns view made
it simple for me to step through his folders in one window and
efficiently drag them to the appropriate folder on my machine in
another window.


> It's not in there because during the Thunar prototyping phase, those
> of us heavily involved in the initial discussions for the UI didn't
> bring it up, and the maintainer didn't like it. Had it been argued for
> heavily, it might have made it in. It didn't really have a defender

OK.  To be honest though, if the team isn't enthusiastic about this
feature then I don't want to put pressure.  People always code better
when it's something they love.


> Patches welcome, short of that, consider filing a bug for a feature
> request, so it's not lost in the 4.6 noise.

Absolutely!  Where is your bug tracker located?

-Ian