User interface for the new file manager

[Andrew Conkling]

On Sun, 2005-03-20 at 23:25 +0100, Benedikt Meurer wrote:
> http://thunar.xfce.org/wiki/ui:suggestion-20050320
> 
>  From the 4 layouts shown on the summary page, only the first two are 
> considered important, because that seems to be the way users want to 
> interact with a file manager, where the second layout is probably used 
> mostly by advanced users or users that have used Windows Explorer or 
> Konqueror before. The first layout is based on the GtkFileChooser design 
> in Gtk 2.4 and above.
> 
> Comments please.

Benny (and company),
I think that looks very good; kudos on the work so far.  I like the idea
to model off of the GTK+ file dialog, but a couple of tweaks suitable
for file browsing seem worth mentioning:

1. You can do nothing in the GTK+ dialog shortcut sidebar but select
shortcuts, yet you must double-click them to select them.  If you are
not adding any functionality to them, might you make them single-click?

2. Also on the shortcuts, I know I do file browsing usually when working
on different tasks: programming, graphics, etc.  Might there be some way
of grouping shortcuts?

3. One thing I would probably use is a group of well-placed buttons
above the shortcut bar (perhaps some arrows, a sort button, etc.).
Perhaps you think that would be crowding the UI, but it would be nice;
in that case, it would be easier not to rely on the menubar, one could
turn it off, etc.

OK, just a few suggestions; sorry if you wanted these posted elsewhere,
but I didn't know where 'elsewhere' would be.

(I do use Rox but this seems like a very good alternative; I look
forward to it!)

Cheers,
Andrew