A new xfce4-fm GUI with images (Was Re: New file manager (WAS Re: xffm))

[David Fraser]

Jeff Franks wrote:

>A new xfce4-fm GUI design
>=========================
>
>Here are a few mock images I put together to give you an idea of what I think the new file manager should look like. xffm has all the file mangement functionality that a file manager needs, and it works very well. From a functional viewpoint xffm is a good application. The problem it has is with its user interface design. xffm breaks 'basic' GUI guidlines by presenting common ideas and tasks in an umfamilar way. You can't do that because it confuses users and they wont use the application.
>
>These images are based on the way I work with my file manager. I use only the icon view and resize the window to one quarter of my screen size, so that 2, 3 or 4 windows can fit neatly side-by-side when I need them to. In this configuration, I think both a menubar and toolbar take up too much space. 
>
>Spatial Nautlius (aaagh!) has no toolbar. When Windows 3.0 came out applications did not have toolbars. It was cumbersome to navigate through the main menu everytime looking for the menu items for commonly performed tasks. With Windows 3.1 the idea of toolbars caught on because it was a convient place to put buttons that accessed commonly used functions. I definitley think having no toolbar is GUI bad design.
>
>These three images are a mock-up using the current xffm and xfce4-fm windows. 
>
>Here's the first image:  
>
>[snip]
>
>This window displays a separate menubar, toolbar, and GTK statusbar. The icons on the toolbar should only be for non-file-management tasks. The first three icons move up, back and forward. I find having these icons in this position makes it fast and easy to navigate up and down the file system tree. The next five icons are for a terminal, the home directory, refresh the icon view, and increase and decrease icon size. The terminal button should open the terminal window in the same directory as that displayed in the icon view. Currently the increase and decrease icon size functions cycle around which is confusing. The increase icon size button when clicked enough times will jump to the smallest size and cycle through the sizes again. This make the decrease icon size button obselete. I think that these functions should not cycle, but should only increase or decrease the icon sizes, stopping at the minimum and maximum sizes for the range. 
>
>The last three buttons are for quitting the application and for splitting the icon view, either vertically or horizontially. I find splitting the icon view useful for many file management tasks (like moving and copying files). It allows me to say - split the icon view into two identical panes and then using the window manager, maximize the window in only the horizontal or vertical direction. Then using the up, back and forward arrows on the toolbar quickly navigate one icon view to another directory. A 'duplicate window' toolbar button would also be useful because it would let you create a new icon view window rather than split the current view. I don't think you need to split the icon view into more than two panes. I only ever use two, at most. 
>
>Here's the next image:
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>[snip]
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>The difference in this image is that the main menu is now on the toolbar, using the new GTK+ 2.6 GtkMenuToolButton widget. User's would have the option of either displaying the menu in a menubar or in a pop-up menu on the toolbar. I think this is a great feature because it saves window real estate when your working with smaller sized windows. 
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>I tend not to use the file manager main menu a lot if the common functions I use are on the toolbar and the appropriate file tasks are in the pop-up context menu. But I think you still need to have a main menu because it's the one widget new users expect find, and expect to be able to access all application functions from.
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>Here's the last image that just shows the main menu on the toolbar in its opened state:
>
>[snip]
>
>Well that's it! Many of the other functions that currently exist in xffm are related to launching external tools, so these could be accessed under the tools menu. GTK+ 2.8 is supposed to include a toolbar editor so at some time in the future the file manager could offer a small number of optional toolbar buttons. You might want to carefully think about using GtkIconView. I know Edscott has reservations but the likelihood is that GtkIconView will get used at some point. Why not save a lot of effort up front reinventing wheel and spend your time on more important things. GtkListStore in GTK+ 2.6 has a new function (gtk_list_store_insert_with_values()) that speeds up adding multiple items to a sorted list by emitting only a row_inserted signal, instead of emitting a row_inserted, a row_changed and a rows_reordered signal after each addition. 
>
>Well those are a few of my ideas for your consumption :-).
>Regards,
>
>Jeff Franks
>  
>
This looks much cleaner than existing xffm. Some minor comments:

- An up icon! Yes please! I could never understand how to do that in 
xffm until I found the .. directory on a level *below* the current 
directory in the treeview. This is quite unintuitive.
- The split horizontal icon looks like a pause button. In fact in 
current xffm it looks like there are next track, pause, and previous 
track icons from a media player! Most split systems work by simply 
dragging a line to split the window.

David