XFCE design SIG: Thunar: Several design ideas

[xfcemailing.kyoo at xoxy.net]

    I have a couple ideas to make Thunar a "better" file manager in my 
opinion.  Mostly, they're based on things I liked about Nautilus2 before 
switching to XFCE at the coming of Gnome3.  As someone who currently has 
little programming knowledge, ideas is all they are.  I'm not suggesting 
XFCE4 is made over to be completely like Gnome2.  I'm just saying some 
ideas from Gnome2 could be used to improve XFCE4.
    I currently use Nautilus2 as my file and desktop manager, but it's 
no longer developed and I'd rather use Thunar than Nautilus3 - if Thunar 
has the options and niceties that originally made me choose Nautilus2 
over Konqueror, Dolphin, pcmanfm, etc.

    1) Allow the user to set a background/wallpaper for the file and 
folder pane(?).  I appreciate being able to customize the look of many 
things and like having something besides the default plain white in the 
file and folder view.  Nautilus2 FM with a background: 
http://ompldr.org/vOHZpMg
    2) An optional, more compact icon arrangement.  This would be 
different from the current similarly-named Compact List.  My idea would 
be both to have the icons closer together in the Compact Icons view than 
the Icons view and to show only a certain amount of long file names, 
until the files' icons were moused over, as Nautilus2 does.  As you can 
see in the following image, Nautilus2 shows more icons in the view than 
Thunar, even though Thunar's icons are smaller.  Both windows are the 
same width and height.  Nautilus2 compared to Thunar: 
http://ompldr.org/vOHZpaA
    3) In 2)'s image above, you can also see that Nautilus' file and 
folder names are center-aligned, rather than left-aligned.  To me, this 
looks more tidy, especially for certain names where some lines are 
significantly shorter than others (compare [The Watcher] as well as 
daa2iso.zip).
    4) One feature Nautilus2 didn't have that I would like is a 
"separate" thumbnail view.  From the View menu, View as Thumbnails could 
be chosen, which would set the same setting Edit > Preferences > Display 
 > Show thumbnails does.  I usually don't want thumbnails as they take 
up more room and visually break up things for me.  However, I 
occasionally want to browse images by thumbnail rather than file name. 
Having this in the View menu would be allow switching between icons and 
thumbnails more quickly.  Alternately, a check box could be added to the 
View menu directly below Show Hidden Files.
    5) I think it looks nicer to name and rename files and folders in 
the file manager window, rather than opening a pop-up to do this. 
Renaming in the FM window in Nautilus2: http://ompldr.org/vOHZpaw
    6) While having a simple drop down box to choose the default 
application to open a file type with on the first Properties page is 
nice, I would also like to be able to -remove- applications from the 
list in the case where certain applications I never want to open this 
file type with add themselves to the list (ex: "A Wine Application" on 
numerous file types).  The way Nautilus2 handles this in the GUI is to 
add an extra tab to the file's Properties page.  I suppose an x or minus 
icon could be added beside each item in the drop-down list, but I think 
that would make it fairly easy to remove the wrong app, especially if 
there are several the user wants to remove.  Here's a mock-up using a 
combination of Thunar & Nautilus2: http://ompldr.org/vOHZpcw
    7) Having the option of applying rwx permissions to files and 
directories with a grid of checkboxes rather than drop-down menus would 
be nice.  At the least, execute permission should be added to Thunar's 
Properties > Permissions tab.
    8) In Nautilus, I like being able to select whether to run or view 
an executable text file every time.  In Thunar, the file is always run. 
  In Nautilus' preferences, the options given are always run, never run, 
and always ask.
    9) Occasionally, having pasted files/folders automatically selected 
after pasting is useful.
    10) The option to create a symlink to the selected 
file(s)/directory(s) (with an absolute path) in Nautilus' right-click 
menu is used often by me.

    Thanks for reading my large number of selections with long 
explanations. If/when I learn C properly, they're all on my long list of 
things I want to change, at least to patch the copies on my computer. 
However, I would quite appreciate if the best of these suggestions (or 
all of them) were implemented sooner than that.
    Regardless of whether any of this is added, what is people's feedback?

-Matt