Call for vote: Nautilus use Browser view for fedora 11

[Joonas Sarajärvi]

Hello,

It seems a few points about the spatial mode need to be clarified
first. And btw, I didn't invent these things and I may have gotten
some things wrong, so please correct me if need be.

The spatial paradigm is a shift from application centric design to an
object centric one. It requires every object to have a consistent
state which is remembered. When a new directory is opened, it is
exactly where the user left it last time. Actually the user doesn't
open a new window, but a folder instead. Opening a folder shouldn't
affect another folder's state, which is why the existing folder is
left open.


2008/12/21 Les Mikesell <lesmikesell at gmail.com>:
> Joonas Sarajärvi wrote:
>> The interface is very clean and simple. There are no toolbars or tabs,
>> just the actual files that I am interested in.
>
> Something that could have been better provided by options to view or not
> each of the other sections of the window in browser mode.

There are such options already in the View menu. However, browser mode
is quite inconvenient to use without the toolbar and and the location
bar.

>> The folders open where I left them the last time, also retaining their
>> settings.
>
> Again, something that would be more useful as a separate option.


Moving the one window to a completely different place and size on the
screen, while also maybe changing the view mode and zoom level would
in my opinion be no better than opening a new window, but a lot more
confusing. It already does this with the shift-click if desired,
though.

I think Ubuntu once did this always, before switching to default to
browser mode, but I may be wrong.

>> I can have a bigger window for directories with lots of
>> stuff or where I want to have a bigger zoom level to make better use
>> of the preview images, or a smaller window for others.
>
> That's reasonable only for some tiny number of directories and only repeat
> the same operations.  What about people who have a lot or nfs-mount many
> resources from other machines and seldom do the same thing in the same
> place?

Spatial mode isn't optimal for everyone. Many computer users use their
machine only for a small number of tasks. There is the browser mode
(Available either from menu for one time browsing or from settings to
have it always) for those who need it.

It wouldn't be very hard to set the view for all the NFS share roots
to the list view, after which one could use the tree to navigate.

>> Drag and drop is easy, but I don't think this is the best thing about
>> spatial mode. It's just an adde bonus.
>>
>> Things I don't like in spatial mode:
>>
>> Tendency to create create lots of windows.
>
> The whole mess could have been avoided simply by keeping the standard
> mechanism to move to a new directory in the current window and adding the
> oddball method for the less likely circumstance when you want a new window.
>   Why did all of the behavior changes have to bundled into one choice that
> includes backwards-incompatibility?

If the spatial mode did that, it wouldn't really be spatial.


>> What I can do to avoid opening a hundred and one windows?
>>
>> Use shift-click or middle click to close the parent folder's window.
>>
>> Use the bookmark feature of Nautilus.
>>
>> Set common 'root' directories, like your homedir and to list mode
>> (ctrl+2) and use the tree to navigate to your target without opening
>> new windows at all.
>
> If you only repeat operations among a few directories you could just throw
> symlinks on your desktop and never navigate at all...

I can set every remote resource I use to have a list view at its root.
Alternatively, I can also use the browser mode to deal with that kind
of situations.

>> Somewhere it was mentioned that all the other major distros have the
>> browser mode as default. However, I think at least Debian has spatial
>> mode as the default mode for Nautilus.
>
> Maybe - there are plenty of things in debian that Ubuntu has to fix to be
> usable.

In my opinion, Debian is at least as usable as a desktop software
distribution as Ubuntu is.

-- 
Joonas Sarajärvi
muepsj at gmail.com