Suggestion Next Release

[Les Mikesell]

Andrew Farris wrote:
> 
>> And when they go more than a few folders deep they'll still be annoyed 
>> at all the useless still-open windows left around even if they expect 
>> them.
> 
> Not necessarily.

How can anyone possibly want all of the intermediate windows left open 
when they really just want to get to some deep path location?

>>> A person new to nautilus spatial browsing but who has experience with 
>>> linux may find it surprising, and so will someone who has experience 
>>> with Windows Explorer but who has never seen Apple OS. 
>>
>> The finder in OS X doesn't clutter my screen that way - at least in 
>> 10.5.  What Apple OS do you mean?
> 
> Thats because Apple has chosen not to make it default behavior, not 
> because it is not included.

And that's because Apple makes some effort to give people a better 
experience.

>  Take a look in the Finder preferences and 
> you'll find it right there (always open in new window) and then set your 
> finder mode to icon view (cmd-1) and start browsing spatially.

But I don't want to browse spatially.

> OSX will 
> behave very similarly to Gnome when you've done that, remembering window 
> placement for any directory you have opened.

I'll control that myself, thank you.

> Whether it is the default behavior is not something I'm really concerned 
> about, only the perception that it is somehow 'wrong' because you don't 
> like it.

No option is 'wrong' if a user sets it himself. In that case it isn't 
anyone else's business. The default behavior is the only one where you 
can pass judgment.

> I suggest you go have a look through gnome development mailing lists for 
> discussion on spatial browsing if you really are interested (especially 
> if you want to argue it should not be the default for upstream).  You 
> might also find this [1] interesting (see point 6).

If I understand point 6 to mean that spatial browsing relates more 
closely to physical objects, that makes sense and is why I don't like 
it.  If I wanted things to be as inconvenient as physical objects I 
wouldn't be sitting at a desk using a computer.  I want the objects to 
come to me, not to be frozen in some inconvenient distant space.  And I 
want them to clean up after themselves better than things in the 
physical world.

> This thread is one more example of why HCI is still (3 years after this 
> blog) in the stone ages.. because people continue to demand things work 
> the way they first learned them to work even when it makes very little 
> sense from a perspective of how a human might best work with a computer.

I'm not demanding things to work the same as I first learned them, I 
just want changes to be for the better, not worse.  The problem is not 
so much about the attributes of spatial windows, although I much prefer 
to control those attributes by my view instead of having them attached 
to the object itself, the real problem is that opening unwanted windows 
is a side effect of navigation.  I don't want to have to remember some 
unnatural action for navigation vs. end point choices and I want an 
explict 'open a new window' when I reach locations that I want left open.

> And interesting read [2] on why the 'desktop' itself is a poor interface 
> destined to be forgotten and left behind as we learn to interact with 
> our computers in far more complicated ways.

No argument there, but again, I want the objects/options to come to me, 
not to be hiding in locations distant from my mouse pointer, especially 
as screens get bigger.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com