Re: [Nautilus-list] Re: GNOME user environment brainstorming

[Luke Hutchison <lukeh email com>]

Calum Benson wrote:
> > Simeon Walker wrote:
> > 
> > > IIRC RISC OS programs had no File|Open menu item, why bother
> > > when you can just drag an icon from a filer window and drop
> > > it into an application or onto an applications icon?
> > 
> > Because not everyone is physically able to use a mouse...
> > 
> 
> Or wants to take the hands away from keyboard just to open another
> file, make a small change and save it...

On the other hand, do all users want to sometimes use the keyboard for
these functions?  No--many users prefer the mouse, even if they're aware
of keyboard shortcuts, which some users are not (or they find them too
hard to remember).

I say that the user should have the option of doing things either
way--i.e. that the Open box works the way it does now, but that it also
has a file icon with the tooltip caption something like "Rather than
choosing a locaion to save to in this window, you may drag this icon to
a directory window that you already have open to save the file to that
location, or you may drag to another application to paste this file in
the application at that point."

The keyboard-users and (ex-)Windows users would be happy.  The
mouse-users and visual-thinkers would be happy.  Those who would be
willing to think more in terms of drag-n-drop and to slightly
de-emphasise strict Windows UI imitation would find that this feature
would set our free desktop apart from the competition.

The trouble is that virtually noone on this list has actually used this
feature before so noone knows how useful it is in practice.  I've said
enough about it, so I'm not going to carry on like a broken record..  I
urge you all to try out the Rox desktop (not just the Filer) on
http://rox.sourceforge.net -- it is not vapourware, it's here now and it
works (very well), it is GNOME-compliant but adds many of its own
features as copied from RISC OS (so not everything in GNOME is
ROX-compliant).  I'm not associated with the ROX authors in any way (I
only discovered it the other day), it just does several things the way I
think they should be done.

I will rant no more on this topic...!

Luke Hutchison.