Re: notes from file selector talk

[Daniel Borgmann <daniel liebesgedichte net>]

On Fri, 2002-07-19 at 23:13, Luis Villa wrote: 
> UI:
> *from email- 'UI should be determined by usability team'
> 	*anna says 'maybe we shouldn't try to innovate on this one'- just copy/lift from someone else
> 		*screenshot as many different ones as possible, compare features, how extensible, etc.
> 		*OS/X one is only one substantially different from Windows filesel
> 			*would have advantage of being easy to implement

I took a look at the OS/X guide and I love the save dialog. It seems to
be simple, easy to understand and efficient. It uses a column view for
folder selection though. Maybe this would be a good reason to implement
column view in Nautilus? :) Then it could be made consitent with
Nautilus (if this would be used).


> 	*ability to add preview widget (perhaps in different locations?)

Wouldn't it make sense to use Nautilus icon rendering (and so have a
preview for every file anyway)? For a list/column view the icon could be
rendered elsewhere but still be used as some kind of general preview.
This would be simpler and more consistent behaviour than a toggable
preview that is application specific.


> *history-ish thing-y (possibly drop-down from text entry)

That's what I like about the OS/X thing, the favorites selector
including a small history. 


> *question: is the file selector nearly a file manager or does it do it very simple and interop with your file manager
> 	*or is it extensible so you can choose to do both :)
> 	*minimally requires a 'just open nautilus' button 
> 	*possibly optional: consistency with icons, previews, etc. from nautilus

That's what I mean. IMO it would be great if the file open dialog would
be similar to a Nautilus window (at least sharing the file rendering).
It could even include the "view as..." selection so you can use icon or
list view or whatever there is (maybe a column view?).
What I would love to see is a "connect to..." button or something
similar so I can connect to a FTP server (or something else) via
GnomeVFS. GnomeVFS is very nice but's not actually usefull if there is
no UI for it. Oh well, just some general thoughts. :)