Re: RFC: On-line Content Filtering of directories

[Alexander Larsson <alexl redhat com>]

On Fri, 2005-04-22 at 16:20 +0200, Diego Gonzalez wrote:
> Ok
> 
> here are my views on the difference of the three methods, included are
> some of the reasons why i made this patch:
> 
> *) The typeahaed filtering only works in the list view mode, not in
> the Icon View, my filtering patch works on both, also 
> currently typeahead (that is, if i press Ctrl+F on the list view)
> seems to be badly broken in HEAD, at least it doesn't
> work for me.
>
> If (it doesn't work for me, so i can't be sure about this fact)
> typeahead works in the same way as it works in the GtkTreeView it only
> matches the string entered agains the start of files and directories.
> 
> The other feature with which you press the first letter of a file and
> the view goes to the first file that starts with that letter
> isn't enough most of the times (i'm talking about my particular use of
> nautilus)

Eh? typeahead works fine in icon view. Just type the start of a filename
and it'll jump to it. It is not limited to one character.

I'm not sure why the threeview-specific (ctrl-f) typeahead is broken
though.

Its true that the typeahead is limited to searching at the start of the
file, however that can easily be changed.

Also, we likely need a "next match" keybinding for the typeahead system.
Someone on irc suggested ctrl-g, which is what most apps use for "find
next".

> *) As this feature has to be explicitly activated, i mean, to use it
> you have to press a button or a combination of keys and as the view
> looses the filtering when closing a window or hidding the filtering
> bar, I don't think it is that confusing as there is an explicit visual
> feedback (that is the filtering bar) telling the user that the
> contents of the directory are beeing filtered.

Yeah, that is true. (Although I think it should be made even more
obvious that the window/view is filtered, and how to get out of that if
possible.)

My main concern is trying to limit the amount of overlapping features,
so that each addition of a feature adds something important over the
existing ones. Each overlapping feature increase complexity, make the UI
harder to understand/more crowded and increase maintenance costs. 

What are the ways we can make this more obvious to the user?
Here are some ideas:
* Have a remove button in the filtering bar, similar to the one firefox
has in its search bar.
* Perhaps make it more obvious that the filter is on the name, by having
"name" somewhere on the filter bar. (Do we want to filter on other
fields too btw? say type, or owner)
* Sometimes you might not see the whole window, or just not look at the
bottom. Maybe we could figure out some other (additional) way to say
that this is a filtered view that is visible in the whole window, or at
least in more places. Maybe we can use colors? background color? some
sort of border around the view? different window title?
* The status bar should perhaps say something like "3 items (of 28)" to
make it obvious the count is of the filtered items

Also: 
* Need a mnemonic on the filter label
* I think ctrl-g might be more useful for "next typeahead match" than
for filtering. We should pick a different accelerator.

Some behavioural questions:
* What happens with your selection when you filter? Say you have
something selected, and then you filter so that item is not visible,
then you delete. Is the file deleted?
* Same with selection changes when filtering. Is select by
pattern/select all limited by the filter?
* What happens if you create a new folder/templated file or copy a file
into a filtered view. If we do nothing, the new (say "untitled folder")
file won't be visible until you remove the filter (not letting you
rename the folder), which is sort of strange. Another perhaps surprising
behaviour (or perhaps not) is when you rename a file and it disappears
(because it was filtered out).
* How does filtering work in manual arrangement mode. Do we keep the
positions, leading to lots of empty space? I guess one could say you
just shouldn't use this mode with filtering. But it leads to the
question, do we allow filtering on the desktop?


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
 Alexander Larsson                                            Red Hat, Inc 
                   alexl redhat com    alla lysator liu se 
He's a benighted dishevelled werewolf possessed of the uncanny powers of an 
insect. She's a violent tempestuous bodyguard from out of town. They fight 
crime!