Re: Browser Mode by Default [Was: Nautilus]

[Eric Larson <elarson novell com>]

Hi, 

On Thu, 2005-12-22 at 03:56 +1100, Jeff Waugh wrote:
> <quote who="Emmanuele Bassi">
> 
> > If Topaz is moving toward a more comprehensive definition of "first
> > class citizen" of the desktop, I think that the overall user experience
> > will benefit from a widespread spatial paradigm.
> 
> I think it's an important physiological aspect to consider when writing
> software, but I don't think that consideration and application of the
> concept immediately results in a spatial file manager being the best
> solution for managing files. It turns out that most users don't like or
> understand how it works.
> 
> "Making it spatial" doesn't actually mean anything. It's not something you
> aim for. It's just part of the process of understanding how to make software
> work really well for bipedal humanoids with opposable thumbs.
> 
> - Jeff
> 


Just to add to this aspect...

Users often associate documents with applications. For example, if you
ask a user to look for some article the person wrote, they will more
often then not open the application they used to create the document. In
this context, a "spatial" or one document per window model makes sense.
Yet, users have also been exposed to the world wide web (which I doubt
anyone would argue has not been successful reaching critical mass) and
learned to handle massive amounts of data using hypertext. 

The point here is choosing the right tool for the job is critical.
Spatial mode nautilus does not address the massive amounts of data that
computers can (and should) work with. Browser mode emulates a web
browser, which is a proven interface for handling huge amounts of data. 

If we ignore our users for the glory of hip UI ideals, we have lost the
point of software. If a piece of code that solves the worlds problem is
never executed it is nothing more 1s and 0s.

Eric