Re: Browser Mode by Default [Was: Nautilus]

[Emmanuele Bassi <ebassi gmail com>]

Hi,

On Fri, 2005-12-23 at 03:38 -0500, Eric Larson wrote:
> Hi, 

> 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. 

No, please don't repeat the same mistake done in the '90s.

Users have become able to handle huge amounts of data even on the web
because there is a new approach of handling data *now*.

The UI of the web have changed: think Google Mail, think Flickr, think
del.icio.us; those UI have nothing to do with "a browser", but with a
"stream" of data.  This works fine for applications, but file management
has nothing to do with a browser.  You don't open Nautilus to check the
position of a file each 15 minutes.  You don't open Nautilus to *see*
where is a file located.  You don't open Nautilus to *change* a document
- even it's position.  Unexperienced users, the ones that should
"benefit of the browser mode" are really unaware of the meaning of the
"file management" issue itself, let alone the meaning of a program.  The
less they are exposed to it, the better, in my opinion, because theyb
tend to create a mess.  Heck, it's a miracle if they even create a
folder to hold their documents; I've been a sysadmin in a windows
environment, and my users didn't even know what the "Explorer" (not
"Internet Explorer") was: their concept of "file management" was to put
documents and folders on the desktop, and rarely change their positions.

So, in a way I'm completely sold to the idea expressed in the thread, of
default locations for Documents, Music, Pictures, Photos and whatever;
also, I'm totally sold for tagging and searching - even the "persistent
search" (vfolder or whatever) is a concept that becomes more and more
important, and I'm thrilled at the idea of having both in Nautilus.

Browser mode, as spatial mode, is no "magic bullet"; also, browser mode
has *nothing* to do with the "web browser thingy": you see documents, or
collection of the same type of documents, with a web browser, and not
files.

> 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.

It's not an ideal - it's something so *real* that has changed *my* usage
of files and directories/documents and folders; and I've been exposed to
every sort of "file management" paradigms as anyone using computers
since the '80s.

Requires training?  As every feature we ship - even if Just Works(tm).
Requires polishing?  As every feature we ship - since we try to achieve
perfection with each and every release.

+++

As I said, I won't object at distributors and packagers changing the
default, at least until they change a *working* set up; I would object
at changing upstream so that distributors do not have to do this
themselves, since upstream is where we can really "break" (and I'm
meaning this in a positive way) the user's experience - but in the end I
would bow to any decision the maintainers take.

Ciao,
 Emmanuele.

-- 
Emmanuele Bassi - <ebassi gmail com>
Log: http://log.emmanuelebassi.net