Re: Browser Mode by Default [Was: Nautilus]

[Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt myrealbox com>]

On 22 Dec, 2005, at 5:38 AM, Bastien Nocera wrote:
> ...
> Not quite, the theory is good, but the implementation is lacking in
> details. What made the MacOS spatial finder great was:
> 1. integration with the "window manager" (Modifier+Close would close 
> all the parent windows, including or excluding the current window)
> 2. the draggable titlebar icon that represented the folder itself
> 3. the great integrated treeview with arbitrary root
> 4. the spring-loaded folders

Those are all nifty and I hope GNOME gets them eventually. But #2, #3, 
and #4 weren't available until Mac OS 8.0 in 1997 (#1 was introduced 
with System 7), and plenty of people thought the Finder was pretty cool 
well before then. ;-) (Those who didn't were the sort of people who 
bought Greg's Browser <http://kaleidoscope.net/greg/browser.html>.)

As for spring-loaded folders, I think their absence hurts browser mode 
more than it hurts spatial mode, because spring-loaded folders are a 
way of dragging to a destination folder without having it open 
beforehand. With browser mode it's really *hard* to get both the source 
folder and the destination folder open beforehand, so you often need to 
resort to invisible tricks like spring-loaded folders or the clipboard.

Here's an alternative list of what made the Mac OS spatial finder great:
1.  You could easily drag and drop to move or copy files.
2.  It was very obvious where windows came from. Double-click a folder,
    and a rectangle would zoom up from the folder icon to the new
    window. Close a window, and it would zoom down to its folder icon.
3.  You never had to learn the difference between a folder and a Finder
    window. A folder was only ever visible in one window, and a window
    only ever showed one folder.

And though the Finder in OS X is generally a steaming pile, in its 
spatial mode there is one great detail:
4.  Individual folders remember whether you want them as browsers or
    not. If you have a deep hierarchy of subfolders inside ~/Photos,
    for example, or the shared file server Jeff mentioned, you can set
    that folder to "as Columns" and it'll still be a browser next time
    you open it.

I think having to decide whether you want everything spatial or 
everything browser is a false dilemma. The right answer is "it depends 
on the folder". So #4 is the gravest omission, IMHO.

--
Matthew Paul Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/