Re: Gnome 2.6: What were you thinking?

["John (J5) Palmieri" <johnp martianrock com>]

On Thu, 2004-05-13 at 17:18, jamie wrote:
> On Thu, 2004-05-13 at 21:33, John (J5) Palmieri wrote:
> 
> > > 
> > > Well, quite a few people don't think that was a 'very good idea'.
> > And quite a few people do.  Really any change like this is going to have
> > people who love it and people who hate it.  Thats just life.  Should we
> > just freeze the desktop where it is right now and never make a single
> > change?  The thing I don't get is what the argument is about.  

First this dose not need to be cross posted to desktop-devel-list.

> The big problem is that spatial mode is on by default and the default
> left click pops up new windows. Therefore for your Joe average user who
> only left clicks at things he/she will quickly end up with a cluttered
> mess of windows on the screen. 

And you gather this info from what?  There was actual user testing done
that said Spacial was much better for new users.  Most people don't have
deep hierarchies.  I would agree with the cluttered mess argument if
Nautilus opened up a window every time you clicked.  This is not the
case, it only opens up one window for each folder.  Should you put a
shortcut on the desktop the root starts from there.  Also, because
windows pop up in the same location with the same size as last time,
folders can be better organized as to not create clutter.

> It would have been safer to make browse the default and spatial as
> optional cause I'm quite concerned that companies who are looking at
> Gnome to replace their windows boxes might be put off by spatial mode's
> heavy clutter (and after all the negative press they are bound to look
> very closely at this feature). Using spatial in an efficient manner to
> avoid this problem is not intuitive for most such users (and they would
> need some training to use it right).

Again I will defer to the studies that were done.  Don't throw around
gut feelings for fact.  Companies are have more concerns than the file
manager.

Negative press?  There was one article from a person who is know for
being a Gnome basher.  There were plenty of good reviews of spacial
also.

> Then using it correctly also has problems. If I middle click folders
> then I sometimes get very disorientating results. By not reusing the
> existing window and instead popping up a window on the other side of the
> screen with a different size and shape I find It less efficient cause my
> focus, attention and mouse pointer is located over the window that gets
> closed and having to readjust wastes time and annoys me. A browser view
> would always be more efficient in this regard. 

Um then use the browser.  Wow, I can't believe I have to keep saying
that.  Ok, so you want a nice little button that makes it easy to
switch.  The devs are putting it in from what I can gather.

> As for ease of use, I dont see anything in spatial mode which makes
> things easier. If tree views in browser mode are a problem for some
> users then my tabbed nautilus proposal would solve that (the tabs in
> nautilus would represent the directory hierarchy of the current
> directory so allowing fast navigation up and down the directory tree).

Ah, so we come down to it.  Stop talking about it and implement it.

> jamie.

--
J5