Re: First UI component needing replacement.

[Dylan Griffiths <Dylan_G bigfoot com>]

"Michael T. Babcock" wrote:
> 
> I've actually grown to like having my directories and files mixed together,
> but not the left-right scrolling that Windows insists on.  My favorite file
> dialogs so far are those in MS Office 97 (haven't seen 2000).  It has a
> number of options that are very useful, although it is slightly
> over-cluttered.  An MRU list seems strange to me as this should be a part of
> the main desktop/file manager UI (IMHO) ... unless the file manager is
> componentised (as it should be) to offer a file open/file save dialog with
> the same visual features as a normal browsing dialog (plus a couple options
> like default extension, etc.).

The MRU is for directories, and would be stored on a per application basis
in the application's ~/.gnome/{program name} file.  This would let you, for
example, use The Gimp in two or three directories (perhaps the local image
editing directory, and the mounted NFS share of the htdocs directory), and
move between the two of them without having to retype or rebrowse an entire
path.  Most applications I know of work in a few limited directories (except
for filemanagers), and catering to this would save a lot of users a lot of
time.
 
> That said, I'd be even more impressed with a more finder-ish style (see list
> archives for my suggestion on how to do a (IMHO) proper hierarchial file
> browser ...
> 
> (basic finder style shown below:)
> 
> v folder
>  o folder
>  o folder
>  v folder
>   []file
>   []file
>   []file
>  o folder
> 
> Except that I would change some of the scrolling characteristics, as well as
> show the full path below the title bar.  Files could even be given
> side-by-side with:

The full path is always shown.  Just because we have gone from CLI to GUI,
does not mean we should throw away the valuable context of where the user is
in the file system.  That's very bad.
 
> v folder
>  o folder
>  o folder
>  v folder
>   []file  []file  []file
>   []file  []file  []file
>   []file  []file  []file
>  o folder

This approach sounds like the Mozilla one.  If those are checkboxes next to
the files, that could allow for non-ambigous selection of multiple files. 

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