My $0.07

["Christopher D. Beland" <beland MIT EDU>]

Catching up on the flood of recent e-mail, I was inspired to mention a
few minor usability improvements, most of which have not been covered
yet.

Topics: file selection, filtering, keybindings, file manager
        operations

---

Selection:

If a directory is selected, then I think users would generally expect
all files in that directory to be selected, in the file selection
context.  It makes sense to go ahead and do that, I think.  Of course,
there will also have to be a directory selection context for apps that
need that functionality, in which no files are listed.

I have seen even very advanced users miss pull-down menus (that
determine file type) when saving.  I suggest that a two-stage dialog,
in which the user is explicitly asked what format they want to save
in, might be more user-friendly.  (Assuming there is more than one
format that is actually useful to save in.)  Then again, some people
might find this extra step annoying, so maybe you should be able to
turn it off (and go back to pull-downs).

Novice users generally don't understand what ".." and "." are for, and
thus I wholeheartedly agree that an alternate way to get to the parent
directory is needed.  ("." is, of course, redundant.)

"Select all" and "select none" buttons in multiple open context would
seem to be very convenient.


Filtering:

There absolutely has to be a big "SHOW DOTFILES" or "SHOW FILES
BEGINNING WITH ." button, or else novice users will have a very hard
time indeed finding their dotfiles.  It would be nice if it were on
the front page of the configuration dialog for dialogs.

Also, if novice users don't see all the files in their homedir when
they go to open a file, it turns out that they become confused and
lost.  It is probably best to show all files by default, but make it
very easy to filter down to only files the application can actually
open.


Keybindings:

Users don't think to press meta characters for mouse clicks unless
they're told to do so.  Also, users generally don't like to use both
the keyboard *and* the mouse for the same task unless it's absolutely
necessary.  Personally, I manage to confuse and annoy myself a lot by
forgetting to hold down Ctrl after selecting one group of files,
thinking for a while, and then going to select another.  So if
selecting multiple files is a common operation (which I think it is)
there should be some immediately obvious way (not hidden in
documentation) for the user to do so.  Preferably a mouse-only way for
mouse-centric users (the majority, I guess).  Maybe even just a config
option "Clicks (select multiple files when possible) / (always select
only one file)"?  Or a little "Select multiple files" checkbox right
in the dialog?

The keys "Delete" and "Backspace" should trigger the delete action for
selected files/directories.


FM Operations:

Perhaps there should be a DND way to move files between different
directories, which is a very common operation, best (at least for
mouse-centric users) accompished graphically.  (I assuming renaming a
file to "../filename.ext" should put it in the parent directory, tho
this is not obvious to most people.)

I also agree only read operations should be presented in the Open
context and both read and write can be presented in Save context.


Chris Beland
MIT Athena User Interface Project