Re: File selection dialog changes

[Mark Seaborn <mseaborn argonet co uk>]

Potentially the simplest and most elegant design for a save dialogue box is
this:

The save box can contain a draggable icon (which can be the icon for the
type of file being saved), and a writable field.  The user enters the name
of the file in the writable field, and then drags the icon to a file manager
window.  The file is saved into the directory displayed by that particular
file manager window.  (The dialogue can also have a Save button so that the
user always has the option of entering a full pathname and pressing Save.)

This is handy because you can then have, say, two file manager windows open
for different directories (potentially very far away from each other in the
directory hierarchy), and then save files to each without having to traverse
the directory structure through a cramped save dialogue.

This removes duplication -- there aren't two different file browsers.  It
also gives the user much more visible feedback on where files are going when
they're saved.  If you use a file manager to open your files, it's also a
lot more logical to save files to it too.

This design is also neat in that it allows data from one application to be
saved directly into another:  You could use this save dialogue to drop a
picture into a word processor document, for instance.  This avoids using the
clipboard, which doesn't give the user much feedback as to what is going on.

The GUI I've been using for the past few years (RISC OS) does this, and it
works really well.  I've always been amazed that other GUIs don't work like
this, but I guess the reason is historical -- the usual
file-browser-inside-a-save-box has just been copied by successive GUIs.

I wouldn't want to force this on anyone, but it would be great if GNOME
could have this type of save box as an option.

-- 
         Mark Seaborn
  - mseaborn@argonet.co.uk - http://www.argonet.co.uk/users/mseaborn/ -
 
       ``Red squirrels... you don't see many of them since they
              became extinct'' -- Michael Aspel