RE: RFP: File chooser user interface

[Matthew Berg <galt gothpoodle com>]

On Thu, 2003-09-18 at 06:02, martyn 2 russell bt com wrote:

> I think DND is used a great deal more by people that realise that it
> actually exists.  It is not obvious to first time users.  

It's not obvious to long time users either.  I've been using Linux as my
desktop since 1995, and Gnome since 1998 (version 0.13 I think?).  

Even though I just went and tried it (with gEdit), it's not something
I'm apt to use in the future.  Why?  The primary one is that I have no
idea what supports it, and I know that File->Open or ^O is pretty much
ubiquitous.

> I use DND a lot more than I used to, and the most typical case, is when I
> load an application, then drag the file into it.  This is far quicker than
> selecting file, open, My Documents, ..., ..., etc.

I'm not sure I see how this is easier or quicker, but that's probably
because our work habits differ.  At least for me, dragging a file would
necessitate opening a file manager window, navigating to the file, and
then dragging; opening a file is opening the open dialog, navigating to
the file, and then hitting okay.   

You might argue that I should just keep a window open, but that leaves
the issue of finding the damn thing.  It *may* be exposed, but it might
also be buried behind other windows.  One thing I could imagine being
*severely* annoying is having several different file manager windows
open in different locations because I was working on several different
projects; in that case I would have to scan the window long enough to
determine whether it was the one I was actually looking for.  In other
words, the amount of work to open a file by dragging is (as far as I can
figure) fairly non-deterministic.

-- 
Matthew Berg <galt gothpoodle com>