Re: [Usability] Re: Suggestion for the actual UI of GTK+'s NewFileSelector

[Melvin Hadasht <melvin hadasht free fr>]

[I am not subscribed to desktop-devel and to usability, so I'm not following 
there.]

Hi,

> Your design is based on the idea that the first thing the user does is
> change to one of the favourites directories before loading the file.
> This should hopefully not be the most common operation. The most common
> one I would expect to be the simple case of "loading a file in the
> current directory".

The first thing I do is check if it is the correct directory, only after that I think 
about the filename. Same thing when opening a file: I check if this is the 
correct directory before looking if the file is in the list. I think most users do
so because we all use a hierarchical filesystem, so first thing is to know where
we are. Unless we let the application decide of the location, in which case 
there is no need for any directory information.

Also, the idea of the minimalistic dialog (current path + filename without a file 
list) is optimal only if the most of application's files reside in one single 
directory so the user does not need to browse the filesystem. Adding an 
expander that will show the file list would make the dialog less easy to 
understand and will bring the question: what should be the default state: 
expanded file list or minimalistic dialog ? If the user expands it, should it 
remain expanded the next time or not ? Should the expand state be saved 
from session to session ?