Re: Usability of the GTK+ 2 file open dialog

[Michael L Torrie <torriem chem byu edu>]

On Tue, 2006-03-07 at 15:19 +0100, Sven Neumann wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Toby <tobia conforto linux it> writes:
> 
> > Now for one of the most annoying things ever: how in the world am I
> > supposed to select hidden files on GTK2's file dialog!?
> 
> Right-click and select "Show Hidden Files" from the menu. Yes, there
> should be a way to globally enable this. IIRC there's a bug report on
> this for quite a while. Someone just needs to find some time (30
> minutes should be more than enough) to add this to GtkSettings. But
> obviously noone cares enough to contribute such a patch.

Yet another example of why Apple was right about the one-button mouse.
There is nothing intuitive about having a right-click menu to activate
this.  Even if a user knows that right-click generally means
"properties" how is he to know that this right-click action affects
anything other than the item he is right-clicking on?  

So while I'm glad that a bug report has been filed, this should never
have been done this way in the first place. Furthermore, a global option
is nice, that is way too coarse.  I believe this option needs to be in
each dialog box (due to the nature of linux) and should be easily
accessible.  

> 
> > Another one: who came up with the retarded idea of "Browse for other
> > folders"?  Just show the damn thing already!  Why add 1 useless
> > click (on a small widget on top of that) to 90% of file dialog
> > usage?
> 
> If you started to use the bookmarks feature, it is likely that you
> will not need to use the folders list for about 95% of your file
> dialog usage. That is my experience at least.

Sure that works.  But I have to use a mouse (or a number of tab
keystrokes). How is this more efficient than just doing what this person
asked?

> 
> > One minor thing: I noticed that Alt-Up goes to the parent directory.
> > I'd give Backspace the same behaviour, following popular OS usage.
> 
> Backspace is already bound to "up-folder". It is however probably been
> eaten by another widget that gets the key-press first. Might make
> sense to investigate if this can be changed.
> 
> > This is only based on my user experience.  I'm sure more people will
> > come up with other issues about features I'm not using (~ expansion...)
> 
> Your user model is obviously different than mine because I very much
> prefer the new file-chooser over the old one. The problem is to find
> something that works well for the majority of GTK+ users and I believe
> that the new file-chooser dialog does a pretty good job at this. But
> of course it would need some research to find out.

We won't be able to keep everyone completely happy, but I think we can
bring back the features that made the GTK1 dialog box so efficient
without hurting the newbies.

> 
> 
> Sven
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