Re: [Nautilus-list] Nautilus Smoke Test --- first draft, feedbackRequest.

[Calum Benson <calum benson sun com>]

John Sullivan wrote:

> So it's a tradeoff (like everything). The tradeoff is between "handiest
> behavior" and "most consistent behavior". Tradeoffs like this where the pros
> & cons are along different dimensions are very hard to judge.

Very true.  However, having just been using a Windows desktop
half-an-hour earlier, I recently deleted a whole folder from my GNOME
desktop by mistake because I didn't realise it wasn't a link... it *was*
the folder.  (Sure, it popped up a message box to try and stop me, but
it didn't make it clear what was going to happen, so I just ignored
it...)  And all I'd done to get the folder there in the first place was
a default drag out of the gmc window... sorry, I wasn't using Nautilus 
:o)

So, that's perhaps another point in favour of making the default
behaviour a link rather than a move in this case... you may just save
the lives of people who work in mixed-desktop office environments, or
who have just migrated to GNOME from Windoze!

As an aside, the Amiga has another interesting concept here (which it
doesn't quite carry through in practice, but that's beside the point)...
you can drag an item onto the desktop, and it will be moved there so you
can get at it quickly while you're working with it.  But once you're
finished with it, you can "put it away" again by picking an item on its
shortcut menu, and it quietly goes back to where it used to live in the
file structure.  (Much like being able to take things back out of the
Trash again on most desktops these days.)  It works quite nicely,
really.

Cheeri,
Calum.

-- 
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum benson ireland sun com    http://www.sun.ie

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems