[Nautilus-list] Some Bugs and Concerns

[Christopher "D." Felton <newmojo home com>]

Congrats Guys, 

I can't wait for your offical release to the GNOME community.

I have been installing the PR releases and ever since the PR3 I have
been installing and testing Nautilus on a daily basis.  I have also been
reading this email list for a few months.  I am a non-programmer and
this is the first project that I have taken enough interest in to do
these sort of things.  Is everyone screaming "Get Out Before Its To
Late"? - sorry I'm kinda hook on this feeling.

I am pretty impressed with Nautilus so far.  However, you are going to
be walking in to a wolve's den in a month.  If Nautilus isn't ready for
prime time KDE and GNOME users alike are going to raise a ruckus.  As
you can tell there is a little anti-corporation fever running through
the community at all times.  Remember you are writing software for the
smartest people on earth, or at least many of them think that. ;)  You
have to admit the media has made you guys out to be able to walk on
water, cure the sick, and raise the dead.

What follows is a list of possible bugs, concerns, and requests for
Eazel Services.  I am running RedHat 7.0 so beware that these may be
version specific.  I am willing to file these in Bugzilla; however,
since this is my first time doing this I wanted to get your impression.

BUGS AND CONCERNS
-- .wav files do not show up in the music view and also freeze Nautilus.
On mouseover the icon I do get sound preview and sound preview icon, but
as soon as I pull the mouse off the icon Nautilus freezes on me.
Happens usually after I pull the mouse of the icon before .wav is done
playing.  When I try to log out I get this message that ---
nautiilus--sm-config-prefix / nautilus-2jFSEe/  with options to remove
or cancel.

--  Browser capabilities - Nautilus will make a very nice browser.  My
biggest concerns are that the toolbar arrows for navigation do not work
like they should- hitting the back button doesn't take me back to my
last viewed page, etc...  I think this is probably a fairly major bug
and should be fix by 1.0.  Also, it seems that gtk themes now effect the
Mozilla builds by Eazel by changing the color of the Classic theme under
Mozilla.  If you use dark or very like themes(such as the aqua-like
themes <-- the aqua theme also looks bad on the toolbars check it out
these are popular themes)  Mozilla looks terrible with gtk themes
effecting its color.  I think we all know ways that the browser needs to
be improved but there is only so much you can do before 1.0.  But also
get a file download capability into 1.0.  If Nautilus is going to have
some web browser capabilities, then 1.0 should have at the very least
some minimal browser features.  Even though we are Linux users a
majority of desktop-types are going to try to compare Nautilus to
Internet Explorer.  Don't tell anyone else, but there are some features
I like about Internet Explorer.

-- Sidebar is not intuitive - sidebar seems to change sizes many times
while opening new windows.  Plus the placement of files and folders in
the treeview is to spreadout.  You have to increase the size of the
Sidebar too much anytime you want to use treeview to go in you system
more than two directories.  Also the Sidebar looks really ugly when you
are browsing web pages.  Your location doesn't fit in the Sidebar so
that much of it is cut off.  Expanding and contracting the sidebar with
single click is a true test of coordination and skill <-- this should
act like Mozilla's expand and contract sidebar feature.

-- Toolbar - text in the buttons should be optional for intermiedate and
advanced users.  To much screen real estate is being used up for power
users.  Also Advanced Users should have a check button for viewing
backup files, hidden files, etc... --> I hate going into preferences
everytime I need to see hidden files. It is such a waste of time for
something I like to use often.

-- Mounting removable media - this is not very well implemented yet.
When icons appear for mounted volumes it is random and sporatic often
covering other icons on my desktop.  Titles of CDROMs seem to get cut
off at the edge of the screen.  Also it is on the desktop underneath all
of my windows.  getting to the icons is a lot of work.  I would like
permanent icons on the desktop that have mounted and unmounted
symbols---> but that's just me.  Also what if the tasklist (I know this
is not your responsibility) had a button on its handle for automatically
minimizing all windows.  Kind of like a Windows98 "show desktop"
feature.

-- Shortcut arrows on icons - They are way out there in right field -
can they brought closer to the icons and made a little more visable.
Remember there are a lot of kids running gnome who like to have there
desktop gothic black  -- not me -- you can check my screenshot out at
http://gtk.themes.org on the front page by chrisfelton.  Evolution and
Nautilus running together  :>)  I have been waiting a long time for
that.

-- Memory Consumption - better, but still overwhelming my AMD K6-2
500Mhz w/ 96 MB RAM and 8 MB of that shared with video because I have an
embarrassing Compaq Presario.  Nautilus-notes, Nautilus-tree,
Nautilus-history all take up as much memory as some single gnome
applications.  I know you can shut them down, but who wants to take away
features.  Nautilus and Mozilla running together make running other
programs drag my system down -- I know beta software.  Linux users want
speed.  Also remember Linux Desktops are perfect for cheap internet
enabled-countertop computers of the future and also in the third world
where the home computer revolution is still needing to really start.
Nautilus should run these computers and highend Linux and Unix servers.


EAZEL SERVICES

In the future, I would like the Eazel team to think about adding these
features to the SMART SERVICES line.  

Automatic installation of themes for gtk+, sawfish, and nautilus.  Also,
have an option like Mozilla to automatically use the theme.  Of course
themes would probably have to have something like *.gtheme, *.stheme,
and *.ntheme -- I guess.

Online Email - like hotmail many home users are used to having these
easy to set up, univerally available email accounts.  I would be great
to have an icon on the desktop or in toolbar to automatically go to the
account.  Great place to put ads for "Free Linux Desktop".

Remember I am running 7.0 so I haven't been able to enjoy your services
yet.  Software catalog shouldn't really have command line programs
visable to beginner and possibly intermediate users.

If you are going to sell storage space on your servers, but give 25MB
away free you need to find away to get people to use up that space --  I
dragged and dropped and mp3 to storage; however, I couldn't get a music
view to come up.  If there was a was to stream audio to Nautilus from
your transparent network people would realize the need for more space.

Can't wait for easy to use backup software.

Services should also be based on individual or business needs.  I don't
want to pay the same as a business.  I don't need apache, mod-php,
mod-perl that businesses depend on for quality builds.  There should be
different pricing and plans for different needs.

Also guys if discussion breaks out on GNotices - about some Cut, Copy,
Paste debate don't be afraid to chime in.  Just say, "Cut, Copy, Paste
is a bad method, we have something better planned for after 1.0." or
something to that effect.  There is a lot of people that don't pay
attention to the development list, who use GNOME and frequent GNotices
to see who is bashing us today.  So often it feels like only users are
talking and no developers.  I know you guys are very busy, but dropping
a line in every so often would be nice  :)

Anyway, thank you, thank you, thank you for hearing what I had to say.
I really look forward to Nautilus, and I am really excited for Eazel and
all the success you have had already.  Keep up the good work.
Hopefully, I will be taking a C, C++ class this summer and will be able
to someday work with GNOME.  Of course that probably won't happen until
GNOME 3.0.

Sincerely,
Christopher D. Felton

 P.S.  Here is a question for some ex-Apples -- how long will Steve Jobs
let Microsoft roast in the anti-trust trial before he decides to
integrate Mozilla into OS X?  a) 6 months  b) 12 months c) two years