Re: [Nautilus-list] Nautilus Goals

[jpg2 cec wustl edu]

> 	I write with the concern of Nautilus' future.  As of now, Nautilus
> is completely unuseful. 

Nautilus is completely useless?  Um, how do you explain all the users
who use it every day?  I'm aware that it has shortcomings, but to say
it's completely useless...is there something wrong with your setup?
Does nautilus not launch?  Does it not perform file management
functions?  Explain how it is completely useless.  

> I'm aware that it isn't finished yet but it is
> unfortunately already labeled a  > 1.0 version. I'll just list the issues
> below in order to make things cleaner.

No software that is in active development, by definition, is
*complete*.  However, the nautilus developers reached the feature-set
and desired stability level for 1.0 and released nautilus unto the
world.  And nautilus has had several releases sense then and is still
being developed actively.

> A.)Mozilla:
> 	Why does Nautilus need to use mozilla? Doesn't this produce a lot
> of overhead? Nautilus should browse files, perhaps be used for
> configurations, and simple html use. Wouldn't gtkhtml get the job done and
> done quicker?  

This is a philosophical question worth debating.  Some argue that
nautilus shouldn't handle web stuff at all, others argue it should use
a more lightweight rendering engine like gtkhtml.  I personally think
it should be configurable and I think the future will be the use of
components.  For example, one day it might be possible for Nautilus
and Galeon to share components.  Component technology breaks down the
idea of a single application.  It becomes less important which shell
you are running.  I would love to see galeon's functionality available
to other programs through the use of bonobo components.  Ever opened
Windows explorer to browse files and then typed a web URL in the file
box?  Suddenly you are staring at IE.  As it stands now, the use of
components is just catching on in the Gnome community.  This is one
area which KDE (Konqueror) has a huge jump on us.  

> C.)GTK
> 	Being realistic, how much is gtk 1.2.x slowing Nautilus down? In
> my experience, QT has proved to be faster. The worse case I can think of
> is for users in 16 bit and even worse in 15 bit. Gtk has to dither
> down. If the user is in 15 bit, gtk has to dither down to 16 and then
> dither down to 15. This makes things god awful slow. Gtk 2.0 should be
> faster and better but it's of course not mainstream yet and the extent at
> which gtk 1.2.x slows things down is not really known. Or is it?

Well, what has your user experience been with GTK+ applications.  Do
the widgets draw slowly?  I don't have a powerhouse machine, but GTK+
applications (unless I'm using some god-awful pixmap theme or
something) are quite snappy.

> D.)UI
> 	No offense, but the current UI design of Nautilus itself and the
> desktop is horrible. More thought needs to be put into this. I'd love to
> help and play with ideas if anyone is interested. People keep blowing the
> UI off as if it's already fine or as if anything else will cause too much
> hand holding. The truth is that a good UI design is hard to accomplish and
> takes a lot of effort. Mac OS X is of course a note worthy example of a
> intuitive, simple, but powerful UI. As of now, gnome, kde, nautilus,
> etc... is too careless with packing options upon options in menus and
> even submenus.  The organization shows the lack of real effort towards the
> UI.

Not to say there isn't room for improvement, for there always is, but
I happen to really like Nautilus' UI and I know I'm not alone in
saying that.  Could you give some concrete examples of how the UI
could be improved?  My friends and family have used Nautilus with
absolutely no Linux/Unix background and found it more intuitive and
easier to use than what they were used to.  How do you find it
difficult?

> F.)Clearer Navigation
> THe nautilus window should at all times show a clear way of moving between
> any disk and the network. Icons of each disk(cdrom, floppy, zip,
> individual partition icons making up the image of a whole hard disk,
> etc..) should be showed on the nautilus window. Then there should be a
> icon for the local netwowrk for browsing the shares of other
> computers. However, even these suggestions should be thought over much
> more carefully than I have done in order not to confuse the user of
> duplicate things. 

I do agree with these suggestions, completely.  It should be very
simple for a user to instantly get access to the samba (or other
shares) network, physical disks, other gnome-vfs browsables.

> The real solution is for the Nautilus and gnome teams to get together,
> discuss UI possibilities, compromise on a solution, and everyone stick to
> it. The full UI should not be redundant or confusing. If I want to browse
> the local network, I shouldn't have to decide between 5 different ways.It
> should be clear that I must do it via Nautilus. 

No, you must be *able* to do it with Nautilus and not have to use a
command line or other tool if you want.  We'll never take the freedom
away to do it any way you can and want to. 

> The way in which the
> system should be configured is a bit tough too. Will the setup options
> stay in the gnome menu or will they move into nautilus? Perhaps they will
> be in the gnome menu but open up within a nautilus window. Ex. Gnome
> menu->
> 1.)System Setup 
> 2.)User preferences
> 3.)Services Setup
> 
> when clicked, they open up within the nautilus window. The question then
> is if these options should be accessable via a vanilla nautilus window
> that is browsing the users home directoy? Would this lead to confusion.

Again, these issues can all be resolved through the proper use of
components.  All gnome configuration "capplets" (or whatever they will
be called) could be embedded in a Nautilus window and accessed through
something very similar to the Windows control panel, for example.

----------------------------------------------------
name:    Jamin Philip Gray
email:   jgray writeme com
icq:     1361499
jabber:  jamin jabber com
web:     http://DoLinux.org/jamin/

"This is something up with which I will not put."

--Winston Churchill