Re: [Nautilus-list] Nautilus Goals

[Chazz Mevoli <chazz mevworld com>]

mitch nuclear physics gatech edu wrote:
> 
>         I write with the concern of Nautilus' future.  As of now, Nautilus
> is completely unuseful. 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.

I disagree with the statement that Nautilus is unuseful.  I "use" it
every day and love it.  Since I work with images alot, Nautilus has
proven to be an excellent file manager.  Friends that have nautilus also
love it and "use" it daily.

> 
> 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?

I do, however, highly agree with this point.  Mozilla and nautilus dont
mix very well.

> 
> B.)Xrender
>         What's the status on Xrender support? I realized that AA
> fonts,etc.. should be done via gtk 2.0 in the future but what about the
> mouse drag alpha? Wouldn't the use of Xrender on this speed things up for
> us that have the hardware support?
> 
> 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?
> 

Using QT doesn't make sense with a Gnome application.  There's a QT file
manager for the KDE folks called Konqueror, which I believe is in the
same category as Nautilus.

> 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.
> 
> E.)Useful Features
>         The features that go into Nautilus should be simple but
> powerful. Applications today pack way too many features in out of the fact
> that they can rather than the fact that they should. What you end up with
> is a bloated piece of software with menus full of options that are
> unproductive and useless. If Nautilus is for file browsing, we all need to
> think of more creative ways to manage files via a UI. As of now, file
> management via a UI can't even compare to a bash prompt. Some say it can't
> be done but I think it can. More effort is needed.  The pros of a UI need
> to be mixed with the pros of a bash promt and then merged together. There
> is no reason a popup window can't take input for specific styles of
> management. Ex. have two delete options. A.) Delete/move to
> trash. B.)Delete Advanced->delete files containing ..,, delete files
> starting with, delte files ending with, delete files of date, etc.....
> So one could click on "Delete Advance", a window pops up with a checkbox
> for the style of delete and a insertion field on the bottom. Anyway, you
> guys get the point

I would love to see "New File" added to the menu right next to "New
Folder" :-)  Currently I have to duplicate another file and erase its
contents or use the shell.

Also, "xterm here" for folders would be nice.

> 
> 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.
> 
> 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. 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.
> 
> Anyway, all the possibilities is overwhelming and there doesn't really
> seem to be much use in planning out a good UI for nautilus unless everyone
> on the nautilus and gnome team can work together.Anyone have any thoughts
> on this or any info that I'm unaware of? Thanks.

I have two issues which I feel are important for improving the UI in
Nautilus:

1) I use AfterStep as my window manager and have come across a problem
with Nautilus.  When I create a new window (wether browser or dialog),
my current virtual desktop switches to the one that Nautilus originally
started on.  This is anoying since I would like to have different
windows open on different desks.  This could be happening due to the
Nautilus windows being raised/focused on new window creation.  Dialogs
should follow this behavior but not the browser windows.  Nautilus is
the only application I have that does this so its not an AfterStep
problem.

2) The Nautilus desktop is actually a window itself, which doesn't
follow correct behavior with the virtual desktops of Afterstep.  It
overrides the window manager's management of the desktops.  Shouldn't
the background of the Nautilus desktop be transparent like dfm/efm
(which work great with AfterStep)?

Nautilus is a great work in progress and I look forward to its growth.

> 
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