Re: [Nautilus-list] open in this window / shortcut behavior

[Darin Adler <darin bentspoon com>]

on 10/30/01 10:22 AM, Benedikt Roth at Benedikt Roth gmx net wrote:

> Why open a new window if the old one will be closed? Wouldn't it make more
> sense (and be lots faster) to just open the folder in the same window?

Because on Macintosh each directory had its own position and size. Just
opening all sorts of different directories with different kinds of contents
all in one window is a poor substitute.

But Nautilus mimics Windows, web browsers, and the latest Macintosh Finder
by reusing the same window, which doesn't really work with icon positions,
with the result that people start to think that list views are better than
icon views and all icon view should be "auto-sort" ones. I find this far
inferior to the "each window has its own size" approach, but I'm not
planning to change it in Nautilus.

When you have Nautilus set to open each folder in a new window, it does save
window positions and sizes, so we almost have both designs.

> So you could generally use eg. the Ctrl-key to temporarily change the option
> "Open each file or folder in a separate window".

That sounds OK.

But personally, I don't like keys that toggle options, because that means
they might do something different on each computer, and you have to try
things twice to remember which way this computer is set. For example, on
Macintosh, holding the command key when you drag turns the grid on if it's
normally off and turns the grid off if it's normally on. This drives me
nuts.

    -- Darin