[Nautilus-list] Constructive Criticism Revisted

[James Mitchell Allmond <gte203h prism gatech edu>]

>Hmm... "Go" is one of the 'standard' menus we recommend in the GNOME UI
>Guidelines for apps that allow the user to navigate around some
>content,be it a file hierarchy or a text document, so if we lost it
>here we'd want to lose it from every other such app, like Galeon.  I'm
>all in favour of getting rid of things that aren't useful in a GUI, but
>I'd probably need more convincing about this one.

The whole "Home" placement with the forward, back, stop, etc... buttons
mimics web browsers. A file manager isn't a web browser. Just because
the two share one thing in common (the need for movements up and back,
etc..) doesn't justify the adoption of other things which hamper the
true nature. Another thing I dislike is inconsistency. It seems
contradictory to have a "place" button in the middle of stop, forward,
etc.. but not a "place" button for the other possible places like the
cdrom drive or floppy drive. That's why I broke it up into "menu",
"movement", "action", and "places" categories. That also why I think the
spinner/throbber needs to go. The whole thing is ridiculous. It's a
waste of useful space and inconsistent in the fact that it's the only
thing that does not directly do something on the toolbar. The
spinner/throbber should be thrown out all together and use a static
transparent foot over the nautilus display window to inform the user tha
nautilus is thinking. 





> I had no idea what most of the icons (except floppy, CD, and Home)
>represented. They probably ought to have text labels like regular
>toolbar buttons (togglable by the same mechanism as other toolbar
>button labels).


Yes, text labels underneath would certainly be used. The icons I used
were just ones I picked for the mock up. The icon on the far left of the
"places" icons looks a bit like connected computers. That's suppose to
be the local network or network neighborhood. Then there was the zip,
floppy, cdrom, home, and the start here icon. The start here icon by
itself isn't very informative. I just used it cause it's the current
icon for representing start here. It could be improved or just given a
label underneath and would be eventually just accepted. The start here
button would open the display to the control center, ximian setup tools,
etc....



>- People don't (currently) expect to be able drag things onto toolbar
>buttons (or any other sort of buttons), so it's unlikely they would
>discover anything other than the basic button-like navigation
>functionality of your new icons without being told about it.  Perhaps
>some other visual representation would make this more obvious.  

We can't limit everything to what previous interfaces have done. If they
don't pick up on it right away, they will soon enough and it would soon
become "common". If a user wanted to copy files to a floppy or zip disk,
I'd be willing to be that they'd try dragging a file to the floppy icon.
I think it would seem pretty straight forward. As far as the split
window goes, I don't like that idea. People can always open two nautilus
windows. Anything that is done to accomplish this two place problem will
just mimic opening two windows. In the long run, it's just easier to
open two nautilus windows and it makes nautilus more simple. 


>- Anything you can do with drag and drop needs to be accessible by
>other means too, for people who can't use a mouse.  So some sort of
>"copy to/move to [Place]" menu would be needed somewhere, perhaps on
>the Edit menu.

Hum, I had forgotten about people unable to use a mouse. In that case,
keep the "Go" menu option, and replace it's contents with the different
"places". It could go under a different name than "Go" like "Places"
hehe. However, the current "Go" menu option needs to be thrown out the
window and hit every limb on the way down.


The "Action" buttons could be used in several ways and could take
several forms. More thought would need to be put into how to do it
actually. The main thing is to stay consistent. Do't have one "action"
button act in one fashion and another in some other fashion. True,
they'll do different things but make the way you use them the same.