Re: The future direction of the Nautilus UI)

[Daniel Borgmann <daniel liebesgedichte net>]

On Thu, 2002-09-05 at 05:17, bordoley msu edu wrote:
> Well other than people are used to objects because they deal with them 
> everyday, so most people will be accustom with the principle. 
> 
> Anyway seth's comments at the below link really best sum up the problems with 
> the navigation UI.
> 
> http://mail.gnome.org/archives/usability/2002-September/msg00014.html


This seems mostly anti-locationbar than anti-navigation model and that I
would agree with. But so far I didn't see _any_ suggestion that even
came close to the efficiency of the treeview. I really hoped that the
future of Nautilus would concentrate more on the treeview to navigate a
filesystem and "other things". 
Now I wonder, can't "filebrowser" and "file objects" be used separately?
AFAIK this is how Windows works. When you click an object on your
desktop for example, you simply get an object view window of it. But if
you specifically launch the file browser ("Windows Explorer") you get a
"real" application with convenient treeview on the left (showing nodes
for "my computer", "network neighbourhood", etc), some navigation and
all content is shown in the same window. When opening something in a new
window, it could spawn a new "object view window". 
This would basically mean, if Nautilus is launched specifically as
application, it is shown with all toolbars, convenient tree and toolbar
navigation, etc. But if Nautilus is opened by clicking a desktop icon or
by opening "something" in a new window, it gets a very window that is
mostly only a container. So we would have an "objectmode" and a
"browsermode". 
The locationbar could be optional/toggable in browsermode, once the zoom
and view controls are moved over. 
Computer beginners would never have to launch the file browser explicity
if they don't want to be exposed to the entire filesystem, but it would
still be there as a convenience for users who are more efficient with it
at least for certain tasks. It would also have other advantages, like
the possibility to scrap several options (as people would already decide
on a preference when launching either the filebrowser or a file object)
and I believe that it would even be easier to implement right now than a
complete and absolute conversion to OO (because Nautilus can already do
most of this with preferences). Also it wouldn't piss off people. ;)
What do you think about this? And yes, I know that you said that OO
windows could also have treeviews but I don't think that's the same.

- Daniel