Re: Column View

[Jürg Billeter <j bitron ch>]

I can see some points, but I'm not (yet) really convinced.

On Mon, 2003-12-01 at 06:53, Tristan O'Tierney wrote:
> A column view is essentially a tree view, flattened
> out into a horizontal space instead of a vertical
> space.  The benefits can especially be seen if you
> have used it for a considerable amount of time. 
> rather than having to reposition the mouse after
> clicking on a folder, you typically barely have to
> move the mouse. which brings me to these pictures:
> 
> http://www.otierney.net/images/columnview/scroll1.png
> http://www.otierney.net/images/columnview/scroll2.png
> http://www.otierney.net/images/columnview/scroll3.png
> 
> In the first picture, you don't notice much.  but look
> at the last 2.  that's very little time to acquire the
> target for the last 2 pictures, and ALL subsequent
> targets after it.  the benefits don't show until you
> get into a deep nest of folders, and this is where
> tree views start to degrade in efficiency quickly but
> where the column view simply shines.

The problem (or one of the problems) I see is the following: Look again
on your scroll3.png. Where can I see that the parent of the active
folder "Conceptual" is located in Documentation/Cocoa? I think that
something like that is essential in a navigational view - as you anyway
don't speak about the spatial architecture. You say that the benefits of
the column view are high when you are in a deep nested folder, but then
you don't know where the folder is located in the system. This is for
example bad in a situation where you have two almost identical folder
hierarchies (for example source directories of different versions) and
you can only identify them by the name of the highest folder in each
hierarchy.

If we would improve the tree view sidebar so it won't only highlight the
active folder but also all parent folders (of course in a distinctable
highlight variant), I can't see anymore that many advantages of the
column view. I see that the column view probably improves the tree view
of the MacOS 9 finder (I'm not a Mac user, so I'm not sure), but AFAIK
something like that did never exist in Nautilus.

Ehm, IIRC Apple has patents of some parts of MacOS X' new user
interface, have you assured that the column view is not affected?

BTW: The maintainers of Nautilus are Alexander Larsson, Dave Camp and
Darin Adler as you can see on http://www.gnome.org/projects/nautilus/