Re: Column View

[Tristan O'Tierney <totierney yahoo com>]

--- Jürg Billeter <j bitron ch> wrote:
> 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

look at the bottom of scroll3.png. you'll see a
horizontal scroll bar. scrolling backwards shows you
the entire file tree that you have traversed.. this is
nice in mulitple ways: it acts like a  "History" of
where i've been, since as i scroll back i go to where
i was previous in the file system.  it also has a tree
metaphore, since it's esentially a branch structure. 
the difference if you compare it to a tree is that
only one node is visible at a time.  i.e. if i'm in
/usr/local, i can't see files in /etc, whereas if i
had a tree view with /etc and /usr/local open i could
see both.  this may seem like a downside at first,
because for example what if you wanted to drag a file
from /etc/ to /usr/local? you could in the tree.  in a
column view, to achieve such functionality you would
drag a file, then go to the edge of the column view to
scroll backwards in the history until you saw /, at
which point you could drag the file over /usr and
either wait 1-2 seconds, or press the space bar, at
which point the folder would be selected. you could
repeat this until you got into /usr/local. then
letting off the mouse button would "drop" the file
into that folder.  the mac calls this "spring loaded"
folders: if you have a file dragging, and you press
the space bar on top of a folder where the mouse
pointer is it traverses into that folder.

> 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.
> 

the spacial view, if i remember correctly, is
basically the windows 95 style file viewer where
opening each folder generates a new window that
overlaps the previous.. correct?   this is a very poor
system of browsing files overall because opening each
window subsequently hides the root folder behind it.
this makes it very difficult to drag files backwards
in the file tree. if you follow my example with the
column view, you'll see it's quite easy to go
backwards in the file tree.  and if you read my post
prior to that, you'll see the column view is also
quicker to traverse than a tree view. in a tree view,
you don't know where your parent folder is if the tree
happens to be cut off due to scrolling down too far,
so the downside is no worse.

when i said that you see big benefits in the column
view once you start traversing into deeply nested
directories, i was pointing this out because this is
the column view's "best case" senario.  if you compare
access times of a tree view and a column view for the
scroll1.png, you'd find faster access times on average
STILL for the column view due to Fittz law. this would
make the column view faster in tree like browsing, and
faster in deep nested browsing.  every system has it's
downsides though, and the column view's is drag&drop
backwards in the file tree.  however it's benefits
outweight it's downsides, because poeple more often
access files than move them backwards in the file
tree.

> 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?
> 

originally, the file browser came from NeXT Step. 
this was implemented in GNUStep (also known as
windowmaker) quite some time ago. here is an example: 
http://www.linuxfocus.org/common/images/article127/filev24.jpg

it's safe to say, considering that windowmaker's been
out before mac os x, that it would be perfectly legal.


all in all, nautilus currently has a list and icon
view. adding an additional column view wouldn't
increase the complexity of the interface much, and for
those like me who would greatly appreciate such an
addition, we'll use that as our default view. for
those who don't, they can always use the spacial
(icon) or list view.  i understand people don't have
infinite time and can't implement every feature a user
requests, which is why i'm offering to help if the
lead developers think it's a worthwile addition.  dave
from ximian already replied to one of my posts, and if
you like the idea dave please drop me an email.


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