Nautilus' context menu

["Eugenia Loli-Queru" <eloli hotmail com>]

The screenshot Mason sent earlier (it hasn't appeared in the list yet
possibly cause of the attachment's size ) made me think about the top level
menu of Nautilus (no, this is not an "addon" discussion ;-)

Havoc was telling me some time ago that there should not be more than 10-12
items per menu, as users can't comprehend the options with a quick glance
(something that is imperative on a good UI). The current menu (after Mason's
patch hopefully makes it to the main CVS) has... 16 items when
right-clicking on a folder/file. This should be improved and get down to
10-12 items.

My logic is that the obvious options (e.g. top level menus and other easily
accessible controls) should _only_ do the absolutely important things, and
not more. Advanced functionality should only be accessible via other methods
that users will discover as they go along (or when they decide to actually
read a manual).
The "less is more" philosophy that Gnome is pursuing is similar to MacOS,
OSX, BeOS and Windows as they also always allowed the absolutely important
options to be easily visible by the newbie and nothing more. With the
current situation, if you try to move all these menu options to a newbie,
you scare him away, even if these options are dead simple. The visual
complexity of the menu itself with all these (simple really) options don't
help in the psychology of a new Gnome user. The UI should be both
accessible, simple and unbloated, and at the same time to have "backdoors"
for the advanced user to do his stuff his way.

Mockup here: http://www.osnews.com/img/3721/nautilus.png
Explanation of the mockup above:

1. Get rid of the "Open in New Window". I must say that this option is the
only one of the rest 5 that I took away that I am not sure of and I require
more input. On the other hand, it is bad enough to have three "Open"
functions crammed there. It is confusing at first for new users. I am _not_
saying that this function should go away. It should either move to the
"Extensions" folder as an addon, or it should simply get invoked by the
third mouse button, as you do when you open links to new tabs/windows on the
web browser. In other words, hide the option ("keep it simple") but make
sure the functionality _is_ there via one of the two methods mentioned
above.

2. Merge Scripts and Addons under a new name that is easy to understand.
"Services" or "Extensions" are good for me, but most of you are better than
me in the english language, so please pick a name. :D
Yes, Scripts are not the same as addons, but the user doesn't need to know
that, they have similar functionality anyway. Allow both the traditional
nautilus scripts and the addons to run from the same submenu, transparently
(in case you want to keep the Script functionality that is).

3. Get rid of Rename, and please adopt the Mac and BeOS way of renaming a
file. Click once (or slowly twice) and rename the file. If you want to
rename more than one files, the user should use the included with Nautilus
"Bulk Rename" addon, as shown in the other mockup the other day
(http://www.osnews.com/img/3721/gnome.png). I can understand that people
will get too emotional about removing Rename from the menu, but if the addon
thingie takes off, you will going to end up having a "bulk rename" on the
addons folder, and a rename menu on the top level menu. Not good. I suggest
to let the user rename a single selected file either via clicking on the
filename or the properties dialog and let more complex renaming functions to
be made via the "Bulk Rename" addon.

4. The stretching icon business have absolutely no place in the top level
menu. It is not like we are playing with our icons all day if we have
nothing better to do (we got Solitaire in this case :-) Just create an addon
for this functionality, with a nice and small gui, in where you can also set
the size you want for _all_ the files shown in the current directory (when
nothing is selected), or for the selected files. In fact, this can also go
to the "Properties", but no way in the root nautilus menu as it is now.
Personally, I am fond for an addon for this functionality, to set the size
to all icons on a certain dir, while when you have selected 1 or few files,
the same addon will allow you to change their sizes (or get them back to
normal size).

And yes, addons can have more than 20 items after a few months if the idea
takes off. And this is why at this time we might need an "Extension Manager"
which will list for you all the addons with a checkbox next to them, and the
user should be able to easily enable/disable (show/hide) addons via it. And
this is another reason why these .server files might need some extra info in
them (that is, if you are going to keep these .server files instead of
another way that helps the easy show/hide functionality).

Your thoughts?

thanks,
Eugenia