Re: Nautilus' context menu

["David Adam Bordoley" <bordoley msu edu>]

Bah this thread has annoyed me enough where I feel the need to comment. I'm 
just going to include general thoughts. 

My personal opinion is that context menus should be completely mime type 
specific, such that only items that affect the specified mime type are in 
the selected file's context menu. So in the case of the trash folder, for 
instance, most of the items that never apply to the trash should not be in 
its context menu. 

I do find it a little dubious that file roller includes "add to archive" to 
every single file's context menu. I'm guessing that:
1) Most people never use this (90% of the user base).
2) Most people would find it much more natural to simply dnd or copy and 
paste files directly into an archive folder. 

Going a little farther with this. I think the number of context menus that 
file roller includes is excessive. The only really needed one is "Extract 
Here." If a user wants to extract into a subfolder or into another folder 
they should dnd the archive file to the folder and do "extract here." I find 
it completely absured that a fileselector appears in a file manager's ui. 
But I digress. 

On the issue of a subfolder for "addons." For one, the gnome HIG 
specifically states "Do not place more than about ten items on a popup menu, 
and do not use submenus." We seem to be breaking both rules right now. 
Obviously there are too many menu items, but throwing stuff into a submenu 
is not a solution either, as submenus are slow, and context menus ought to 
be very fast, or they lose their usefulness. 

If a subfolder is determined to be necessary for some reason than I would 
not call it "Addons," a term that exposes an implementation detail to the 
user. A more appropriate label would be "Actions" since all items in the 
menu pertain to performing mime specific actions on the file. 

While I'm on it, maybe this actions menu could appear in the menubar edit 
menu (regardless of how the items are presented to the user in the context 
menu). This would give the user access to these specialized actions without 
needing to use context menus. [1] 

dave 

[1] The gnome HIG also states "Since the user may not be aware of their 
presence, do not provide functions that are only accessible from popup menus 
unless you are confident that your target users will know how to use popup 
menus."