Re: An object Oriented File Manager Design

[Chris Chabot <chabotc xs4all nl>]

> Yeah, I remember this thread, but IMHO there is just a little trouble: a
> nautilus window is too much similar to a galeon/epiphany one :-( 

Well with that in mind, there's really two ways to go.. Either make 
nautilus be a 'simple to use oo file manager' that has not much to do 
with the browsing metaphor, or make nautilus a 'browser' 
(nautilus-mozilla anyone?)

If you ask me, it will be imposible to avoid this in the future.. The 
more we abstract views and abstract the OS, the less distinction there 
will be between a file browser, network browser, cd-burner, image viewer 
or web browser.

I'm think that when we reach that point, it might be worth considering 
using mozilla/gecko as the canvas for nautilus (generating 'pages' that 
display the folder) and giving up on seeing those 2 applications as 
seperate things. (Even now nautilus could benifit from some mozilla 
intergration for creating .html file previews, etc)

It's worth keeping in mind that you do not need all the overhead of 
GtkMozillaEmbed in something like nautilus.. you could use just the 
rendering engine (gecko) and use the network transport facilities that 
gnome-vfs offers. This way it should be a lot more resource friendly & 
faster then a embeded mozilla control would be.

Using dhtml layers and a few custom components in mozilla should give us 
all the tools we'd need for a file / desktop manager i'd think

For where applicable, the gnome2 port of mozilla is progressing quite 
well to. I've been using it exclusivly for the last 2 months now, and 
it's not been a bad experiance