Re: Nautilus 2.6 - We're going all spatial

["Manuel Amador (Rudd-O)" <amadorm usm edu ec>]

> Well, the viewer model is common to 99% of the applications on the
> desktop.  Picture viewers, word processors, music players, paint
> programs, pretty much everything uses a similar model: you have a frame
> in which you display things, and you can browse through those things.

What you're calling the viewer model isn't.  Picture viewers, word processors et
al open in new windows, they don't mess up the current view, and let you keep it. 

> 
> If that model is so complicated, how do people manage to use computers
> at all?
> 
> > 2) Many of the people who do understand Nautilus will use it less for
> > simple tasks
> 
> Have you tested this?

I have.  No papers and stuff, but I've taught some Linux courses here at campus.
  It isn't that bad, because most of the people come from a windows 98
background and hence are accustomed to the browsing model.  But that doesn't
mean it couldn't be improved.  I taught to mostly technical people, which
understood that the "icon" is a "representation" (actually, if one looks it up
in the dictionary, that's what it means =)   ), but grandmas, five year olds,
and most corporate users don't have either the time or the will to deal with
such subtleties, and even I sometimes forget that the icons aren't the files,
but just represents them, which leads me into doing things that don't work (like
dragging an FTP server's folder icon into XMMS to listen to music remotely) and
small surprises.

> Then it would be nice to have at least some proof that those users are a
> minority.  As far as I can see, the overwhelming majority of computer
> users out there very happily uses the navigation model.

Defaults, man!  Defaults!  It's all about the defaults!  And I wouldn't say
"happily".  I'd say "".  The just use it, because they need to use the computer,
and don't know that changing the option (deeply buried into preference panels)
will yield them better results than the status quo.

> 
> Even better, Windows and Mac used to have an OO model, and both switched
> to a navigation model.  Did they do that just for fun or was it a
> horrible mistake?  (And if so, why aren't they fixing it?)

They did this to mimic the web browsing model in your file system.  Personally,
I really didn't like it at all.  Web browsing is web browsing is web browsing,
and file management is fm is fm, and there are tons of things you can't do while
on a web page that you can while on a folder (like opening up a terminal and
doing for $a in * loops).

> Most corporate desktops out there run Windows, and Explorer uses the
> navigation model.

See above.

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