Re: Comment: spatial interface

[Ryan McDougall <ryan mcdougall telusplanet net>]

On Wed, 2004-04-07 at 20:35 -0700, George Farris wrote:
> On Tue, 2004-04-06 at 20:39, Ryan McDougall wrote:
> > On Thu, 2004-04-01 at 12:52 +0200, Robert Fendt wrote:
> > > Hi,
> > > 
> > Take a couple weeks to train yourself before you write of spatialus;
> > maybe your habits need to change, not the UI.
> > 
> 
> This is good advice and perhaps you might have some pointers for him on
> how you use it and what makes it good for you.  That might help
> immensely.  Just a thought.
> 
> -- 
> George Farris <george gmsys com>
> 

Let me give it a shot, you mileage may vary:

Personally I find double-clicking to be an abomination. I cannot find
words to describe how badly I hate clicking twice in rapid succession.
My first advice is to turn it off (in your nautilus preferences)!

Desktop shortcuts, or symbolic links in ~/Desktop to favourite places is
an absolute must if you want to avoid a mess of windows. Mostly there
are only a few places we visit often, and if they are always at had in
the form of an icon, then you navigation is *very* quick. 

Shift-click, or middle button click will save you a mess of windows
since it automatically closes the parent when opening the child. The few
times I have to drill into a directory, I almost always us it.

Use applications that automatically manage your files:
-Evolution owns all my mail
-gThumb opens directly to ~/Pictures
-Rhythmbox imports everything from ~/Music
-epiphany automatically places all my downloads in ~/Downloads

Spatialus always remembers the state of any window, so take advantage
and resize + re-place your folder windows just they way you like them.
Shrink folder windows with few files, grow windows with many, etc. It
gives your desktop a very organized feel.

Hey this is fun! Anyone else care to share their desktop hints/tips?

Cheers,
Ryan