Re: Annoying flicker during directory loading

[Alexander Larsson <alexl redhat com>]

On Tue, 2004-05-25 at 23:27, Eloy A. Paris wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> When I open a folder that was closed with the scroller of the scroll bar
> at the bottom of scroll bar, Nautilus draws the window's content
> assuming the scroller is at the top, and then, after all icons are
> drawn, it moves the scroller to the position it had when the window was
> closed (the scroller actually "jumps" from the top to the previous
> position, and the window's content also gives the impression of a
> "jump")

This is because the location to jump to is stored as a specific file in
the list, and we don't know the location until all the files have been
laid out. And in fact, we can't even scroll before then because we don't
know the size of the canvas.

> This re-layout causes an annoying "flicker" that gives a sense of slowness.
> 
> In addition to this, Nautilus seems to be drawing the window's contents
> while the directory is being loaded. This seems like this issue that
> Ettore Perazzoli brought up:
> 
> http://lists.gnome.org/archives/nautilus-list/2003-September/msg00350.html
> 
> This apparently was committed but I get the impression that the behavior
> is back. Is this the case?

No its not. What makes you think it is? We do some changes after the
files are loaded, such as calculating the number of files in
directories, but we don't layout before all files are read.

> The question is: is it technically possible to delay drawing the
> window's contents, including the scroll bar, until the entire directory
> has being loaded? Wouldn't this provide a smoother interface?

This is probabably a good idea. It might not even be that hard.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
 Alexander Larsson                                            Red Hat, Inc 
                   alexl redhat com    alla lysator liu se 
He's a benighted dishevelled jungle king She's a warm-hearted tomboy Valkyrie 
with a birthmark shaped like Liberty's torch. They fight crime!