Re: Spatial Mode Window Cluttering and Possible Solutions

[Nathaniel McCallum <npmccallum gentoo org>]

Just use Xorg Composite to slowly fade to transparent parent windows
when the only action is opening a child folder.  If the user lets them
decay, they just eventually close (when invisible).  If the user
interacts with the window, it regains full opacity and stays until the
user manually closes it.  This both solves the problem and is much more
intuitive.  If Xorg Composite is not available, disable the behavior.

Nathaniel

On Sun, 2005-04-17 at 23:23 -0400, Yuan Qi wrote:
> Ubuntu Bugzilla Entry: https://bugzilla.ubuntu.com/show_bug.cgi?id=9125
> 
> Nautilus spatial is a very user friendly way to navigate files, however, it
> creates window clutter for users who use deep folder trees. I think a
> discussion
> needs to be made on how to improve the spatial mode, especially when we
> start
> considering all the controversies created by
> https://bugzilla.ubuntu.com/show_bug.cgi?id=8516
> 
> Here is my suggestion of a new spatial behaviour:
> 
> A folder will be automatically minimized when the user opens one of its
> subfolders for the first time.
> 
> If the *very next* action performed by the user *on the autominimized
> folder* is
> to bring it up again, then a flag will be set to tell nautilus not to
> autominimize it the next time.
> 
> That folder will not be minimized the next time the user opens a
> subfolder from
> that folder.
> 
> If the *very next* action performed by the user on *that particular parent
> window* this time is to minimize it, then the flag will be deleted and the
> folder will be autominimized the next time.
> 
> This suggestion, however, will not solve the cluttering on the taskbar. So I
> want to make another suggestion to the behaviour of the taskbar that
> goes with
> the above suggestion:
> 
> Only the non-minimized window will have an explicit entry on the taskbar. In
> order to access the minimized parent windows, the user should use the
> path menu,
> which can be brought up by clicking on the path button on the bottom
> left corner
> of the folder window, or by clicking and hold the taskbar entry for more
> than
> one second (similar to how the tool button groups work in Adobe Photoshop).
> 
> Of course, people will argue that this is very unintuitive to novice 
> users, but this confusion should be largely resovle with properly 
> designed window minimization animation.
> 
> ps. My description of the feature might be worded poorly, so please free
> to ask
> me to clarify my wording.
>