Re: Spatial Mode Window Cluttering and Possible Solutions

[Yuan Qi <gmanenews 3 maxchee spamgourmet com>]

Although fading makes the user believe that the windows has 
closed/disappeared, which will confuse the user.

Nathaniel McCallum <npmccallum gentoo org> wrote:
> 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.