Re: Idea: Tooltip showing file properties when you hover over the file

[Ryan McDougall <NQG24419 nifty com>]

On Fri, 2005-22-04 at 13:58 +0200, Alexander Larsson wrote:
> On Fri, 2005-04-22 at 13:40 +0200, Paolo Borelli wrote:
> > On ven, 2005-04-22 at 13:34 +0200, Alexander Larsson wrote:
> > > On Tue, 2005-04-19 at 22:35 +0200, Jaap Haitsma wrote:
> > > > Now if want to see some details about a file in the icon view I have to 
> > > > open the properties window. Would be handy if a tooltip would show up 
> > > > when you hovered over the file which would display stuff like 
> > > > modification date, size, permission etc.
> > > > 
> > > > What do people think about this idea?
> > > 
> > > In general it would be very nice to have a way to quickly bring up more
> > > information about a file (primarily a preview of it). However, using
> > > hovering for this is a bad idea, as it will often be in the way. You'll
> > > accidentally leave your mouse over something and it'll pop up, covering
> > > the files you're working with.
> > > 
> > 
> > What about showing the tooltip only if the icon is selected? This way it
> > would be way less probable to have the toolip in the way...
> 
> But it would be much more work to get the preview displayed. A typical
> use of the preview would be scanning a set of files looking for the one
> you want by looking at the preview, and this gets complicated if its
> hard to trigger the display of it.
> 

Once upon a time I suggested a modal interface, with a button looking
like the old zoom feature. If you want to 'scan' with previews you click
on a magnifying glass icon, the mouse pointer becomes a magnifying
glass, and any hover creates a preview only while in that mode.

To get rid of the mode, you'd have to toggle toolbar icon.

problems: 
- spatilus no longer has a toolbar, so it has to go in "View"?
- previewing requires an extra click and the knowledge of what you are
doing.
- can be confused with the current "zoom-in, zoom-out" mode, but with a
little though I think they can be combined to improve spatial mode. for
example, the button could be clearly labelled "View -> Zoom Into File"

Cheers,
Ryan