Re: [PATCH] Add Pathbar to Nautilus Browser

[Alexander Larsson <alexl redhat com>]

On Wed, 2005-07-06 at 11:59 +0100, Jamie McCracken wrote:
> Alexander Larsson wrote:
> 
> > First a bit on the general UI. I don't want to have the pathbar in
> > addition to the location bar, I want it to replace the location bar. For
> > a long time a major goal of nautilus has been to avoid displaying
> > pathnames (as in absolute pathnames or uris) in the UI. Going from
> > location bar will help with this. It will also help us look less like a
> > web browser, which is nice, as that can confuse people at times.
> > 
> > Of course, we can't totally remove the location bar, as its needed for
> > typing in addresses, and some people still might want it. What we'll do
> > is put the path bar and the location bar in the same place, but only
> > show one at a time. Normally we show the pathbar, but on "go ->
> > Location" in the menu (or ctrl+l) we temporarily show the location bar,
> > similarly to how this is handled when the location bar is not visible.
> > 
> > Lets also add a preference (hidden for the moment) to allow people to
> > always have the location bar instead of the pathbar.
> 
> Okay I will do that with Ctrl+L to toggle between pathbar and location 
> bar. I'll leave the view->location bar menu item then so if they set it 
> it toggles off the pathbar and permenantly replaces it (IE we dont need 
> another pref then as I have added view->pathbar pref/menuitem already).

I don't think that will work. The view location bar toggles the whole
location bar toolbar, which will include the pathbar. I don't think we
need another preference in addition to the view location bar one.
Furthermore I don't think we should ever expose the term "pathbar" in
the ui.


> > The root icon for non file:/// uris is always a folder (I think). It
> > should use the real icon that nautilus uses for it, i.e. gotten from
> > nautilus_icon_factory_get_icon_for_file(). See for instance the location
> > menu in spatial mode that uses this and what icon it uses for
> > "computer:///".
> 
> but its okay to hard code the icons for the common ones (home, desktop, 
> filesystem) like the filechooser? I will just use icon_factory for the 
> root folder then.

Its better to not hardcode i think, because people might have set e.g.
custom icons for these directories. In fact, maybe we should try to get
the icon for each button on the path bar, and only ignore it if its the
standard folder icon. That way you could see custom set icons in the
pathbar.

> > Why did you add folder icons to normal folders? That seems to use a lot
> > of space for something that isn't really needed.
> 
> it looks nicer, improves usability (user can see they are folders 
> instead of plain buttons) and thunar does so. Do you want me to remove 
> them for now?

Yeah. They will cause the pathbar to need scrolling more than necessary.
I don't think that improves usability at all.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
 Alexander Larsson                                            Red Hat, Inc 
                   alexl redhat com    alla lysator liu se 
He's an ungodly chivalrous boxer with nothing left to lose. She's a scantily 
clad paranoid mercenary with the power to see death. They fight crime!