Concept: Folder-panel

[Andrew Burns <email_income_ab yahoo com>]

Aim: to reduce time and effort needed to access files,
folders, bookmarks, programs, computers etc. with a
single click.

A folder-panel lists the contents of a user-specified
directory.  In appearance, it's similar to a
gnome-panel (options for autohide, transparency), but
with nautilus-like functionality (listing real files
and folders - or bookmarks, computers, program icons
etc).

These two very roughly drawn screenshots should bring
this idea across.  

http://geocities.com/email_income_ab/folder-panel_1.jpg
http://geocities.com/email_income_ab/folder-panel_2.jpg

The ability to do this (or something similar) has been
present in M$ desktops since IE4, and linux desktops
since KDE 3.2.

These (in my mind, anyway) are the current options for
development, then:

a) gnome-panel gets given file and folder listing
capabilities
b) nautilus obtains the option of creating a
folder-panel from a folder
c) nautilus offers a way to display only the side
pane, as a desktop element / panel
c) it could be a gdesklet (last resort)
d) a new program is written to achieve this
functionality

Anyway - I'm not a programmer/developer/hacker - so I
have no idea where to start.  If someone wants to
adopt this idea and change it to suit their needs, go
right ahead, please.  I'd love to see something come
of it.  And if anyone knows how I could go about
starting something up, or has any suggestions, I'd
love to hear them!  (And please forgive me for such a
long post...)


		
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