Re: Nautilus vs gnome-shell and the future

[Cosimo Cecchi <cosimoc gnome org>]

Hi Alex,

On Wed, 2009-12-02 at 16:08 +0100, Alexander Larsson wrote:

> This leads to two initial conclusions from my side. First of all we
> should disable the drawing of the desktop by default. Second we should
> default to browser mode. This might seem a bit suprising since I've
> generally been on the spatial side. But, this has mainly been because
> I've seen nautilus as much more used as a kind of file activation
> shell rather than a hardcore file manager, and when that changes the
> rationale for spatial mode change too.

While I completely agree about enabling browser mode by default,  I'm
not completely sold on Nautilus not drawing the desktop by default: 
      * even with many applications opened, the desktop is just one
        click (or one keystroke) away from you (Ctrl+Alt+D or the "Show
        Desktop" applet). 
      * it's a very big space to save things. If we're going to have
        something like a file stack in gnome-shell, we should make it
        sure it has the right amount of space. For instance, I find it
        confusing to use the stacked "Downloads" icon on the OSX dock,
        as it becomes just too messy and out-of-control when the number
        of files is high. You can always clean up your desktop instead
        when there are too many things on it, just like you'd do with a
        real one :) 
      * orthogonal to the previous one, there are some items which are
        very handy to have on the desktop anyway, for instance, newly
        mounted volume icons.

> For instance, gnome-shell focuses a lot on using search to find files
> and other things of interest. Nautilus also does search, but only
> for files. The g-s search is more integrated in the desktop and gives
> multiple types of results, but the nautilus search allows a more
> detailed view of the results (multiple view types, previews, etc) and
> also allows more interesting operations on the results (file ops,
> nautilus extensions like sendto, etc). Maybe we could integrate these
> better, or at least make them more similar?

I agree with this; as I see it, the g-s search is something like
Spotlight's dropdown menu; if you click a button, a nautilus windows
would open with the full results/set of actions you can take. If you're
going to integrate metadata more into Nautilus, I'd not be scared to see
something more than bare filesystem hits there in Nautilus' search
window, though a good UI for that would be mandatory.

> With the desktop gone we don't have a place for shorttime "storage" of
> actively used files. There is "recent files" which is accessible from
> the activities overview, but the activities view is very much a
> "launch some new activity" thing rather than something you actively
> work with during an activity. For instance, your current app is zoomed
> out and you lose all possibility to interact with it and the recent
> files with e.g. drag and drop.

I've always liked the idea of a file well, but I'd rather see this as
some sort of "temporary stack" where you put all the resources you need
to accomplish a task (maybe with an option to save them, and associate
it with a shell activity/workspace), rather than a permanent file-system
folder.

By the way, if we're going to stop drawing the desktop, what would be
drawn on it and who would be responsible for that?

Cheers,

Cosimo