Re: Steps View - Miller Column View/Mode For Nautilus

[Alexander Larsson <alexl redhat com>]

On Wed, 2009-02-25 at 13:34 -0500, Brian Crockford wrote:
> I've been investigating the options available for OPENSTEP style
> columns view file browsers, and I've decided I don't like what's out
> there. I may sound like I'm nitpicking - which I am - but Dolphin's
> KDE (which is jarring in GNOME), Gworkspace is GNUstep (which is even
> worse at playing nicely with others), and the brief Thunar patch
> proposal didn't emerge.
> 
> As such, I'm planning to implement it in Nautilus instead - for my own
> purposes, at least. However, since there's a Brainstorm idea[1] open
> for it, I wondered whether others were interested in the concept. Any
> input as to how best to implement it (ie.: mode vs. view, resizeable
> columns vs. global fixed size, preview panel vs. not, etc.).
> 
> On the other hand, taking recent discussions about a split view into
> account, I realize that this may seem to branch from Nautilus'
> intended purpose as a graphical shell. Obviously I think it would be a
> great addition, though; it nicely extends on the breadcrumb bar idea
> as a graphical way to display directory hierarchy. It works well for
> browsing multimedia directories especially.

I don't think another view mode is the same kind of thing as a split
view. It doesn't change the fundamental thing you do with nautilus, it
just shows the folder differently (and not all that different from the
list view either). So, having a column view in nautilus is something we
want, but has not been done for lack of time and resources.

There has been people who expressed an interest in working on this
before though, unless i missremember. So you might want to start by
searching the mailing list for this. Maybe there was even some code you
could get ideas from.

Otherwise, keep at it, we're here on the list and on #nautilus on irc if
you have any questions.