Re: Removing 'Backgrounds and Emblems'

[John Keller <gnome johnkeller com>]

On 07/26/2010 06:14 PM, Cosimo Cecchi wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> with Nautilus 3.0 around the corner, I went ahead and removed
> 'Backgrounds and Emblems' from nautilus.
> 
> There are some reasons for it:
> - the code is quite old and crufty, pulls in a lot of libeel code and is
> basically unmaintained.
> - the feature, as it stands, is not really useful, and it's more
> cosmetic than anything else, especially now that we use browser mode by
> default.
> - we're trying to achieve a more streamlined nautilus (see e.g. [1] and
> [2]), and removing legacy features goes in the right direction.
> 
> Note that this does not completely remove the ability for extensions
> (e.g. Dropbox) to add emblems programmatically by using the
> libnautilus-extension library, just the user-added emblems from the
> properties dialog/emblems sidebar.
> 
> Also, the 'Information' sidebar is gone, for basically the same reasons.
> 
> We will keep to investigate a more powerful and up-to-date
> metadata/keyword integration for nautilus in the future anyway.

Removing emblems is a little unfortunate for me personally because I
used them as a fast way to customize folders in my home with nicely
drawn artwork. But I can understand the reasons why, and they really are
much more appropriate as part of a larger vision of metadata and
keywords, as you mention.

Is there any plan to make the custom icon option more user-discoverable?
Right now, you need to know that you can click the icon in the
properties dialog box. Not bad if you click everywhere or read the help,
but otherwise...

Related to the removal, are notes going to go too? (Either completely or
just removed from the sidebar.) I've personally never used them, but
this cycle would seem to be the appropriate time to remove them if that
was the plan.

- John