Re: compact view removed from Nautilus

[Cosimo Cecchi <cosimoc gnome org>]

On Tue, 2012-07-03 at 01:55 +0200, Stefano Teso wrote:

> What I didn't like of this whole story is that the discussion on the subject
> matter started only *after* the removal.
> 
> What's so wrong with discussing any plans for touchy changes *before*
> actuating them? I mean, you GNOME designers should know by now what kind of
> decisions may upset the public, right? ;-)
> I'm not saying the removal is necessarily a bad decision, however it would
> make sense to warn people before this kind of things happen, so at least
> they have a chance to debate. The key part is: *before*, not *after*.
> 
> The fact that the compact view was already removed also makes it nearly
> impossible to get it back with any form of argument, at least looking at the
> precedents. Others probably feel the same.
> 
> Please let me know if there actually was any previous public discussion, and
> I'll shut up. :-)

Hi Stefano,

me and Jon talked extensively about these changes before he started
writing those patches, and other people have been involved too [1];
those changes are indeed part of a bigger picture (that is increasingly
taking shape in git master) aimed to consolidate the user experience of
nautilus to the emerging new gnome application style.

Nautilus needs to evolve to keep up with the rest of GNOME, and having
both an elegant and simple design and someone writing the code to
implement it (in this case, the same person!) is great. I understand it
might be upsetting to lose a pet feature, but other different features
will come back: it's still under development.

Polling for user opinions through mailing lists or similar very rarely
has been the way GNOME designers worked to push important changes, in my
experience so far - and I see this as a very effective way to actually
make such important changes happen.

Cosimo

[1] Note that mockups for many of the changes that are being done have
been around in various forms for some months, and were even syndicated
by popular news sites when they appeared, so one could have seen it
coming...
https://github.com/gnome-design-team/gnome-mockups/tree/master/nautilus/new-style/