Re: [Usability]Nautilus tree sidebar / location field

[Sunnanvind Fenderson <sunnanvind fenderson com>]

Hi again,

Reinout van Schouwen <reinout cs vu nl> writes:

> Hello Sunnanvind,
> 
> On 1 Aug 2002, Sunnanvind Fenderson wrote:
> 
> > That's all very nice but I argue that a present location field allows
> > a nice transition path from web to cli. "Everyone" knows how to use a
> > browser, right? A location field makes typing paths very obvious.
> 
> 1. Why is a transition path from web to CLI desirable?

It might be, for some. I love CLIs, I have a strange feverish vision
that haunts me about a modern cli with fonts and postscripts and
formatting. I personally prefer to type the file name than
search-n-click, even though I've tried both. This revelation of the
joyousness of CLIs is something that must be shared! It is a passion!
A message! A vision! :)

Some guy ("Greg Knauss", I don't know who that is) said the following
in an article about Mac OS X:

"You know there's revolution in the air when the following can be
typed into an operating system built in Cupertino and execute
flawlessly:
                                                                   
     dig @138.195.138.195 goret.org. axfr | grep '^c....*A' | sort |
     cut -b5-36 | perl -e 'while(<>){print pack("H32",$_)}' | gzip -d
     
Put that in your GUI and smoke it."

Somethings are harder to do with a GUI, that's all. Sure, I'm all for
doing something similar to KDE's Kaptain, or improving xdialog, and I
dig the Nautilus "scripts" folder. All those are sweet things - but
knowlegde about those things stem from the CLI. I might even go as far
to say that the CLI is the mother of all customizability and
script-like creation.

> 2. You'd be surprised of the number of people who don't know they can
> enter something in their browsers' location bar themselves.

I might be surprised. I'm a pretty emotional person who gets surprised
easily. How many percent of current browser users don't know that?

> 3. How does a location bar within the Nautilus window make typing paths
> any more obvious than a location bar provided by an applet?

"Because it's easier to find and to connect visually with file
browsing" - is that a good answer? A location bar provided with an
applet might be okay for cognescenti (if it's easy to acces with C-l)
so I won't *complain* if this is what happens, but I don't see why the
location bar must be killed at all costs when it's benefits are so
big.

Now, having it hidden as default might be good. I've been out of the
loop since that first usability testing - but in it, users seemed to
think that the location bar was the bee's knees.