Re: [Usability] Text legibility on the desktop; the Cartesian file browser

[Gediminas Paulauskas <menesis delfi lt>]

luke optushome com au wrote:
> Finally, in case I happen to have anyone's attention, I may as well
> comment on my only other usability worry with Nautilus.  It's to do with
> the fundamental nature of an X-Y grid layout of icons or previews -
> they use up more screen space than the value you get from it.  (With
> some notable exceptions.  The nntp example above is an excellent use of
> the concept; so is the preview mode when you have lots of image files.)
>
> But it falls down when you get to boring directories full of files that
> aren't `photographic' in content.  (Perhaps because the human brain has
> evolved with lots of image recognition circuitry.)
>
> For such directories (e.g. directories full of directories or text
> files), a big chunky icon has never made any usability sense to me.
> I always kind of think "Okay, okay, it's a folder already.  You don't
> need to consume a square inch of the screen to tell me that!"
>
> The repetition devalues the information, I suppose.
>
> How to solve the problem?  I confess I don't know.  It's a tricky
> problem that many people have wrestled with over the years.  Both a
> tree view of files (like Explorer), or columnated scrolling regions
> (like the Nextstep one), are I think more effective for such
> repetitious directories.
>
> Perhaps the solution is to display the most important thing.  For image
> files, it's the image.  Even for X bitmap files, the text would still be
> very recognisable. :-)  But for most other text files it wouldn't.
>
> Therefore, displaying just the name gives you both a screen space saving
> and a consequent drawing speed saving.  And responsiveness is after all
> a critical issue for usability (second only to predictability, perhaps).
>
> So - probably just a legible file name is all you need, then, for such
> non-graphical file types.  And let's face it, text labels are basically
> one dimensional, not two, so packing them side by side makes a lot of
> sense... 
>
> Maybe the idea that some people like, where the directories are
> separated from the plain files, makes some sense ... (I've never liked
> it myself, but with a slight twist the idea might be useful).
>
> If you're looking for files by name you're doing a different thing than
> looking for them by content view.  So maybe splitting the directory up
> by file type makes more sense.  So reserve a grid area for image file
> types, displayed in an X-Y grid, and then use an explorer style view
> below.

Are you talking about List view? It was in Nautilus from the beginning...

In Windows Explorer, however, this view is called "Details", and "List" is 
just file names with small file type icons on the left. So, maybe that's 
what you want? Yes, it would be nice to have such a view in Nautilus. At 
least in Windows Explorer I always use that view.

--
Gediminas