[Usability]Nautilus Preference Proposal (screenshots too!!!!)

[<bordoley msu edu>]

Hi All,

Jan Petersen and I have worked on a proposal for consolodating and reducing 
the existing nautilus preferences. We would like to know the opinions of 
the the maintainers and the usability team. Jan has offered to do the 
implementation work (coding etc.) and we'd very much like to see this 
happen for 2.2 if possible. 
 
In addition, we'd like to consider moving the nautilus preferences out of 
nautilus and into the control center. This change would make nautilus more 
of a desktop component, similar to the panel, rather than a standalone 
application. Also in the star trek future, some of these preferences could 
in theory apply to a nautilus based file selector, so this is something to 
at least consider.
 
 
proposal:
========================
1. Views Category
------------------
In our design, we consolidated the "arrange items" and "sort in reverse" 
preferences for the icon and list views under the "default view" 
subcategory. Its our opinion that the user should only have one default and 
that these preferences should be shared between the list and icon views. In 
addition the "sort folders before files" and "show hidden and backup files" 
preferences have also been moved to the "default view" subcategory, as 
these preferences affect how a user views a folder. 

Both views retain their own default zoom preferences as users tend to 
prefer larger icons in the icon view than in the list view. 

As a result of consolodating the arrange items preferences, a "use manual 
layout" preferences was added to the "Icon View Defaults" subcategory. 

Finally, the tree view preference, "show only folders", has been moved into 
the new "Tree View Defaults" subcategory. It seemed to fit in well here 
along side the other folder views.


2. Appearance Category
----------------------
Most likely nautilus will no longer have themes in 2.2, so we did not 
consider this preference category in our design.

3. Windows Category
-------------------
We removed the "windows" category in our design. The new window behavior 
preference is moved into the new "files and folders" category (icon and 
list views in the current design). 

We recommend that the "new window display" preferences be removed in
favor of honoring the most recently selected setup from the view menu of 
the main window (ie. if a user selects to show the toolbar in the current 
window, all subsequent windows will show the toolbar as well). Galeon2 uses 
this method to select which window elements to display and it seems to work 
well. As always, we welcome comments. 
 
4. Desktop and Trash category
-----------------------------
We removed this category.

The "desktop" preferences are removed. These preferences seem to fall under 
the crack options category in our opinion. While I personally am a huge fan 
of "use home folder as desktop," from a pure usability standpoint I think 
nautilus should only have one desktop dir (at least in the user visible 
ui). In addition the "Use nautilus to draw the desktop" preference is really 
a power user tweak preference that shouldn't be included in the ui (i'm not 
aware of any other desktop shell/filemanager that includes such a 
preference). We recommend removing these preferences from the user visible 
ui, but retaining them as hidden gconf preferences for the power user in all 
of us. :)

The trash behavior prefs are moved to the "files and folders" category. 


5. Files and Folders category (currently Icon and List Views)
------------------------------------------------------------- 
First we generalized the title to "Files and Folders." This title is more 
descriptive of the affect these preferences have on user interactions.

The "Click Behavior" subcategory is generalized to "Behavior." This 
subcategory now includes both the "click" preferences and "open each file 
and folder in a new window" preference.
 
The "Executable Text Files" category is renamed "Scripts." This change was 
prompted by an existing nautilus bug report. I do not feel strong about the 
title either way, however the word script does appear in other parts of the 
nautilus ui. These prefs remain unchanged.
 
As mentioned before the "Hidden files" and "Backup files" preferences are 
moved into the views menu and are combined into a single preference. 

The "special flags in Properties dialog" preference is removed in our 
design. This should just be enabled as the permission tab of 
the properties window already requires the user to understand unix 
permissions. We see no reason for a preference.

6. Sidepanes category
--------------------------------
This category is removed. With the new sidebar design the tabs preferences 
seem out of place. We may want to include them as hidden preferences for 
those tweakers who may gain from minor speed improvements, but this doesn't 
really warrant inclusion in the ui. The tree view preference was moved to 
the "views" category.

7. Icon Captions Category
-------------------------
Same...
 
8. Previews Category (currently Performance)
--------------------------------------------
We renamed the category to "Previews" as these preferences more directly 
affect how nautilus previews files. The effect on performance is a side 
effect. This dialog remains unchanged with the exception that option menus 
are used in place of the radio buttons (looked cleaner to us).


Here are some mockups of our proposal. Its not quite complete (it missing 
mneumonics for example). 
 
http://www.msu.edu/~bordoley/nautilus_prefs/Screenshot-Prefs-1.png
http://www.msu.edu/~bordoley/nautilus_prefs/Screenshot-Prefs-2.png
http://www.msu.edu/~bordoley/nautilus_prefs/Screenshot-Prefs-3.png
http://www.msu.edu/~bordoley/nautilus_prefs/Screenshot-Prefs-4.png

Anyway what does everyone think. Lets stay positive and avoid a flamewar :)

dave