I am not going to advocate a position on the default for the the sidebar and toolbar. However, i am going to point out something i experienced with nautilus while playing around with it when they are both off. DISCLAIMER: I am using Slackware 8.1 so you may not have these problems, oh, and this is fairly long. After both the location bar and side bar are turned off, the easiest way for me to navigate around is by using the tool bar buttons: back, forward, and up. right? ok. So, if I use the "Start Here" menu selection in the Go menu, then i am see 5 choices: Favorites, Preferences, Programs, Server Config, and System Setttings. I choose Programs. Now i have a list of several folders i can choose from (Notice at this point that the Up button does not work (It is insensitive). I select Games. At this point, i decide that i do not want to play a game so i hit the up button. (I know that everything is arranaged in a hierarchy). Hmm. Not sure how to get to / from here, so i will just hit up some more. Oh crap! the up button doesn't work anymore. I guess i will hit the back button. Now i am back in the Games menu. (What the heck?!) So, i hit back again and it brings me to a different screen. Now, i am finally back to the start-here screen. It gets even worse if you traverse further down and have to backtrack. So, in other words to make a long story short: Nautilus does not follow the tree structure that you would expect it to follow because after you decend from "start-here:" to "programs:" you can not hit the up button to ascend back up to "start-here:". The only way to get back up to the "start-here:" screen is to go all the way back down to the deepest level you went to, then all the way back up the way you came by using the "back" button. While most of the time "back" will bring you up, and "forward" will bring you down, in this example, you have to use "back" to go down, then "back" will start to bring you back up. Now, if you say that, "Yes, that might be true, but "start-here:" and "programs:" are exceptions because they are not in the file system like your home directory. That may be true, but how would anyone know that without the location bar? Linux is based on one single file system with everything being located as a child of /, but Nautilus breaks that rule. It brings back memories of DOS with different drive letters. eck! I not sure what the metaphor is supposed to be for nautilus. On the one hand, it is like a big hierarchy file system, but there are certain folders which are not located in the hierarchy. But, on the other hand, it is kinda like a web browser because you can click on "links" which bring you to different screens and you have a history to allow you track backwards. But, if nautilus is web browser, then how come you can't use it browse the web? At this point, i am not sure what the meaning of this post is supposed to be, but i know that it is mostly fueled by frustration. I know that a lot of really hard work has gone into gnome, but it seems to me that we are not gettting anywhere. I really want gnome to be great, but it seems like it is just a pale imitation of something which doesn't deserve to be copied in the first place. Sidebar and Toolbar defaults really don't seem to matter if the user doesn't understand the metaphor in the first place. john
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