Hey all,
There is a bug somewhere about turning off the sidebar and location bar
in nautilus by default. I'm not going to get into that arguement, but
suffice it to say that for my own uses I much prefer to have the sidebar
off.
What I miss when it's off is the ability to make mime-type-executions
(eg. 'Open with Gedit' on a text file) on the current file or directory.
I really don't think that we should have to rely on the sidebar for this
functionality. I'm not a Usibility pro so I'm not going to say I know
exactly where else this functionality should be, but I think that the
File menu makes the most sense.
eg. I have a text view open and I could click File->Open with->Gedit to
open the file in gedit. To me that fits in well with the file menu
metaphor and saves me clicking back and using the file's context menu.
.....................................................................
It get's slightly more complicated when you are viewing a folder. The
problem is that the File menu is used for both the current folder and
any files that might be selected in the current folder. I use single
click and didn't know until a second ago what those greyed out Options
in the File menu were for. Turned out they are for working with the
currently selected files, while the items above them are for working on
the currently selected folder.
Should we not have two sepporate menus for these? IMHO the file items
don't belong and the menu should be called 'Folder' instead of 'File'
and should related only to the current folder.[1] It's very windowsish
to have a file menu and throw everything into it. It might be breaking
the mould a bit, but to me it would make much more sense to have two
sepporate menus.
Maybe an 'File -> Open Folder with' item and an item in the Folder
context menu in icon view would work to solve the mime-execution issue
I raised at the start of this mail, while leaving the file menu in tact,
but then we would still be left with a messy file menu.[2]
I can't pretend to know the answers, but I really don't think that the
file and folder object metaphors are being represented as well as they
could be in nautilus atm :/ Mixing them in the File menus is quite
confusing IMHO.
Hope this e-mail made some sense :)
Later
[1]Doesn't the HIG tell us not to stick in a 'File' menu just because
everyone else is doing it?
[2] But I guess adding an item to the file menu would be better than
nothing and would solve my first problem..
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