[Usability] Re: Killing Views Part 2 - The return of the Usabilty study

[Gregory Merchan <merchan phys lsu edu>]

On Tue, Jun 03, 2003 at 01:14:07AM +1000, Jeff Waugh wrote:
<snip>
> Nautilus is a sub-optimal user interface for non-file-management related
> tasks, and there's not a lot that menu and toolbar merging can do about it.
<snip>

It doesn't seem to be doing too well for file management tasks either.
Lacking are:
 - Group operations for things like chmod and chown. [1]
 - A main tree view for moving .desktop (or possibly, bookmark) files
    around while keeping perspective on the hierarchy.
 - Scripting-by-doing, a.k.a. macro recording. (See AppleScript)
 - Other stuff people have been clamoring for since day one that GMC had.

Cheers,
Greg

[1] If Nautilus provided a list of selected files by an X selection, it
    wouldn't be hard to make an external property inspector for those
    properties which are not private to Nautilus.[2]

[2] And about those private parts, PANTS OFF! If any application could
    get and set metadata for a file indicating the dimensions of the
    last window used for a file, then we could cut down on the "random"
    window placement. With root-relative icon positions exported on
    opening, we could make a document appear to connected to its icon.
    With a little more data, the document could disappear back to its
    icon (or an ancestor folder's icon) when closed.