Re: [Usability]Re: Nautilus toolbar simplification

["Liam R. E. Quin" <liam holoweb net>]

[do we really need the two lists here?]


On Tue, 2003-03-11 at 01:32, Michael Toomim wrote:

> Even with remote file-systems -- why would you ever want nautilus to 
> freeze after drawing half a directory?

Some possible reasons --
* it's using all my network bandwidth drawing thumbnails, and my
  computer is too busy for me to be able to get to Preferences, or
  I don't know there's a preference not to get file info about remote
  filesystems

* my filesystem is automounted and the server went away, e.g. my dialup
  modem disconnected, or the hotel's ADSL is unreliable

* after drawing 3,000 little icons for this directory nautilus is using
  over 50 MBytes of memory and is still going, and I only have 64M to
  start with

* the constant scrolling and flickering is driving me crazy and it's
  been doing it for 20 minutes now and I'm sick of it.

* nautilus is using too much CPU

* I have to pay for bandwidth and didn't realise this directory was
  so large... but I only need the first screen or two of information.

In general, network file systems may be very fast (in some cases
faster than local disk) or they may be very slow.  The most common
case is likely to be that they are usually moderately fast, slower
than local disks, but that sometimes there are problems or the network
is busy, and they are much slower.

I know I have used all of the nautilus toolbar icons, and I am not a
very frequent Nautilus user, mostly because it used to be a disaster
on a laptop a long time ago.  When I do use it on a remote folder, the
stop button is pretty important to me.

There's no keyboard equivalent I know of, and if there is, I don't want
to learn it (but it should be in the tooltip over the button if there
is, as otherwise I don't have a mechanism to learn it).  Possibly on a
Sun keyboard I could press the STOP button.


>  Because the home folder is always within the 
> user's immediate reach (even if there aren't any other nautilus windows 
> open),

The ways I know to get to the home folder, since I don't have
Nautilus draw my desktop, are typing a "fake URI" into the location
bar, pressing the home icon on the toolbar, quitting nautilus and
starting it again, or choosing Home Folder from the foot menu. 
Only one of those is either obvious or easy.


> >>   o "Reload" shouldn't be needed if FAM et. al. is doing its job, right?

FAM might not work on a network file system, whether or not you pressed
reload.  (does it work with virtual file systems like fonts:/// if I
install a font?)

If I pressed Stop, it'd be nice if the stop button changed into a
"resume" button.  Then I could stop nautilus from using tons of
bandwidth (or in fontilus' case, from making my machine crawl) and
carry on later.  The full fontilus view of 9,000 fonts makes nautilus
say too many icons in directory (with no option to draw it anyway, which
is obviously broken) and takes 20 to 30 minutes to draw.  No stop
button, you say?  No "resume" button? hah! :-)

> BTW, one of the reasons that you have to rely on the throbber is that 
> there isn't any busy-interaction hourglass mouse cursor when nautilus is 
> active

Yes.

If saving space is the issue, I'd actually like to see more use made of
the window title bar.  For example, replace the title bar with the menu
bar of the active window.

Another possibility is autohidden toolbars, like the gnome panel.

I use a WM theme that puts menu/close/minimise/iconfiy buttons to the
left of the window, not the top, and I like this a lot.  I'd use wmx
if it were more gnome-compliant -- but it fights with the panel too
much.

By all means simplify, but removing buttons isn't the only way to do
that.

One system I used to use had a Window Scale item in the window menu;
you could make any window's contents larger.  This used less room than
zoom buttons everywhere, and was more useful, but you had to know you
could click on the title bar.  To suggest this, there was a menu
button on the title bar that you could click on.

(on the other hand, it also had a "rotate window 90 degrees" option,
which maybe counts as a misplaced feature!  The developers got a bit
carried away with that one I think)

Liam