[Usability] Re: Nautilus Sendto -- opportunities for generalisation

[Edd Dumbill <edd usefulinc com>]

On Tue, 2004-08-24 at 14:50 +0200, Reinout van Schouwen wrote:
> Hi Edd,
> 
> On Mon, 23 Aug 2004, Edd Dumbill wrote:
> 
> >> My alternative solution is to make the GNOME Phone Manager phone object
> >> just another icon in Nautilus that people can use as if it were a
> 
> > Bluetooth has two ways of doing file transfer.  OBEX FTP, which would be
> > handled with a gnome-vfs method (not yet implemented), and OBEX PUSH,
> > which is "beaming" (implemented in gnome-obex-send).
> 
> But why bother the user with this distinction? If the user wants to send 
> a file to his phone, does it matter *how* this is performed under the 
> surface?

For a start, it's not just phones.  It's any bluetooth device. And yes,
it does make a difference as the receiving device handles it differently
too and does bother the user with the distinction.

To reiterate, they are quite different operations:

PUSH (what I'm calling "send to"), which chucks a file into an inbox on
the remote device.  This is akin to sending email.

FTP, which works like normal FTP - so the user gets to decide where the
file should go, etc.

> > "Send to" is the correct semantics here.
> 
> Perhaps it is, but I still don't see the need of cluttering nautilus 
> context menus with stuff few people will use some of the time.

Well, if they've installed GNOME Bluetooth they've installed it because
they want to send files.  It's not part of the Desktop release and
likely won't be.

There's no point in writing another file manager-like application just
to send files!

> > Maybe the answer is a similar way to the way the panel applet choice 
> > has been solved.
> 
> I think I missed that. URL?

Use a 2.7 series panel and do the "Add to panel" menu item.  Instead of
the deep context menus it brings up a simple list.

-- Edd