Re: [Usability] Re: Suggestion for the actual UI of GTK+'s New FileSelector

[Julien Olivier <julo altern org>]

> I still believe Gnome should do this.
> If it's too slow or uses too much memory, that should be fixed.  The
> original file list dlog in the early UI systems was because there was
> not enough performance to run a file manager and an application at the
> same time, not enough screen size to drag between two windows, and
> for the Mac, because of the decision to have only one active window.
> 
> The Sun/AT&T open look experiments with drag & drop were successful at
> the time - UI studies they did seemed to show that users liked being
> able to drag files from the desktop into applications without having
> to bother with File->Open.  However, an "affordance" was needed to
> give them a clue that this could be done.  Programs had a "drop target"
> where you could drop documents to have them be opened.  This seemed
> to work well.  When active, the drop target could also be used as
> a drag target to save, print, view,compile (or whatever) the current
> document by dragging from the target.
> 
> We're in danger of falling into the trap of following Microsoft when
> Microsoft itself is moving... in a couple of years, Gnome will need
> to compete effectively with Longhorn, and it won't do that by copying
> Windows 95/98/NT for "familiarity".  The OSF made the same mistake by
> copying the OS2 ver. 1.5 presentation manager for Motif, thinking it
> would reduce training as pretty much everyone in the industry would
> be using OS/2.  The moral is, don't be afraid to lead ;-)

There is, at least, one technical problem: the open/save file dialog
should work with GTK-only app, with or without GNOME, and, thus, with or
without Nautilus (AFAIK).

-- 
Julien Olivier <julo altern org>