Re: [Usability] Getting rid of Open and Save entirely?

[Daniel Borgmann <spark-mailinglists web de>]

On Tue, 2004-01-13 at 00:35 +0000, iain wrote:
> > But why _another_ Nautilus window and even a dialog one? We already have
> > browser windows and folder windows, that should be confusing enough. :)
> > What's the real benefit of such a dialog over a real window?
> > I experimented with an "Open Folder" item in my text editor and it seems
> > very useful. See this screenshot to get the idea:
> > http://liebesgedichte.net/Temp/scratch.png
> 
> Umm, (at the fear of dragging this on eternally)
> "Open folder"...and ummm, then what?
> Open folder...there's a folder open. great, thats useful.
> What folder?

This is just a shortcut to the folder of the current document. The idea
is not that you open the application, then press Open Folder and then
open the document, but that you open the document directly from a
folder. I do this already whenever possible. 


> What do you do after you have opened the folder?
> How do I load a file?
> I don't want to open a folder
> I want to open a file.
> "How do I drag and drop???I can't use a mouse!!!"

If it's not obvious how to open a file from the file manager, maybe we
did something wrong... And if file associations would be less
complicated to use, we wouldn't depend on drag and drop so much.


> Now do people see the problems?
> let this thread die
> We're not going to get rid of open save dialogs any time soon people
> We need them.

All I know is that I don't need them, that it's possible for
applications to work perfectly fine without them and it feels a lot
better. The screenshot above is no mockup, it's an actual application
which I use and which works.
However, I'm not in favor of getting rid of the dialogs and I don't
think anyone really is. I'm in favor of de-emphasizing them as the
"main" method to open (and someday to save) files and I'm in favor of
keeping them simple (pretty much like Federico's current work or the
suggestion of TigerT) instead of turning them into semi-filemanagers or
even filemanagers with buttons.

Daniel