Re: [Usability] Thoughts about the file chooser

[Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie>]

On Sun, 26 Sep 2004, Leonardo Santagada wrote:

> Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2004 05:21:55 -0300
> From: Leonardo Santagada <santagada gmail com>
> To: Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie>
> Cc: usability gnome org
> Subject: Re: [Usability] Thoughts about the file chooser
>
>   Radical changes are nice but they have to be planed and well
> executed if you want it to work. Responding to not using mouse for
> drag and drop, I don't use the acessibilyties tools of gnome but in
> windows you can transform your number pad into a mouse and te buttons
> stick so it is easy to do drag&drop operations.

I've used it and it is an exageration to call it easy.

>   About the cli propose. If we are working on a full desktop you
> shouldn't be worring with people who use cli, if they want they can
> use other software to do their work, we can't make every user in the
> world happy.

I firmly believe that if you ever need to use the command line your
Desktop Enviroment has failed.  Currently it is difficult for ordinary
users to automate or script tedious task and chain together smaller
programs as easily as you can string together commands using >
redirects and | pipes but maybe eventually full scripting and recording
of tasks will become possible and ordinary users will become programmers
without really noticing.

> I personaly think that the save button it an old concept from the
> time that saving to floppy disks was the only way to store information
> and it was really slow. Today I think the computer should always be
> saving the user work.

This has been gone over before and I dont think getting rid of the file
chooser is a long term issue and is not a reason not to incrementally
improve what we have right now.

Even if autosave worked well (like it does for simple stickey note
applications, but no examples yet of more complicated applications
implemnting it reliably) there would still be a need for things like Save
as and Import/Export or Insert files which would benefit from continued
developement of the File chooser.

> Drag and drop is a clean metaphor and if you
> want to see it working nicely you should test rox
> (http://rox.sourceforge.net/).

drag and drop has it's limitations (requires good mouse control, not very
particularly accessible) and although improvements to drag and drop are
great the file chooser will still be needed.

I am sure the importance and emphasis on the File Chooser will die down as
other approaches are refined but I feel safe to bet that we will have the
File Chooser for another 5 years (and I'm reasonably confident it will
still be around in a recognisable form in 10 years time).

Sincerely

Alan Horkan

http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/
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