Re: [Usability] The ``Replace File'' dialog should display the two file sizes, times, etc.

[Phil Bull <philbull gmail com>]

I really like Christian's design; I think it would work well just as
it is (including the select all checkbox). Anything else is adding
features over and above what we already have.

The interface should, IMHO, be left virtually as per Christian's
proposal - it's clean, simple and not too confusing. I also agree that
rather than overwriting the file, nautilus should just send it to
trash so as to avoid accidental data loss. This should be a priority,
as mistakenly overwriting the family holiday snaps is going to be very
frustrating if they can't be recovered...

However:

There are a lot of 'advanced' features mentioned which would be very
useful sometimes. I don't think they should appear by default, but it
would be nice to have things such as renaming, batch renaming or file
diffs available if ever they are needed.

I sort of agree with Matthew Thomas - Christian's dialog (and mine,
and any of the others for that matter) do seem a little advanced to
start off with.

Maybe it would be best to do things in three stages:

1st: Show a really simple dialog, so you can either 'Cancel',
'Overwrite All' or go to 'Advanced'. This dialog should briefly
explain what happened - that there are filename conflicts. I'm not too
keen on 'Advanced' as a button label, because it doesn't really give
an impression of the (very useful!) tool which clicking this would
present. Maybe something along the lines of 'Manage Conflicts' or
'View Files'. Something more dramatic, anyway.

2nd: Christian's dialog. This would be enough for most selective
overwrites. This should again have an 'Advanced' button to lead on to
the third stage, but no rename function or anything like that.

3rd: Basically an app, toolbars and all. Possibility of filling this
out into a standalone 'GNOME Sync Manager'; it would be nice to have
something like this as an interface to PDAs, MP3 players, or for
syncing laptops and the like. While this is a separate issue and not
really within the scope of this discussion, making synchronisation
easy would be a cool/useful feature for GNOME. A lot of people would
use it if implemented well.

I can see stages 1) and 2) being implemented ready for G2.14 and a
'GNOME Sync Manager' being an option for G2.14/6. After all, it'd just
be a nice feature, not a necessity.

Thanks

-- 
Phil Bull
philbull.tk