Re: [Usability] New Pathbar

[Matthew Thomas <mpt myrealbox com>]

On 23 Aug, 2005, at 1:07 PM, Owen Williams wrote:
> ...
> The current methods to reveal hidden files and get a location entry 
> were completely undiscoverable for me.  I only found out about them by
> reading this mailing list.  There's not even a help icon in the file
> selector that could be used to figure this out.

An icon-only pull-down menu could be placed above the right side of the 
list, containing these commands.

> I like the idea of adding a location bar and making the folder names
> clickable. Users are used to seeing text-based location bars when web
> browsing.

Which is one of the Web's worst aspects. "In principle, users should 
not need to know about URLs which are a machine-level addressing 
scheme." <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/990321.html>

> As the user scrubs the mouse over the names, the underline
> will appear and the mouse cursor will change, signalling a clickable
> element.  Again this is feedback learned when browsing the web.

Only on a minority of pages that are very badly designed. People 
"shouldn't have to guess or scrub the page to find out where they can 
click" <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20040510.html>.

> Advanced users could go a step further and edit the text directly,

It would be rather annoying trying to edit text where clicking on the 
part you wanted to change opened another folder.

> at which point tab completion becomes useful.

You can already do completion in the listing itself. You don't even 
need to use the Tab key.

--
Matthew Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/