Re: [Usability] Hide the Desktop folder

[Tom Conneely <tom conneely gmail com>]

Hey

On 8/24/05, Joachim Noreiko <jnoreiko yahoo com> wrote:
> On the subject of things being viewable twice in
> spatial Nautilus, what about links? When I make a link
> to another folder, say to another drive that I've
> mounted in /mnt but want to access within my home
> folder, I can get two windows to the same folder that
> can have different view options (such as background
> colour).
> 
> Joachim

This is something which has been bugging me for a while, I feel that
nautilus, or atleast the desktop should be able to manage symbolic
links and duplicate the appearance of the actual folder when user
clicks on a symlink.

To give an example I have a folder /mp3s where all users keep their
mp3s together, and I place a symlink to this folder in every users
home so its easy to find(pointless background info finished). When
creating this symlink for myself I used nautilus (terminal being how I
sorted every other user out) by dragging the file into my home
directory with middle click and selecting "link to file" (or whatever
the menu option is). To an average user, this isn't a symlink (i.e. a
"file" on the HD containing the path of the actual file) its a
shortcut that will display the actual folder /mp3s, so they don't
really see it as /home/foo/mp3s, it took my family a while to latch on
to this difference. While I'm not advocating that we DO send the user
to /mp3s as this will mean when the user goes up in the hierachy they
will go to / rather than their home which wouldn't be good. But
nautilus should be abe to alleviate some of the confusion as to where
they are by keeping both /mp3s and /home/foo/mp3s physically (or
should that be spatially) the same appearance wise.

Sorry for the rather lengthy text for a rather simple problem but I'm
tired, bored and need an outlet other rubbish than late-night TV.

Hope you got it all, cos now I read it back its not very clear but I
think its time for bed so there is a prize for anyone who gets what
I'm on about

-- 
tom.c