[Usability] Issues and suggestions about files preview

[Jie Zhang <jzhang918 gmail com>]

Hi,

I'm using GNOME for daily use, both for work and at home. I want to
tell my feels about files preview in current GNOME.

I never enable "Text Files" preview. It's useless since you cannot
easily figure out what this file is from the few characters shown in
the preview icon.

And I don't like group almost all kinds of files in "Other Previewable
Files" except text, sound and folders. When it's enabled, pictures and
pdfs are both show their thumbnails in the icons. I also found it's
almost useless for pdfs. It's very hard to identify what the pdf is
from the small first page on the icon. The first page of a pdf usually
contains only a caption and several other lines of text. When shown in
thumbnail, almost every pdf looks alike. The second point I don't like
pdf thumbnails is their size is much larger than other normal icons.
So scattering them with normal icons looks ugly.

What the preview is very useful for and I often use is pictures.  I
disable all previews in ordinary use to keep large pdf thumbnails from
showing.  I only enable preview when I want to browser my picture
directories. It's very inconvenient.

So I suggest that

1. replace "Text Files" with "Pictures". Let "Other Previewable Files"
control text files.

or

2. take "Pictures" out of "Other Previewable Files" and make it a single item.

Personally, I like to see the first one.


Thanks,
Jie