Re: [Usability] Spatiality does not mean that navigational facilities cannot exist

[Kalle Vahlman <kalle vahlman gmail com>]

On Tue, 01 Feb 2005 16:06:08 +0100, Maurizio Colucci
<seguso forever tin it> wrote:
> Kalle Vahlman wrote:
> > On Tue, 01 Feb 2005 10:46:38 +0100, Maurizio Colucci
> > <seguso forever tin it> wrote:
> >
> >>Kalle Vahlman wrote:
> > FWIW, I have not used the task bar for a long time. Instead I use the
> > drop-down list to select windows and it has worked well.
>
> I agree that this works. I've used this system too for a while (BTW, if
> the windows were sorted by recent usage, it would work much better IMHO.
> I also developed a window list on KDE that exploits this technique).

I think this has at least been discussed (the alt-tab-list does it too).
 
> >>Secondly, as someone who regularly uses the history sidebar in
> >>nonspatial nautilus, I am of the opinion that the space the sidebar
> >>takes is not missed, since the sidebar is only visible when you are
> >>browsing files.
> > In the browser, you'll probably have 1 or 2 windows open at the same
> > time
> Wait. In nonspatial nautilus with history sidebar, why would I have more
> than one window open? I never had to do that.

That's what I said :)

The point was that in nonspatial, there's only 1 or 2 history lists
visible, but with spatial it would something like 4-10 lists at the
same time. They'd take awfully lot of screen space.

> And please note that, if the list were popup, this would not be
> tolerable. The switch would be too slow, and YOU WOULD BE FORCED TO KEEP
> MORE THAN ONE WINDOW OPEN.

No. The panel applet (actually nautilus) could reuse the window, like
some web browsers do for example.

> And this is not all. An always visible sidebar would allow more
> simplifications: the "back" and "forward" buttons on the toolbar could
> be removed, because it is much more intuitive to click on the target
> location *directly*. And the "back" button could be removed too (I did
> this in my program "onefinger" for KDE).

You lost me here, there's no such buttons on my spatial windows. And
for the browser mode, the sidebar seems to be visible all the time
anyways.
 
> So, an always-visible sidebar would give us a big deal of
> simplifications, with no drawback (as experience proves).

Those simplifications apply to the current browser mode, and in
spatial there's almost nothing left to simplify ;)
 
> > so duplication is not an issue. But in spatial there are more
> > windows and so more duplication.
> 
> No, wait. The "spatial sidebar" should close the previous window, thus
> always keeping one nautilus open window at any given time. What would be
> the reason to keep more than one nautilus window open?

and

> Thinking again, it might be better for the user to choose whether a
> click on the folder history should close the previous window or not:
> someone might like to see two locations at the same time (for reasons I
> still don't understand, including drag and drop).

*blinks twice*

Isn't dnd alone enough reason to have two windows open?

> What's important is that, if I want to see only one location at a time,
> I must be able to do it. Just like I am doing now with nonspatial nautilus.

Well, if you add the side bar and have only one window open any given
time, what makes it different from the browser mode? The fact that
"spatial" windows (appear to) fly around and resize unexpectedly
depending on their remembered position and size?

-- 
Kalle Vahlman, zuh iki fi