[Usability] Re: spatial mode (was Nautilus: maybe a GtkFileChooser like UI?)

[Michele Cella <michele cella gmail com>]

Thilo Pfennig wrote:
> Am Dienstag, den 14.06.2005, 23:45 +0200 schrieb Michele Cella:
>
>
> > (Not mentioning spatial mode here. I've never switched it off since its 
> > introduction but I must admit that often, when I need to do something, I 
> > click the File Browser launcher in my panel and start browsing.)
>
>
> I have lately came to a new opinion about this. I think "sometimes"
> spatial mode is great and sometimes I hate it.
>
> 1. Spatial mode is especially frustrating on smaller screens, because
> open folders cover each other.

True

> 2. Spatial mode is especially fine with often used folders that are deep
> in hierarchy. I would say they could be considered Bookmarks or
> Favourites

Yes, I agree. I've not mentioned it before, but I always open my 
favorite folders (those in my Places menu and the Trash) in spatial mode 
and I think this is its ideal use case.
My trash is a small window in the right bottom corner, my movie folder 
is big and takes the entire screen and so on...

> I think here the old "file-browser" and content organiszers like F-spot
> meet! There is a difference between navigating folders (spatial) and
> organizing content. But moth methods do mix. Also folders mighht contain
> a mix of content like a picture, a movie, text,... 
>
>
> So to make my point clear i would mention:
>
>  1. navigational level (Nautilus with spatial mode)
>  2. organizing media ( F-Spot, Rhytmbox, Easytag, Gthumb,...)
>  3. Working with the media.
>
> [...]
>
>  * importing new images (camera, web, network)
>  * organizing images (content orientated, including licensing!)
>  * work with the images
>  * exporting or structuring: the last step would allow users to export
> specific images to special places: usbstick, desktop, Flickr,...
>
>
> I think that there is not much sense allowing the user or asking him
> where to put images. I think that GNOME should have default places. But
> I think about them more as virtual places then as necessarily real
> folders. Those places could also be distributed via many computers or
> file systems, depending on how they are organized. The user can share
> these content The user could give his images licenses (like CC). These
> sharing rules also could be used by peer-to-peer programs.
>
> [...]
>
> Organizing files is a very time-consuming task. I would love to see
> Gnome going in the direction of helping people organize their content
> and help them to interact, share, communicate. I think that the classic,
> spatial interface can also be present as an application that many people
> will seek, but we should target the new generations who have their first
> contact with the computer. Being not a popular as Windows could benefit
> GNOME as we do not have to take tens of millions of users with us. 

I think recently we (as computer users in general, not only gnomers) are 
 experiencing new ways of managing and organizing our media. That's 
particularly evident (at least for me) on the web front, with tons of 
new and cool applications like flikcr and del.icio.us completely "tag" 
centric (the same applies for GMail with its label concept and for 
F-spot on the gnome front).

As the capacity of our storage media increases every day we need new way 
of managing our data, that's why we see applications like Beagle popping 
up on every platform (Applet Spotlight, Google Desktop Search...) and 
acting as our personal computer search engine, just like google does for 
the world wide web.

We can't use a filemanager to find our way in the www, that's what 
google is for, and maybe (someday) this will also apply to our 
filesystem. We will rarely use our file manager, instead we will search 
our documents, specifying a particular tag, to get our work done without 
worrying about their locations on our hierarchical filesystem. Just like 
you said. :-)

Disclaimer: I'm absolutely not an usability expert. That's only my POV 
as a simple user! :-)

> Thilo

Ciao.
Michele