Re: [Usability] nautilus, panel, and metacity not acting as if the desktop was a single entity

["Liam R. E. Quin" <liam holoweb net>]

On Sat, 2005-05-14 at 08:44 +0100, Phil Bull wrote:
>  If the desktop should not be cluttered, then
> why should we help people clutter it more?

One reason people's desktops are cluttered is that it's easier
in many environments to save a file to the desktop than to put
it where it belongs.  Sort of like a teenager's bedroom floor :-)

Where the computer knows where something belongs it should just
ask, "do you want to put this away?"

For example, if I always save downloaded music in
/media/usb-disks/bigone/music/artist-name/album-name/track-name.ogg
then after 3 or 4 the system can notice and do it for me automatically.

As for the viewport vs workspace debate, different X window managers
do this in different ways, and there's a note in the Metacity readme
about how it could work either way.  With a viewport scrolling over
an infinite (or large) "desk" surface, the metaphor can include things
fastened (e.g. pinned or glued) to the screen so that they are visible
all the time.  A "downloads tray" is one example.  You could also
have a feature, "go to window or icon named..." where you type in
the first few letters of a name and go to where it's visible.  Then
you get a much more "spatial" interface.

I don't know if it'd be better, but I do know that wherever the
metaphor fails ("leaky abstractions", I think that might be a Jef Raskin
term) users tend to have difficulties... e.g. "drag floppy to waste
basket to eject"... if the metaphor is that we're a UFO spaceship
hovering over a planet with our things sprawled out everywhere, then
things inside the spaceship around the outside of the port-hole [= a
window in a ship] should move with us.  And if the computer crashes, the
glass should shatter :-)

Liam

-- 
Liam Quin, W3C XML Activity Lead, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin
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