Re: [Usability] Open Files - Search

[Thorsten Wilms <t_w_ freenet de>]

On Wed, May 09, 2007 at 05:56:12PM +0100, Calum Benson wrote:
> On Wed, 2007-05-09 at 18:27 +0200, Thorsten Wilms wrote:
> 
> > Adding modality doesn't make things simpler. 
> 
> I agree (although it needn't make things harder either); I just
> suggested it because our file dialog is too cluttered already to allow a
> permanent, separate search box like OSX has.

Cluttered ... I thought about removing the Places header, but it shows the 
P mnemonic. I wanted to (again) remove the Add and Delete buttons, but they 
too show mnemonis ... But now I wonder: How about not showing the 
Add/Delete buttons initially. Show Delete if a Places item is selected,
show Add if a folder is selected?


> Well, one concern I'd have with your approach would be how quickly the
> results list could populate itself as you typed.  Most of the time I'm
> not interested in the search results because I know where I'm going, so
> unless the results update was so instantaneous as to not delay the
> appearance of each letter I typed, I would find it annoying.  Having a
> separate search 'mode' might turn out to be necessary for that reason
> alone.

Before something is typed, you'd see a file list like now. It would not 
go away until the first hit is found. With incremental search, results 
for the current folder should be practically instantaneous.

Searching all the way down and system-wide takes time of course. The 
results should appear as they come in and some spinning symbol as the 
last item could indicate the search is still in progress.

 
> Being a minimalistic sort of guy, I guess I also prefer the simplicity
> of the results list in OSX-- it doesn't have explicit headers in the
> results area, it just shows you a list of filenames.  For me, that's
> enough to pick the file I was looking for first time, although I
> certainly understand why you've included the headers in your mockup.
> (And also that I'm not really a typical user any more than anyone on
> this list probably is...)

The results do belong to different categories and the user should not be 
left wondering why something is in the results. There could be files with 
the same name, but from different folders. What would you do in the last 
case, with OSX?


-- 
Thorsten Wilms

Thorwil's Design for Free Software:
http://thorwil.wordpress.com