Re: [Usability] Nautilus emblems



On Sat, 2008-04-05 at 13:05 +0100, Alan Horkan wrote:
> On Fri, 4 Apr 2008, Andreas Nilsson wrote:

> > Therefore we thought it might be best to check with the UI people what's
> > the idea behind emblems
> 
> I wish I knew. I have an theory though.
> Does/do emblems go back as far as Eazel or was it more recent than that?

They were introduced by Eazel.

> They remind me of how Mac OS used to allow you to colour code folders, in
> effect tagging them as work, important, fun, cool, etc. (there were about
> 7 colours and the labels were could be changed) and to put it another way
> emblems seems like a crude form of built in tagging.

The Medusa indexer and search daemon indexed the emblems as keyword
tags. Medusa was enabled in the Eazel nautilus packages. It was used
the way Beagle or Tracker are when the Nautilus extensions are enabled.

There was work done to make Tracker treat emblems as tags, but i do not
see this working (I'm running the Hardy Heron Ubuntu beta).

> Emblems look interesting and are perhaps a good way to encourage users
> to tag their files and get into the habit of metadata and also to have an
> obvious visual cue for that tag.  Perhaps the developers had an idea of
> what they wanted but didn't fully think through the big picture in exactly
> those terms but I'd be sceptical about getting rid of emblems, it could
> yet be a powerful idea.

I use them a lot to tag the purpose of folders and files. Some nautilus
extensions use them to signify states eg. a version control extension
displays the file's state compared to the repository.

There are uses for them outside of the filesystem too. Emblems can be
used to indicate the number of new messages. The apple Mail.app displays
an emblem of the number of unread messages on the app icon in the dock.
I wonder if a similar approach could work using the Notification Area,
or the Avant Window Manager.

> If that really is the underlying concept and meaning that makes emblems
> useful then perhaps the current system needs to be rejigged so that the
> icons behave as a useful starter set of tags (and I really hope you
> understand the gist of what I'm getting at but if not I'll try and explain
> it agian better later).

I think the search tools (Tracker and Beagle) need a little prodding and
love.

-- 

__C U R T I S  C.  H O V E Y_______
Guilty of stealing everything I am.

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