Re: [Usability] File open dialog double/single click issue

["Dylan McCall" <dylanmccall gmail com>]

Well, speaking of being consistent with the file manager, it isn't. There is a gconf key to change between double or single click for Nautilus, but the GTK file browser widget does not do the same.

Personally, I don't like that this widget tries to be so much like Nautilus, since it is incorrect in many ways, including having a different Places list. It should either be exactly the same thing (Nautilus itself squeezing into a container created by the file open widget), or completely different. Otherwise, users will continue to expect this thing to behave like Nautilus when it really does not; it only looks like Nautilus, and only enough to be confusing.
Granted, it's a nice widget. Putting Search in the Places list makes a lot of sense, and that would be good to have in Nautilus, especially since searching will always search everything that gets indexed (no choice of file path so far). Listing it under Places makes a lot of sense.

I wouldn't mind it being a completely different widget, either. This widget is not meant to behave like Nautilus, as it is not for managing files so much as simply finding them quickly.

Bye,
-Dylan McCall

On Jan 22, 2008 6:41 AM, Calum Benson <Calum Benson sun com> wrote:

On 21 Jan 2008, at 23:37, Toms wrote:

> Hi all and thanks for the GNOME!
>
> I have a short question:
> In the file browsing dialogs, like file->open, the left pane (folders
> and favorites) responds to single click, but the right one, where you
> have files and folders - to doubleclick.
> There are no visual clues that would hint for the single click on left
> pane, and i find myself forgetting which one was which time after
> time.
>
> I was wondering if there is any background on this behavior or just
> happens to be so.

Left pane was double click until very recently, but so many people
complained about it that it was changed to single click IIRC...

On the face of it, although I was in favour of the change myself
(because I kept single-clicking the left pane and wondering why
nothing had happened), it is rather hard to explain why they should
different.  The right pane obviously uses double click to be
consistent with the file manager, but, for whatever reason, most
people seem to expect to single click the bookmarks list.

Cheeri,
Calum.

--
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum benson sun com            GNOME Desktop Team
http://blogs.sun.com/calum             +353 1 819 9771

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems

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