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Re: [Usability] File Open/Save dialog

Reinout van Schouwen wrote:

Op zondag 03-01-2010 om 11:51 uur [tijdzone +0100], schreef SZABÓ
Gergely:
A few thoughts on the file Open/Save dialogs. I've just had a quick look in Bugzilla, there are about 200 related bugs, each dealing with some minor aspect. I'd rather propose a more general solution. 

I will try to give some short replies based on my knowledge of the
situation.


1. Layout
1.1. File name edit-box should be together with optional file-type or encoding drop-downs. 

Why? It might be obvious to you but if you think the current placement
is bad, you'll have to explain how you come to that conclusion.
Simple: the file-type determins the filename. A JPEG type file is called foo.jpg while a PNG is called bar.png. They belong together. They are even placed together in the OpenOffice Open/Save dialog (not to mention Windows, Mac OS X, etc). It's probably not a coincidence. 
1.2. "Places" should be deleted or optional, see below
1.3. Folder Button-bar should be deleted or optional, see below
1.4. Separate "Save in folder" and ""Browse for other folders" are an unnecessary complication, just display the folder-browser 

The designers of the dialog felt that the folder-browser was an
unnecessary complication, at least unnecessary to display by default.
Why do you think every user should be forced to think about folder
hierarchies when he just wants to save a file?
Most people reluctant to think about folders end up saving everything on their Desktop. Utter chaos, in other words. Why make my life miserable for their sake? According to your arguments, the "Create folder" button should be removed as well.
Actually, I think people were originally not reluctant to think about folders, Microsoft just corrupted them with these My Documents, My Videos, etc. shortcuts. My boss used to program ABS systems in assembler 10 years ago, but now it's a pain to watch him deal with his files... 
2. Folder Browser Behaviour
2.1. Hotkey Backspace for up-dir does not work as in Nautilus


Works for me (Gnome 2.28).

It was fixed in the meantime, then :-)

2.2. Even item up-dir ".." is missing


It's not missing. ".." is meaningless for anybody except people with
good knowledge of the command line and filesystems. The breadcrumb bar
is there to navigate a level up.

I just proposed it as an alternative of the missing Backspace.

2.3. Items are not right-clickable as in Nautilus


That is because the filechooser is not a file manager.


It is in Windows. You can stone me now.

3. Keyboard navigation
3.1. Tab-completion in file-name edit box is nice, but first I thought it's broken keyboard navigation 3.2. Escape from file-name edit box by Ctrl-Tab is not intuitive, as Tab works everywhere else 

You have a point, but believe me when I say that hell would break loose
on the internets if the GTK+ developers were to change this.

It's OK, I can live with that.

3.3. Folder Browser unusable due to lack of up-dir hotkey, see above
3.4. "Places", folder button-bar etc are simply a huge bug as regards keyboard navigation, see above 

Then let's fix the navigation and not remove a useful feature.
The main way to fix keyboard-navigation is to (optionally) decrease the number of widgets on the dialog. 
4. (Dis)similarity to Nautilus
To summarise things, the dialog's main problem is its dissimilarity to Nautilus. It looks similar, but it behaves completely differently, which users do not expect. 

It looks similar to Nautilus' list view, but that's not even the default
view in Nautilus (that's icon view). So I don't think this point is
really valid.
I meant the functional, behavioral dissimilarity. No right-clicks, no configurability etc.
I actually think Nautilus and these dialogs should be the very same project. 

Technically impossible. The filechooser is a GTK+ widget which cannot
depend on the pile of Gnome libraries Nautilus depends on.
4.1.1. Take over layout config from Nautilus (presence of Places, button-bar etc) 

Actually I don't see many differences in the layout between the Nautilus
Places sidebar and the one in the filechooser.
I mean the PRESENCE of the Places sidebar, not how it looks. You can notice a theme developing here: I want to get rid of the Places sidebar somehow ;-)
4-1.2. Use the icons/list/column layout as configured in Nautilus for the Folder browser
Note that this is per-folder setting. 
Unfortunately.

4.2. Take over Folder Browser's behaviour from Nautilus


Please specify what exact behaviour you refer to.

Please look just below...

4.2.1. Backspace for up-dir
4.2.2. All items right-clickable with usual context-menu (e.g. remove write-protection etc) 

Read-only permissions are located in the Properties notebook of a
file/folder, not in its context menu. What's more, replicating a file manager within the filechooser would be 
a waste of effort. If you want to manage files, use Nautilus. If you
just need to open or save a file, the filechooser does its job just
fine.
The evil and rude Microsoft still managed to do it: A fairly intuitive user interface, which looks and behaves the same all the time. Please stone me again. 
To conclude: certainly improvements to the GTK+ filechooser are
possible, but not all of the points you mention are actual bugs. Reading
up on the history of the filechooser may explain you better why things
are as they are.

regards,
I never said these were bugs. I just proposed possible usability improvements. That's the exact reason I've posted this to "Usability" and not GNOME-bugzilla.
If nothing goes, I promise I'll stick to the Tab-completion feature in the future (that's a rhyme!). And as much as I was praising Microsoft, their product is completely broken by the simple fact that Backspace jumps to the first item of the up-dir and not to the dir where you've just come from. GNOME rulez. 

Best regards
Gergely
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