Why Users Blame Spatial Nautilus

An anonymous reader writes "OSNews has a commentary on spatial Gnome and why you KDE/Windows people hate them so much (hint: because almost all of you use Windows and/or a Windows 'interface clone'). Steve Jobs, however, denounced spatial interfaces because they make the users janitors. Hmmm!"

Huh?

[BobPaul (710574)]

GNOME 2.6 is all about ease of use, performance and unification
...
Don't know how to use gconf? Then you shouldn't change the way Nautilitus works, I presume.

Am I missing something?

--
Remove the Kiddie Gloves! [osdir.com]

Re:Huh?

[hbo (62590)]

Yeah, it's called "respect for the user." In this case it's replaced with "user interface paternalism."

Browser-mode file browsers hide the lack of thought and organisation in the filesystem structure; spatial ones do not. Folder structure should be simple and as shallow as possible..

Translation: We know best about how to organize your files. We don't understand why you need a deep directory hierarchy, so we'll make it hard for you to use it.

What's worst, attacks on the spatial browser try to stop the innovation. While it is hard to call the GNOME's spatial Nautilius "innovative", as spatial browsers have a long history, to mention only the famous Macintosh Finder, it is certainly innovative to bring this idea back to life, after all these years of browser-like file managers domination.

Translation: You are a pinheaded luddite if you oppose this "innovation."

Spatial for shallow, Browser for deep.

[tentimestwenty (693290)]

I don't know why this keeps being debated. Spatial interfaces work for when you have few files and shallow directories, just like in the real world on your desk. Browser interfaces work for when you have lots of files and deep directory trees. The only way to get a spatial browser to "feel" like it's powerful when you have a lot of files is to have the computer manage the files in "meta" categories. That way, you're managing groups of things that are smartly organized, not a myriad of individual files. Perhaps when we get some really smart database file systems there will be some automation to bring spatiality back but until then it's browser all the way.

Re:Spatial for shallow, Browser for deep.

[kfg (145172)]

Perhaps when we get some really smart database file systems there will be some automation. . .

Someone still has to inform the database just what is considered "smart" behavior.

This "smart" behavior may well end up being pretty stupid behavior for any particular user. The construction of business rules cannot be fully automated, as they are abstract constructions from particular real world situations.

You have to decide for yourself which drawer is appropriate to store your socks in, or even whether storing them in a drawer is appropriate at all.

KFG

how about piles?

[tentimestwenty (693290)]

Spatial and meta-categories can mix if you expand the vocabulary of the spatial environment. The obvious example that comes to mind is "piles." Apple has been rumored to be working on this for a long time now. If the computer can organise your documents, say based on date created, format, job, or content, then it can put it into piles, much like you would do for a stack of papers of a particular category on your desk. Automating these kinds of groupings is difficult but I don't think impossible. Perhaps like speech-to-text it will be possible to train the OS based your work patterns. I know that I am pretty consistent in how I manage everything. I have a few types of projects I work on which always have the same patterns of creation.

here's a flash demo of piles in action.

[tentimestwenty (693290)]

First off, in my using piles as an example of the melding of spatial interface and meta organization, i didn't want to suggest that piles are a particularly great innovation, just that they were an example of a way to do it. I think if Apple put some finesse into it like they did with their excellent Exposé technology, it could be a very welcome addition to an already great Mac OS X. In any case, here's a flash demo of the concept: http://homepage.mac.com/rdas7/piles.html

Re:Huh?

[tzanger (1575)]

Exactly -- I will use my computer how I see fit, thank you very much. It sounds to me like the Gnome team is getting a little big for their britches.

Re:Huh?

[hbo (62590)]

Actually, the Gnome team isn't who wrote that silly article. They have been making lots of choices for their users through application of the HID, but they do retain the ability to customize most of the interface in true F/OSS style, so I can turn off the behavior I dislike. If it isn't easy for a beginner to do that, well, it's probably a good thing. It should be at least 25% as hard to get in to trouble as it is to get out.

Re:Huh?

[belmolis (702863)]

Folder structure should be simple and as shallow as possible..

I'm amazed by this statement. In my experience the problem is usually just the opposite. Unix novices or MS Windows users tend to put everything in their home directory, or at any rate have a very shallow directory structure. A well articulated directory structure can make it much easier to find things and to keep related work together. Want to bring the project you're working on with you? If its all in one directory, tar it up you're ready. It's a real pain if it consists of N files in a larger directory. And large numbers of files in the same directory are hard to grok, whether in a shell or in a file browser window, unless they're all of the same type.

If other people find a shallow directory structure better for their work, fine with me, but the idea that deep directory hierarchies are intrinsically bad is ridiculous.

Flame on!

[Anonymous Coward]

In other news, god uses three-space tabs.

I don't see what the big deal is...

[ScottGant (642590)]

I use gnome 2.6.

The spatial nautilus took me all of 30 seconds to get used to and I still use it today...though I use aterm more in day to day stuff.

But hey folks, it's not rocket science here. It's very easy to use, and it's very easy to get used to. But some people just "I don't want to get used to it! I hate it! HATE IT! I'll never use it!".

I seem to remember that OSX had a new interface also that people had to spend a little time getting used to it. And I recall in the pre-press shop I worked at people saying "I don't want to get used to it! I hate it! HATE IT!" with that too. But after a few days they couldn't live without it.

People hate change. But hey, if you don't want to use it, don't use it. Use kde or fluxbox or _______(insert window manager here).

Ahh...the sweet smell of choice!

Spatial browsing can be good if...

[CharAznable (702598)]

Whether a spatial interface is useful or not depends on how many levels of nested directories you have. In linux you can go pretty deep, and a spatial interface quickly becomes unwieldy. On old Mac OS, you hardly ever went deeper than Macintosh HD:Documents, so a spatial interface was very efficient and intuitive. OS X could easily be spatial: all the unix stuff doesn't show up in the GUI anyway.

Re:Spatial browsing can be good if...

[Lispy (136512)]

It doesn't in Gnome 2.6 either. My mom never gets below her home directory. That's exactly what caused her headaches with the Windows Explorer. Seeing all those strange folders named c:\programs c:\temp c:\windows and so on. She never has that kind of clutter anymore.

She sees one icon: Computer. There she finds her CD-Rom drive and her USB-Stick to go.

Everything else is in "Personal Folder". She just drags and drops the file into her USB-Stick folder and she's set. She would have never managed to do this inside Windows Explorer, I can assure you. Spatial is easy. And it is fun. I even cleaned up my MP3-Folders. It was a bliss...

Keep going GNOME!

Re:Spatial browsing can be good if...

[jcr (53032)]

Spatial is easy. And it is fun. ..and regrettably, it does not scale. I don't have very many songs in my iTunes music folder, (1,513 altogether), and yet finding a particular track in the directory tree is a major PITA.

iTunes solves this issue with a simple, high-speed search capability that makes it much faster for me to pick the song by typing a part of its title than I can by navigating through the Finder, even if I already know its exact path in the filesystem.

-jcr

Re:Spatial browsing can be good if...

[big tex (15917)]

OK, have you used KDE or WinXP lately?

They both do this.

KDE - In the file manager mode of Konqueror, there is a little sidebar with seven icons - Bookmarks, Devices, History, Home, Network, Root, and Services. First, if you want to turn some of these off for your mom, you can right click and make the icon go away. By clicking back and forth between the Home and Devices tabs, she can move stuff just as easy, if not easier - she doesn't have to go and find the damn USB Stick window and move it to where she can drag to it, since it's all one window.
Besides, there's also a "open folders in separate windows" checkbox in the first configure screen for Konqueror.

Windows- when you click on the my computer icon, you get a few icons, included within are the My Documents, My Pictures, CD-ROM (or burner, or DVD..) and an icon for the USB stick pops up when I stick it in. Never need to click on the C Drive link.

Seriously - the GNOME team took an old cow (open in new window), put on a wig (remember where the window was) and wondered why nobody wanted to take her to the prom.

Re:Spatial browsing can be good if...

[gujo-odori (473191)]

Oh, the reviewer has a ready answer to that. You shouldn't use nested directories because they are a "bad habit':

What is the real cause of all these attacks on the spatial Nautilius? In my opinion, it is just bad file organisation coupled with a bunch of old bad habits. It's really hard to use a spatial file browser if someone keeps his or her files in a ten-folder-deep structure.

OK, fine. I'll just take all of my thousands of digital photos collected over the years, which are now organized in nested directories so that I can easily find photos of my kids that I took last November, or of fireworks at Sagami-ko, in the mountains of Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan in 2001, and dump all those pictures into one big folder so that Spatial Nautilus can deal with them better? Riiiiight...

I typically have four levels deep below my PHOTOS directory, and in some places it's six. Drilling down to the bottom of that would leave me with a lot of desktop clutter, to say the least. His answer to that? Well, he's got a couple, and one we've already seen: just get rid of your nice, well-organized directory structure (and we're going to call being organized an old bad habit now, too; I wonder if he uses drawer dividers in his desk, or just throws everything into the drawers in one big pile? I think I can guess).

His other answer is to cause the parent window to automatically close by either double-clicking the middle button to open something, or using shift + double-click. This puts extra burden on the user; automatically closing the parent should be the default, and if you want to keep it, you should have to double middle-click.

He also praises the old Apple Finder for being spatial. As a person who used a Mac in those days, I have to tell you that Finder's spatial behavior (I just called it "pain in the ass") was horrible. It drove me crazy, and I found Windows Explorer to be an incredible breath of fresh air in comparison. It's so much easier to drag a bunch of files from one folder to another in a tree view than it is in a spatial view (and of course, now as a convert to Linux, I find it easiest to move a bunch of files from point A to point B by using cp in a shell; beats graphical file managers easily). He might want to consider the reason that nobody uses spatial file managers anymore is that they were just a failure in practice, no matter how good they sound on paper. I fully agree with the OSNews EIC's opinion: spatial browsers and hierarchical filesystems don't mix. I am not, however, convinced that the future of a MIME-based (ugh!) or db-based (maybe) file system is the answer.

Overall, the reviewer's defense of Spatial Nautilus seems to be based on two things:

1. It's the new thing, it's what they've done, so you must like it. If you don't like it, you are Wrong
2. General perversity of mind, like when he discusses tabbed browsing and says:

   I even know few people who never open more than one browser window, viewing all pages in tabs

Uh, hello! That's the whole point of tabbed browsing; so that you don't have to have a bunch of browser windows open at once. I only open a second one if I have too many tabs in the first one and they're too small to see.

In the end, the reviewer is just grasping at straws to try and defend the horrible idea that is Spatial Gnome, and he accuses those who dislike it of only disliking it because it doesn't work like Windows Explorer. It would seem that he is bound to the idea that because it comes from Microsoft, Windows Explorer cannot be good. Could it be, just maybe, that the reason people like Windows Explorer is because it works so well? I dislike Microsoft the company, and I don't much care for most of their products either, but Windows Explorer is quite simply the best thing they've ever done.

My file manager of choice is a bash shell, so it doesn't matter a great deal to me what's on the desktop as a file manager. When I was a Gnome user I never use

Re:Spatial browsing can be good if...

[BobPaul (710574)]

What exactly makes it spatial, then? Just opening folders in new windows the way Win95 and Win98 did by default (and most of us probably disabled?) Or is it remembering your preferences for each seperate folder, the way WinXP does?

Whether it changes the window contents or not, if it doesn't have a file tree in the left pane, I'm all for it. I just don't like it opening new windows everytime I click on something. When I pull a file out of a cabinent--which, in my 20 years of life I've done so many times that I can count it on 1 hand--I don't dump the whole drawer on the table. I browse through and find the file or paper I want and remove only that folder, just like I only keep open the folder on the desktop I want to use, not the whole cabinent...

Whatever there is to a spatial desktop that isn't opening a new window, I'll accept. Guess I'll just have to learn to dbl-middle click!
--
Remove the Kiddie Gloves! [osdir.com]

Someone explain?

[Dynastar454 (174232)]

I really can't understand arguments like the one OSNews makes. If people hate the interface then they hate the interface. Saying, "No! You can't hate the interface becasue it's right! You're all worng! You really like it!" just seems, well, silly. What's next, "Why Users Find Spinach Disgusting" telling us why we should really all find spinach to be tasty?

Re:Someone explain?

[wmshub (25291)]

I think the argument was even dumber than you make out. Basically, the argument is, "spatial browsing is a metaphor for desktops with real files and contentents, thus it is good." But, the whole point of metaphors is to make things easier to use; that is, we pick a metaphor that fits what we want to do, we don't adjust what we want to do to fit the metaphor! Spatial browsing, to a lot of people, adds a lot of work and clutter from taking care of all the intermediate steps to get to their ultimate destination, so if the desktop and file metaphore leads to spatial browsing that people hate, then the answer is to change the metaphor! Not to insist that people live with SB because the metaphor says it is the right way to do things.

Re:Someone explain?

[kenaaker (774785)]

I think the argument is in the same class as the argument that we should ignore all the benefits of using fixed or rotary wings to fly, and only use ornithopters, 'cause that's the way the "real world" works. Or wheels are a bad mental model, and all land transportation should use legs. I'm using the power of the computer to increase my ability to organize information. Why should I limit myself to "real world" models, when I can do so much better by stepping outside the limits of the "real world"?

Re:Someone explain?

[metalhed77 (250273)]

Sometimes they even abuse the physical metaphor of tabbed browsing by opening multiple pages - not subpages of the same web site! - in multiple tabs of a browser window. I even know few people who never open more than one browser window, viewing all pages in tabs; I hope they do not try to glue a daily set of newspapers together before reading them...

Dead on, the writer of this article is a serious pedantic asshole. The only argument this person has is some bizarre adherance to the rule of a metaphor. I truly am baffled by this person's mind.

Re:Someone explain?

[GoofyBoy (44399)]

> I believe its more of an explanation of why people don't like it. Not why they are wrong in their opinions.

The whole article is why the users are wrong in thinking that spatial and the way Nautilus is bad.

From the article:
"What is the real cause of all these attacks on the spatial Nautilius? In my opinion, it is just bad file organisation coupled with a bunch of old bad habits. "

He is pointing the finger not at opinions, but the behaviour of people.

Bleh

[arkanes (521690)]

This has got to be one of the whiniest, worst written apologies I have ever read. You aren't allowed to dislike the new spatial paradigm! If you don't like it, it's only because you're messy! SUBMIT!

Some people aren't interested in the Gnome developers personal interperation of the desktop metaphor. Some people think that making poor decisions based on pushing on a metaphor to the breaking point is stupid.

Some people think that using a tool to apply struture to files is an excellent use of a computer, rather than yelling at users that they're too messy and they need to conform to thier tools rather than the other way around.

Jesus. What egocentric crap! There's nothing wrong with a "spatial metaphor" if thats what works for you, but your underwear twisted in a knot when other people don't willingly submit to your attempt to push it on them is just egocentric and irritating.

Re:Bleh

[neverkevin (601884)]

"Folks, the desktop has been created and is very useful as it is"

Eh? With an attitude like that, we would all still be using the same desktop as Mac OS 1.0 (or something else that predates that) Sure for the most part the desktop has been refined to be a useful replacement for the command line, but I still think there are lots of improvements to be made. 10 years from now the desktop will be radically different (if it even still exists) and you will wonder how you got any work done on the current generation of desktops.

"Let's innovate some apps that can actually threaten the standing of MSFT and friends"

Why should open source exist just to topple the Microsoft empire? Why can't it just stand on its own merits? I think open source would be better of not worrying about Microsoft or anyone else for that matter and just concentrate on making good programs.

"of retooling themes and icons on a daily basis"

There are some people who want to contribute to open source that are not programmers. If people who are graphic designers that want to contribute, more power to them, I think it strengthens the open source community if more diverse groups of people can have a say in development.

"Anything else deserves to be stopped out of existence"

Oh boy...

what nonsense

[CAIMLAS (41445)]

I've not read such a bunch of poorly written flaptrap rhetoric in quite a long time.

There is not a single case of anything there but first-hand anecdotal nonsense. Not only that, but it ignores the fact that spatial browsing (as they call it) was tried with Windows - and dumped, because it largely sucked.

Some people might like GNOME, but most do not. I do not like it because it is not configureable. Even Windows is more configurable than GNOME is in some respects.

The author tried to say that hard disks should be browsed like a file cabinet's folder. That's fine - but I like to browse by task (if I'm browsing at all). It would drive me nuts if i had a seperate bash instance or state for every directory I navigated to - as I've evidently moved from those directories, and no longer need them.

That said, this guy's writeup is borderline incomprehendable. How'd this make it to the front page, again? My left testicle could make a more sound argument for castration than this guy's half-assed attempts at arguing for spatial file browsing.

Re:what nonsense

[RickHunter (103108)]

Some people might like GNOME, but most do not. I do not like it because it is not configureable. Even Windows is more configurable than GNOME is in some respects.

I'd say that about sums up my problems with GNOME in a nutshell. With KDE, I can configure everything, but its still not overwhelming because the defaults are chosen sensibly and the options are well-presented.

Re:what nonsense

[Alan Hicks (660661)]

I'm going to try to go easy on the GNOME developers here for the simple fact that I can't do a better job, largely because I don't code. I hate to run some one's name in the mud if I can't do any better, but it seems to me the GNOME developers have lost sight of what made people like GNOME.

Some people might like GNOME, but most do not. I do not like it because it is not configureable.

Does anyone remember the reasons GNOME can to be? One of course was to provide a truly free linux desktop as an alternative to KDE. The other was to make a very powerful and configurable desktop. In the GNOME 1.x days you could configure anything you wanted (which sometimes got you into trouble of course). Replacing the window manager was as simple as clicking an option in the preferences dialog.

In those days a lot of people really liked GNOME. We liked it because it was fast, and it was leaner than KDE. You could run GNOME on pretty much any modern (P5 or better) machine and have a full DE that was usable. In those days, KDE was simply too slow to run on a lot of commodity hardware. These days hardware is cheaper, but GNOME runs like ass. In most cases I find that KDE is noticeably faster (can't offer empirical evidence other than to say that is my perception).

Somewhere around GNOME 2 the development philosophy changed. The developers seem to care more about making this really dumbed down you-can-only-do-it-this-way GUI in the mistaken idea that this will both attract newbies, and make things easier on them. In reality GNOME now loads in more time than it takes me to wait out the dog days of summer. If it isn't fast, nobody is going to use it, certainly not newbies, who don't have a personal attatchment to your program.

These days it seems to me like the only people running GNOME are doing so from plain inertia and/or dislike of KDE.

Myself? I run XFCE, which is GTK+ based. I like many of the GNOME apps (Galeon is the best browser and Abiword is just a straight up fast WYSIWYG word processor, Eye of Gnome is a decent picture viewer), but running them on GNOME is an excersize in patience. There's really only one thing I liked about GNOME 2.6, the improved GTK+ save/open dialogue. This has long been needed in GTK+; it's a shame that the sluggishness of the desktop it was designed for and the idiocy of spatial nautilus overshadowed this important addition.

not a very thoughtful article.

[crazney (194622)]

The guy is basically saying that this way of browsing your desktop is better for you, so shut up and get used to it.

Thats just insane.

Users have their way of using their desktop, and software should adapt to that. Yes - software should push new ideas. However, when users flat out reject them it is not the place of the developers to say "quit your bitching, we know what is best for you."

As for the guy that wrote the article, attacking users that complain and don't know how to use gconf? What, only power users are allowed to choose how their desktop feels?.. [ as a side not, perhaps if gconf wasn't so crap... ]

Why Spatial Nautilus Sucks

[Alan Hicks (660661)]

I've decided to post this instead of mod.

I've thought about this, and seen the way a lot of different people use their computers, and i've come to this conclusion why spatial mode is a really dumb thing to do. Spatial mode only helps you move or copy documents from one directory to another.

Users are basically divided into two groups: people who can find their files, and people who can't.

People who can find their files hate spatial nautilus because it just clutters up the screen without providing any real functionality. Sure it makes it easier to drag and drop files the few times you need to do it, but it makes navigation of the file system a complete bitch. These people don't want the hassel of working with twelve different windows.

People who can't find their files typically put every single one of their files regaurdless of content or file type into a single directory, "My Documents" or its equivilant. Since these people pretty much always save their files in this same place, they never benefiit from spatial nautlilus because they never have multiple places for their files. The only benefit of spatial mode is easier copying or moving of files from one directory to another, and since these people only use one directory, spatial mode means nothing to them.

Re:Why Spatial Nautilus Sucks

[visualight (468005)]

From the article:

What is the real cause of all these attacks on the spatial Nautilius? In my opinion, it is just bad file organisation coupled with a bunch of old bad habits. It's really hard to use a spatial file browser if someone keeps his or her files in a ten-folder-deep structure. Browser-mode file browsers hide the lack of thought and organisation in the filesystem structure; spatial ones do not. Folder structure should be simple and as shallow as possible, and the "master" folders (something like My Images or My Music folders known from Windows) should have their own shortcuts on a GNOME panel, so that playing your favourite song would only require opening My Music from the panel, opening the appriopriate album folder and double-clicking a file icon, instead of browsing straight from the home directory (or, worse, the root one) through several levels of subfolders

He seems to equate good organization skills with having all your files in one or two folders and having a directory structure 10 folders deep with bad organization. He also uses a lot of "should be's", as if he wants to press his preferences onto the rest of us.

I don't know about Music Folder idea either. His My Music folder sounds horribly disorganized, or maybe his collection is really small/limited to one genre. His directory structure should be Media/Music/Rock/80s/Singles/B-52s_Rock_Lobster.mp 3. Whats that 5 folders deep? So if he wants to play that song he has to open 5 windows. Or he could go with his shortcut idea and eventually have 30 icons on his desktop. How tidy.

Weak

[J4 (449)]

I'm sorry but the newspaper analogy sucked donkey balls. I mean, my web browser doesn't turn my hands black either.

GNOME devs - Lay off the Kool-Aid and switch back to something with caffeine!

Clutter

[kunudo (773239)]

Yes please, can I have some more?

Yes, I'm sure it would be perfect if all files were only 2 directories deep, but achieving that would require you to really really want it (for philosophical reasons?), and waste your time on it. It's not real-world though.

In the article (I read it) it says that the spatial nautilius mimicks the way physical objects behave, ie by staying in the same place unless you put it somewhere else etc (not replacing the directory you had open). This works fine in the physical world, but computer systems are often more complex (or more simple but act in a different way, depends on how you see it), and therefore we have developed suitable abstractions and interfaces to be able to interact with them. The "browser" mode is one of these. It prevents clutter, and it's easy to get at both folders a level above and below where you are in the directory structure.

BTW, congratulations on getting an extreme flamebait submission accepted.

I'm gonna start a flame war here...

[mblase (200735)]

And say that of all the file browsers I've ever used, the default OS X system (and its simplified iPod cousin) with multiple columns scrolling left and right is probably the most useful. It simultaneously tells me what files are in my current folder and leaves a breadcrumbs trail back to the root directory, with the added bonus of giving me detailed info on whatever file I've selected.

It's not perfect -- it's stuck on alphabetical order and always takes me to the top of a folder's contents instead of scrolling to wherever I last was -- but it gives me a lot of information in one window, which is just the sort of thing an info-geek like me loves.

Imaginary Real-life metaphors?

[Zweistein_42 (753978)]

The author seems pretty stuck on extremely stretched "real-life metaphors". I never ever actually thought of files & folders as drawers in a cabinet, or webpages as pages in a book -- any artificial attempts to link these two quite separate activities are doomed to failure. Let's use the advantages of new interface media whenver possible - after all, it was the failure of QuickTime and so many other media players of few years ago to try to immitate real-life devices (CD-players or PDAs) in an interface too different to make such "metaphor" work.

Advice for shallow folders seems stuck in ages of DOS when you had 100s of files on a drive max. In age with 100's of thousands of files, shallow hierarchy is a murder both in terms of organization and performance.
Similarly, author's disgust at some people using tabs to display separate pages seems ridiculous - we're not supposed to use interface in the most convenient way possible, just to avoid crossing some imagines real-life metaphor none of us knew existed?

I guess I just cannot get myself into the mind of the reviers, or the way that he apparently uses his computer... all I can say is, he better realize that other people don't all use the computer in the same way, before he presumes to write UI articles with any authority... :-/

What the hell?

[colonslashslash (762464)]

"I even know few people who never open more than one browser window, viewing all pages in tabs; I hope they do not try to glue a daily set of newspapers together before reading them..."

Ok, I am one of these people, I like to have one browser window open with all of the pages I need in tabs along the top. Why? Because I find it much more efficent functionality wise, if I had multiple windows on the bottom menu bar, it would get far too cluttered.

I am getting the feeling the author is attacking people like myself who use their browsers like this based on his view that people like their software interfaces to act like objects we encounter in real life. But why should I be limited to how objects work by the laws of physics, when there are better options available to me that aren't confined by these laws?

I don't understand the attack here, if I find it more functional to use my browser this way, who the hell is he to suggest otherwise? No I don't glue pages of a newspaper side by side, because that would be plain stupidity, but this is not the same. It would take ages to glue newspaper pages together in a different arrangement, whereas on a browser interface such as mozilla, it takes a simple: Right click > Open link in new tab.

Worst analogy ever.

And here is why engineers make bad UI designers

[Prothonotar (3324)]

I'm an avid user of Gnome, though a less avid user of nautilus (I tend to prefer the good ole terminal window, myself). I have nothing against the "spatial" nautilus or its detractors/competitors.

However, reading this article is like a HOWTO on the philosophy of poor user-interface design. Software engineers in general make bad user-interface designers because of the philosophy of those like Radoslaw. That philosophy is that you can engineer a perfect design and ram it down the throats of users who don't like it, because it is based on "sound" engineering. A desktop "metaphor" is only as good as it does its job- which is to aid the user in doing what he or she wants to do (in whichever context you're in).

"Spatial" nautilus (and to be honest, I'm not entirely sure how it differs from the Windows 95 file manager, but as I said, I don't use Nautilus very much) may be great, but it won't be because it rests soundly on some abstract file drawer metaphor. Hell, if I want to something that matches the usability of a file drawer 100%, I'll buy a file drawer, thank you very much. Nautilus, and any other piece of desktop software will be great if and only if it helps its users get their jobs done. If users are clamoring for an option to turn it off, then that's probably an indication that they are not buying the new UI, or at least not ready for it. Provide them the option (apparently there is one, buried somewhere in gconf no doubt) and move on. Stop trying to deliver a "revolution" to the unwilling, and stop developing user interfaces in a vacuum.

Shallow org works for small number of files

[Bystander (227723)]

The commentator claims in part that spatial browsing is better because it encourages a shallow directory structure, which is clearly preferred over deep directory hierarchies for organizing information. He gives as a metaphor the contents of a drawer, which is easily visible to anyone who opens it. But he fails to consider the problems for people who have large numbers of files and documents that need organizing. Imposing shallow directory trees implies that there will either be large numbers of files in each directory, or that there will be a large number of subdirectories under each root and branch node. The appropriate metaphor then is not a few drawers in a desk to keep track of, but a garage with walls that are packed with the contents of shelves, boxes, jars, drawers, cabinets, and other containers. After a while, people forget where things are stored and resort to brute force searching to find things they know are there, but can't recall exactly where.

The solution isn't to impose a particular form of organization for storing and browsing files, but rather to provide superior tools for indexing and cataloging all entries so that they are easy to recall. What we need are browsers that allow us to browse by content attributes, rather than simply by file name or directory path.

poor UI design...

[hankaholic (32239)]

I am not familiar with the software in question. However, the author of the article said a few things that lead me to believe that the overall interface is probably designed quite poorly.

"I even know few people who never open more than one browser window, viewing all pages in tabs; I hope they do not try to glue a daily set of newspapers together before reading them..."

Why would one artificially limit their use of tabs to only pages served from the same website? The author likens tabs in a browser to marks in a book. However, he almost suggests that use of such a tool should be limited in use to one specific style of usage. To me, it might make sense to use tabs within the same window to group pages related by task (recipies for tonight's dinner, for instance) rather than source.

By the way, I cannot imagine how spatial browsing must lead to screen clutter: opening folders with double-middle-click or Shift-double-click closes the parent folder window at once.

And this is intuitive how? The author seems to think that UI elements should map directly to real-world objects. I am left wondering which real-world object would lead the user to stumble across the idea of holding the shift button while double-clicking.

Why double-clicking? Why must a modifier key be used? My remote control never requires a double-click. Nor do the climate controls on my car. The author seems to like the book analogy -- I've definitely never had to turn a page twice while holding a random button to get the desired response from a novel.

And even if it is not enough, one can click one field in the gconf configuration editor and turn Nautilitus into "classical" non-spatial file browser. Don't know how to use gconf? Then you shouldn't change the way Nautilitus works, I presume.

The author also suggests that if one cannot figure out how to change the application's default behavior then they should constrain themselves to the developer's idea of what the proper settings should be. In other words, if a user finds a UI to be confusing and unfriendly, it's their own fault and they aren't qualified to determine what environment they prefer.

Is this really the type of thing one should be saying of an application with a well-designed UI?

Programmers need to remember who the users are

[Tony Hoyle (11698)]

It's easy to start on an OSS program to 'scratch an itch' - I started that way myself. 6 months down the line I found I had *real users* who actually (gasp) wanted the program to work for them too.

5 years down the line I probably spend half my development time thinking about how each change impacts the users (yes, even the really annoying ones). I have a rule.. if more than 10 people complain about something I have a design issue that needs fixing (since there's probably another 1000 who didn't get as far as the mailing list to complain).

Too many programmers treat their projects as an excercise in masturbation and forget that there are real, flesh and blood people out there who are relying on you to get it right - some of them have invested money because they believe you can do it.

People don't read documentation, or FAQs, or even google. They want their software to do what *they* want it to do and it is our job as programmers to at least attempt to give them that. Bleating that all the users *must* be wrong because this wizzy new feature is so revolutionary it'll change the world is just wrong on so many levels I can't even begin to express it.

Innovation is good, but you do it slowly - first offer the option, make it a bit more obvious over time (once the teething troubles are out), and see how people pick it up and use it. If they all hate it, then dump it. Forget the ego... you'll just piss everyone off and kill the project.

Rolling out Linux at work

[Taos (12343)]

We're currently in the process of rolling out Linux at our animation studio (RedHat -- don't bitch, it's what our software vendors support). Being the one who knows linux best, I've tried a few things on the artists to see how they like it.

First thing I tried was KDE on RedHat 9. What an abysmal failure that was. I upgraded the machines to 3.2.1 using the kde-redhat rpms available here [sourceforge.net]

The problem we had with that setup was the file browser. It's way too complex for non-knowledgeable linux users. 800 tabs on the left side of the screen to get to different parts of the file system just simply doesn't work. Nobody could get to anything.

So I switched them to a custom compiled version of gnome 2.6 on redhat 9 (again, vendors restrict us to it). It's actually gone quite well. However, the change I've had to make across the board is getting rid of the spatial windows (a pretty easy option to change, and now part of our default user config). We use a very large file structure to get around our assets and shots, and navigating it with a spatial browser would have taken a ton of windows and the user would have spent way too much time closing windows. So, their browser window has actually been quite sucessful.

In short, the gnome browser view is a winner, but spatial navigation just doesn't work for very large directory structures.

"User friendly - riiight

[Animats (122034)]

From the article:

• By the way, I cannot imagine how spatial browsing must lead to screen clutter: opening folders with double-middle-click or Shift-double-click closes the parent folder window at once. And even if it is not enough, one can click one field in the gconf configuration editor and turn Nautilitus into "classical" non-spatial file browser. Don't know how to use gconf? Then you shouldn't change the way Nautilitus works, I presume.

Or, "I am so l33t that I know how to use double-middle-click and the "gconf configuration editor". And people wonder why Linux has trouble getting traction on the desktop.

Keyboard "shortcuts" are shortcuts. You should never have to use them, and all of them should be visible in menus. Go read "Tog on Interface", or "The Inmates are Running the Asylum". The user should never need to know a secret code to do something.

Re:Disclosure?

[kunudo (773239)]

It's like the metric system

As in it's not like the metric system? The metric system is mathematically elegant, but the spatial nautilius is just oversimplified. An oversimplified approach to a rather complex task. It's an abstraction level below the browser nautilius, and one step to low. Clutter.

we don't want it now because we're not used to it, but everyone knows it's better than the English system.

As in clearly not everybody knows it's better than the browser nautilius?

Troll? Yes, probably.

Re:Disclosure?

[pantherace (165052)]

Spatial navigation is the wave of the future, face it. It's much more intutive than our current system. We just need to get used to it. It's spelled intuitive, btw.

If you have to get used to it: It's not intuitive. Please understand this. If it has a learning curve that means people need to get used to it, it's not bloody intuitive! Apple Zealots seem to fall for this sooo much.

Now, not being intuitive doesn't mean it's a bad interface. Some programs have non-intuitive interfaces that require (sometimes steep) learning curves: Grapics editors (photoshop, gimp...) 3d Editors (Blender comes to mind for the praise people who have mastered that learning curve heap on it, and the scorn those who haven't: suggesting it's a good design, but not intuitive.), CAD programs, and other complicated ones.

GNOME is going for the philosopy that good= intuitive= simple= striped-down-to- lowest-common-denominator. It's a choice they made. User options are regarded as bad things. The user shouldn't have to think. Which is fine for some users who only do very basic things or just happen to work/think the way the GNOME devs do, but it tends to highly annoy most other people. Honestly, why does almost every servey of Linux users come out with KDE being lots more popular, even in the US? I think it comes down to: KDE offers the user choice. Can anyone name a GUI interface that everyone likes with default settings? I don't like OS X, nor BeOS, nor Windows, nor GNOME, nor (shudder) CDE, nor even KDE's Keramic. I can use all of them, but they annoy me. If you like one of those, use it, but don't claim that it is the one true best one.

Oh, and apparently intuitive's spelling isn't intuitive, nor is it's definition.

EXACTLY.

[bani (467531)]

why the gnome devs require end users to dig through hidden settings with gconf-editor is beyond me.

if such a fundamental ui thing as spatial browsing can be disabled, present it to the user in an easily accessible manner. don't hide it away.

i mean, what's next, hiding away the logoff button in some hidden menu because users might accidentally use it?

Re:Understanding spatial

[EvanED (569694)]

"
And the great thing about the spatial Nautilus mode is that it works both spatially *and* navigationally! You can open a folder, scan through the list of folders and files in it, and make a choice based on a known path or set of directions. On the other hand, if you are already familiar with the file, you can navigate to it without so much as reading a single label/name, because all the items are in the same places, each folder opens in the same spot on your desktop, etc. You can remember where to click based on the location of the window and icons therein in relation to each other."

And this is different from Win9x how?

I just went down to verify, and if you check "open each folder in a new window" in the appropriate dialog, Windows 98:
a) Opens each folder in a new window
b) Remembers the placement of the window on screen
c) Remembers the size of the window
d) Remembers how the icons are set up

I really don't see how this differs from what Gnome does...

Re:Well...

[EvanED (569694)]

"middle-click the folder and Nautilus will open it in the same window"

Actually, it doesn't. It opens it same as normal, then closes the parent window. The difference is that unless you're very careful the windows will be in different locations and different sizes. Both are really annoying when you're trying to get to a directory that is pretty deep quickly.

Also, most people's middle "button" is my mouse wheel, and double clicking that makes little sense and can actually be somewhat difficult.

Re:How to turn it off.

[Yorrike (322502)]

That is the exact reason I stopped using Gnome after 1.4.

If there's an option you're likely to want to change, or modify, put it in the damn application, not in the registry style gconf-editor.

The article was considsending. The Gnome group seems to think they're smarter than me, and that if their system doesn't work with me, then I should look elsewhere, and so I have.

Re:How to turn it off.

[gtaluvit (218726)]

From a usability standpoint, thats the right idea. The option isn't something you're likely to change, and if you do want to change it, its something you're likely to change once. For that reason, its in gconf. Gnome is designed for usability, not to have every option available under the sun given to you. It simplifies the interface so you don't have to wade through all the options just to get to something you may change fairly often. If you're interested in modifying every aspect of your desktop down to the smallest detail, get FVWM.

Re:"likely to want to change" being the key phrase

[Mornelithe (83633)]

And if there's an option that only those familiar with computing is likely to want to change or modify, gconf is a fine place.

So if only people migrating from Gnome 2.4 and below, KDE, Windows, and MacOS X (that is, a lot of people) would want to change an option, it's not really that important, so you should put a checkbox in a separate program that looks like regedit?

Only people likely to want that, are the non-newbies longing for the "good old days" of "exploring" the filesystem.

I could see people migrating from any of the desktop environments wanting to disable this feature. They wouldn't all necessarily want to, but it's not solely old-school Unix/Linux gurus that want to keep from opening 5+ windows to get to a file.

Is Gnome really only concerned with people have never used _any_ operating system before? I seriously doubt many such people get to use Gnome as their first environment.

On the other hand, I always hated the old Nautilus

I'm happy you've found something you like, but it seems to me that this is an important sticking point for many users, so it deserves a more accessible toggle than digging through options in gconf.

Re:How to turn it off.

[EvanED (569694)]

No he doesn't. He tells you that there's one field in GConf that will do it, doesn't say what field, then goes and insults anyone who hasn't had the need to open it before.