Why Users Blame Spatial Nautilus 925
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? (Score:5, Insightful)
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? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Translation: You are a pinheaded luddite if you oppose this "innovation."
Spatial for shallow, Browser for deep. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Spatial for shallow, Browser for deep. (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Re:Spatial for shallow, Browser for deep. (Score:5, Insightful)
This worked for a while to categorize spam. Perhaps we could use it to categorize documents automagically. With the bonus that everytime its wrong, it learns more. The "distributed" part is where we share our filters and gain from each others effort of training the filters.
Thoughts?
Re:Spatial for shallow, Browser for deep. (Score:5, Funny)
If you read this line quickly, it sounds like something Geordi or Data would throw out to fix the computer overload that is preventing the Enterprise from escaping Some Devastating Explosion.
Re:Spatial for shallow, Browser for deep. (Score:5, Insightful)
IMO, the reason this keeps being debated is because of the great diversity of preferences among computer users. For instance, I find GNOME's new spatial thingy to be wonderful (for file managing, at least) in deep folders, as compared to a browser-type file manager. (incidentally, I find spatial browsers to be awful if all I want to do is open a file.) Why do I like it? because if I want to copy a folder in a browser-type file manager, I have to select the files/folders, press Ctrl-C, try to remember exactly how many times I need to press the 'Back' button to get back to the folder I want to copy the files into, and press Ctrl-V to past the files.
With spatial Nautilus, I find it a breeze to see both folders open on my desktop (even though it's awful clutter), and Ctrl-C Ctrl-V (or Alt-drag) just like that.
I guess my mind is spatially-oriented instead of timeline-oriented. But that's my point -- there is no one perfect way to do things. For instance, maybe the next person really likes the hybrid browser-plus-tree-sidebar approach that mixes spatial orientation (that tree), easy access to all the folders in the filesystem, and a wee bit o' browsing metaphor.
I was going to smugly inform the "why do I have to use GConf to get back my old Nautilus" posters that my stock GNOME allows you to change from spatial to browser view right in the Preferences... I was, of course, shocked to find out that I was talking through my hat and in fact there was no such setting. Although I'm very stuck on new spatial Nautilus, I agree that the lack of an easy-to-change option was a rash decision on the part of the GNOME devs.
Re:Spatial for shallow, Browser for deep. (Score:5, Informative)
Not in Konqueror. There I just hit Shift-Ctrl-L (not sure if this was the default keyboard shortcut since I've been using it so long and have customized quite a few of them) to split the window into two vertical panes and navigate one of the windows to the destination or source depending on where I am. Then I hit Shift-Ctrl-R to close the extra pain again when I'm done. If two panes aren't enough I can hit Shift-Ctrl-L or Shift-Ctrl-H to split any of those into as many sub-panes as I want. Heck I can even open a terminal emulator with F7 which can be linked to any of those panes (i.e. follows the cwd of that pane) and which accepts dragged files or folders as parameters for clt's.
And don't tell me that that's "just like in Windows".
Cheers,
Chris
Re:Spatial for shallow, Browser for deep. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is my opinion, but the thing I can't stand about "spatial" file managers OR the strange "non-spatial" things many people mention is that you can only see where you're currently at. I actually loved the tree-view in Win95+ Explorer and am glad that OSX 10.3 at least put something kind of like it back in the Finder (though WinX is, unfortunately, still better in this respect I think).
What I want in a file system, at least from a "physical layout" standpoint, is the ability to see from a high level the overall structure of the system - how things are stored relative to each other. Basically, a summary "map" where you can see the organization without having to traverse it. The tree-view is currently the best implementation of this - I'd love to see innovations related to some kind of multi-demensional tree-like view that's easy to use and not necessarily 3D or too much animation (I've been trying to think of some but not come up with anything yet). Having an expanded tree view in the side of my explorer window allows me to get to just about ANY location (assuming an intelligent organization of files) in 1 click (perhaps 2 clicks and a scroll). The Windows implementation actually allows you to drag files / folders from the "browse" window over into the tree view, so you don't even need to open a second window at all to do your "spatial copy or move". <Prior Art>I could even envision an implementation where in the tree view you could have something like a "query shortcut" that when you clicked would run a query to show in the browse rather than just contents of a physical directory.</Prior Art>
The thing that gets me is all this "trying to make a computer mimic the physical world" for things like "desktops" and "files" and that sort of thing. One power of computers is that it frees us from some of the limitations of the physical world like having to store things in drawers and the like. I think we'll contstrain ourselves greatly by trying to make computer interfaces mimic the physical.
I could go on, but I've got to get back to work. Hopefully this gives the crowd enough more discussion for a while...
Re:Spatial for shallow, Browser for deep. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
What I want to know is why GNOME and it's proponents have to keep justifying their decisions. How good can their decisions be if they have to keep saying "Well, this is what you really like". I'm getting so sick of GNOME zealots telling me how great GNOME is when GNOME is just guilty of the same Microsoft "This is what you want, I don't care what you say" syndrome. If their UI decisions were so good they wouldn't have to keep trying to justify them. If they're not so good, well, lots of people will criticize them.
When's the last time KDE got knocked for making a controversial UI decision? I don't recall it happening recently, anyway. Of course, KDE has this nasty habit of bringing in UI changes in a fashion that we don't even notice them, or they make it an option we can enable (or easily disable, if that's what we want to do). None of this "Oh, you have to take it because that's how we're giving it".
how about piles? (Score:5, Interesting)
here's a flash demo of piles in action. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Informative)
If for the authors of that article shallow directories are ok, more power to them. But here's a real life example (with the corporation and project name changed to protect the innocent;) of a directory I need to get to. It's from a java project:
~/workspace/some_project/src/de/some_company/so
What am I supposed to do? Dump the files of all projects together in my home directory, so I can save the "/workspace/some_project" part?
Yeah, that'll make it so much easier to check in only the some_project files in CVS, when they're mixed with other projects and with every single config file and directory from other apps. E.g., I'm sure everyone will understand if the config file for the game Pingus suddenly appears among the sources I checked in. (Hey, it was something to do between projects, ok?:) For that matter, I'm sure they'll understand that my whole browser cache and history needs to be in CVS in every project too.
Or maybe unilaterally also dump the "src" (and other directories in each project too), regardless of what the rest of the team decided?
Or maybe I should tell them that they should stop using packages too, for that matter. Yeah, those projects will be so much easier to use with all the files dumped together in a big mess. EJBs, facade classes, xml content handlers, whole hierarchies of data objects, wrappers, singletons, factories, properties files, deployment descriptors, etc. Yeah, when you need to find the sax event cache classes, and only those, it's soo much easier if they're not in their own package. Not.
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, regardless of who wrote that, it's an example of the rampant "if you don't do thing _my_ particular way, you're a n00b/retard/luser/fossil/whatever. I couldn't care less about what _you_ need.
[snip - lots of good reasons why spatial isn't right for everyone]
It seems to me that the gnome project has been making this kind of decisions for a while now. I used to be able to do lots of things to change nautilus. These days it seems all the configuration settings have gone away. More and more it looks like windows: "you can change what little we would like you to change, for the rest go look in the registry and hope you are lucky." This is very much accepted by the windows crowd, they stick to the tasks described in the article most of the time. Those of us who use our computers for more specialized tasks will have to go out of our way to configure our computers to our likes.
The ideas described in the article are indeed a means of getting my grandma to use gnome, and I'm pretty sure that she will like to use a computer where she does not have to worry about things like bitrates and file hierachies. Me, I stick to enlightenment where I can change the stacking of windows, border type for when the developer of some third party app screwed up, as for file browsing im stuck with the gnome 2.4 nautilus until that day when enlightenment 17 stops being vaporware or I find something more configurable. I am not going to be using shallow file hierachies any time soon, and naither are any other people doing specialist work on their computers, I think.
It seemed that F/OSS was all about choice, the gnome people seems to be taking more and more of that choice away from us in the name of usability. So I choose to use something else. All power to the gnome developers for making "grandma's computer," but it's not for me.
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Q. What experience do most new Gnome users have with computers?
A. Basic Windows use.
Q. Are these people going to like spatial browsing?
A. No, they've learned to use a different technique, and non-techies hate it when an interface changes.
Q. So it's going to cost a lot of money to train them to use GNOME?
A. You got it.
Q. Is this going to encourage people to use GNOME?
A. No, it's going to encourage people to stick with Windows.
Hmm... I wonder how much Microsoft are paying the GNOME core developers...
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
"clicking a link [in a browser] replaces what you are seeing with the new content, unless the link points to another web site (in which case it may open a new browser window for your convenience)"
And later:
"Sometimes they [users] 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..."
WTF? So I'm wrong to use tabs unless they're pointing to the same website, while websites which open links in a new window are "convenient"?
Is it just my imagination, or is this the complete opposite of what people normally do when they get a tabbed browser?
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
if you can explain why shallow structur is better for me i'll switch and use your spatial crap, o/w i want everything in one window.
also web browing (i tend to use webpages as info i need to recall and i like it tabbed - i hate new windows, i can't find stuff b/c i have too much open). tab 1 - lecture notes, tab 2 - assignment statement, tab 3 - checklist (when applicable), tab 4 - slashdot, tab 5 - other random crap i'm doing. i like to multitask, i don't like reloading web pages every time i need to check something
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Funny)
You think that contributing to Gnome proves you like it? I spent probably 20-30 hours of the last week coding one of it's libraries and I still detest it :)
The old mode is still there (Score:4, Informative)
Me, I like the new mode a lot. It has a Windows 98 feel, very lean, no-frills.
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Interesting)
Flame on! (Score:5, Funny)
I don't see what the big deal is... (Score:5, Insightful)
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!
Re:I don't see what the big deal is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Spatial browsing can be good if... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Spatial browsing can be good if... (Score:5, Interesting)
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!
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Spatial browsing can be good if... (Score:4, Informative)
OS X could easily be spatial
OS X is (optionally) spatial. There is a preference option to set the "open-new-window" behaviour, or not, depending on how you like it, or not.
I'm surprised there's no clear option for doing so with Nautilus given that this "spatial" approach is so often a love it or hate it thing.
Re:Spatial browsing can be good if... (Score:5, Insightful)
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]
Re:Spatial browsing can be good if... (Score:5, Insightful)
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:
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... (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me make sure I get this...
It's more efficent to go into EVERY file, individually type in keywords for over 100 photos every time you upload a set of photos?
As opposed to popping open irfanview, going through the photos and sorting them into individual folders?
I'm definitely missing something.
It's quicker for me to set things into groups of 20 quickly and search through those 20, then spend the time upfront with these keywords.
I feel the same way about spatial browsing. If I place something in a folder, I will know where to find what I want. That's preferable to grouping everything together and depending on remembering what keywords I chose so that I can search for it.
But then again, I prefer MDI, so I've already gained the experts' ire.
Someone explain? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Someone explain? (Score:4, Funny)
Thank you,
A.S.H.C.R.O.F.T.
[Anti-Spinach Hating Council for Re-education Of Free Thought]
Re:Someone explain? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Someone explain? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Someone explain? (Score:5, Insightful)
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? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Someone explain? (Score:5, Insightful)
> 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.
Re:Someone explain? (Score:5, Insightful)
How DARE the users violate our carefully crafted metaphor!?
Their book/file drawer metaphor is flawed. I don't think of my web browser like a book. As a matter of fact, when I see book-like objects (like PDF files) on my screen, they're really annoying. My hard drive is not like a filing cabinet. I don't need to scatter all the enclosing folders around on my desk to get to the one I want.
I found the article to be very condescending. "Well, if you'd just go ahead and buy our metaphon, you'd like it just fine!"
I loved the spatial nature of Apple's old Finder. But the system was designed from the ground up to utilize it smoothly. Not the case with Linux.
Windows (Score:4, Interesting)
Overall, I think that the spacial metaphor is good for novice users, but once users get used to organizing files and folders themselves, they begin to find that it clutters their interface more than a browser-based interface does.
EXACTLY. (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Interesting)
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:Understanding spatial (Score:5, Insightful)
The classic spatial example is driving. There are probably tons of places you go on a daily basis on which you have no idea what the road names are.
But that only works because roadways are relatively static. You don't have to worry about someone suddenly adding twelve stoplights, three left turns, and a stretch of one-way road between the last time you drove and when you're giving instructions.
With a shared data environment, though, you don't have that control. What was the forth folder down alphabetically is now the sixth as a new project comes in; or management decides your folders should be subfolders to match the latest reorg. (Or someone not in management--some people can't resist making improvements regardless of how much of a hassle it is for the rest of the team.)
Bleh (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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.
mod me flamebait but... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not trying to flame anyone here, but it is a valid opinion shared by me and lots of other users.
I hate to say it... (Score:4, Interesting)
The Gnome interface guidelines are different to what people are used to under Windows (e.g OK and Cancel buttons in a different order) which makes it annoying when using Firefox which conforms to these guidelines, because I'm swapping between platforms all the time.
Thiw isn't a firefox problem as they designed it to fit in with the Gnome UI guidelines, but it's not going to be successful unless they get guidelines that all main Linux apps use (Gnome, KDE, and other apps that don't fit into either like OpenOffice) otherwise it's just an inconsistant mess.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Speak for yourself, please. (Score:5, Insightful)
_I_ use computers, and I want _my_ needs catered for, not some mythical mother, or aunt, or grandmother, or whatever the current model "Average User" is.
I am a real user, I use computers now, I use them for fun, and I use them for getting work done.
I want an interface that caters to my needs - in other words, it doesn't force someone else's interpretation of my needs on me, and lets me configure and set things up how I like it without having to hunt around in configuration files.
I'm no stranger to a text editor, or the command line, but I also don't feel that editing config files by hand somehow makes you 1337 (god I hate that term).
A desktop environment that makes you leave the desktop environment (ie, go to a terminal session and fire up vi) to change it's settings, because having an option in the GUI to change it _might_ confuse one of these mythical users, is just a pain in the neck for us real users.
I recognise that there are benefits to be made by making things easy for new users. But too many people make the mistake of concentrating only on new users, and forgetting that existing users - even the advanced ones are users too.
retarded interface design (Score:4, Insightful)
not a very thoughtful article. (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Funny)
GNOME devs - Lay off the Kool-Aid and switch back to something with caffeine!
Ivory Tower (Score:4, Insightful)
I *hated* the folder diarrhea that began with Mac OS. Some people love it. The option to turn it off and on should be an easily configured checkbox in the app, not something "hidden" in the gconf setup.
Clutter (Score:5, Interesting)
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... (Score:5, Insightful)
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? (Score:5, Insightful)
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...
Re:Imaginary Real-life metaphors? (Score:4, Insightful)
In this case, the "drawers / cabinet" metaphor doesn't even match particularly well - it doesn't explain links at all, it doesn't map well to the deep hierarchies that are common in filesystems (what's that supposed to be - a drawer inside a drawer inside a cabinet?), and it doesn't explain removable media well. I've used computers long enough to want to think of my harddrive's contents as what they are - files, directories, and links. I want a window to be a view (that I can change) into the filesystem, not a representation of a specific directory. Any interface that gets in the way of that is a bad one.
The problem with this spatial mode Nautilus has is that it doesn't account for what people want to do. In probably 90% of cases a user opens a new directory they are finished with the old one and leaving it lying around is not the correct thing to do. As Jobs said, it makes the user into a janitor, constantly having to clean up unwanted windows. The author responds to this point by saying "you can use double middle click instead", but why have such an obscure operation for the common case, and why open a new window and close the existing window when replacing the contents of the current window makes more sense?
What the hell? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
I like gnome 2.6 (Score:4, Insightful)
And here is why engineers make bad UI designers (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
What an arrogant jerk (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't use Nautilus but I decided to read this article just cause it's a slow day. I was amazed at what an absolute buffoon the writer is. Check out some of these choice quotes. Speaking of tabbed browsing:
Sometimes they even abuse the physical metaphor of tabbed browsing by opening multiple pages - not subpages of the same web site! ... I hope they do not try to glue a daily set of newspapers together before reading them..."
What an opinionated moron. I browse the web all in one window, using nothing but tabs. But *apparently* I'm abusing my user interface! Here I thought I just preferred it that way, who knew I was offending a purist! And further for people who don't find spatial Nautilus conducive to browsing:
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
Ahhh, now it's how we're all storing our files the wrong way. Silly us! I appreciate the basic gyst of his argument. "If you change your way of working to conform to your user interface, then you'll find it's completely intuitive. Sorry, no offense to the folks who use and love Nautilus, but you need to keep this buffoon from engaging in any more advocacy.
Constraints in the real world vs virtual world (Score:4, Insightful)
I hate it when people applies real world constraints to the computer. Yes, each folder is a seperate entity, but that doesn't mean that you have to treat it as such whenever you handle it. Instead of thinking that each folder has its own window, you can treat the window as a view inside your file system. Opening a new folder is just like switching channels on the tv. As someone else mentioned, each window does not have to represent the folder itself, but rather the current task.
I'm also one of those "few" people browsing the web using just one window (opera). Web browsing is usually one task, thus one window. It's also quite practical if I want to move the browser to the other monitor. Instead of moving 10 windows I can now move one. If I want to use both monitors, I just detach one of the document windows (or create a new window) and move that window.
Old Technologies Die For A Reason (Score:4, Interesting)
This is such a bad argument (Score:4, Insightful)
They explicitly argue that the spacial metaphor is somehow intuitively more appropriate:
Think of your hard drive contents as of a desk full of drawers. Every time you put something into a drawer, you may be sure that the next time you open the same drawer it will be in the same place (and the drawer itself will remain in the same place). So, when you open a folder and try to locate a particular icon, it should be where you put it before. Simple?
But so what!? There are other viewing metaphors (such as the browser) that are just as coherent to the user, but don't have such negative usability impacts (such as hundreds of open windows, new windows opening in seemingly random locations, and seemingly random changes in view).
Arguments for usability need to be based on usability testing or proven heuristics - not on "this metaphor is the most conceptually pure, but who cares about its usability impact". The only real advantage of a strong UI metaphor is to increase peoples speed at learning the interface due to their familiarity with the metaphorical concept, but the choice of metaphor needs to be carefully weighed up against how usable that product will be once it is learnt.
I find it a confusing and jarring experience when OS X finder switches view mode based on the previous way I was viewing some folder, because I don't remember how I last viewed a folder, I'm thinking in a browser/viewer type framework (but I realise my experience may not be typical of the average user). How usable is this for the average person?
Shallow org works for small number of files (Score:5, Insightful)
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... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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.
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?
Er, that article is way off base (Score:4, Insightful)
They then decide that it sucks because they never bothed to give it an honest look in the first place and were either resistant to any sort of change or were simply confirming the pre-existing bias they already had.
Here's who *likes* spatial nautilus: people that use it to manage files instead of browse their filesystem. People that use Gnome as a tool and not a toy, people who and organize their personal files logically. If you actually *use* it, you'll probably end up loving spatial nautilus, despite the areas that still need improvement in it. But those are not the people that tend to review new distributions or new versions of desktop environments which is why there are so few positive spatial Nautilus reviews out there.
Programmers need to remember who the users are (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Filing cabinet inside filing cabinet? (Score:4, Interesting)
from a keyboard user (Score:4, Interesting)
There are still some things I'd like to see resurrected from OS/2's WPS, but for the spatial interface, I'm okay with nostalgia.
"User friendly - riiight (Score:5, Insightful)
-
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.
Metaphors Considered Harmful (Score:4, Insightful)
The following things are stupid:
- disabling the backspace key because you couldn't easily erase things with typewriters
- eliminating Undo, Redo, and Repeat because time travel is physically impossible
- having www.airplanetickets.biz take two hours to load because it takes two hours to go to the physical ticket booth
- making directory trees behave like physical drawers
Metaphors do not make things easier to use. If Jane-Six-Pack tosses an empty vodka can out of her armoured utility vehicle, she expects it to disappear. She does not expect it to stay where it landed until it decays in twenty million years.
If computer interfaces were just as tedious as real life, no one would bother with them.
"bad" interface design (Score:4, Insightful)
One of the first things I always did in Windows 95 explorer (once I found the option for it) was turn OFF "open folder in new window", because its a pain in the arse.
As to the whole "but a web browser is like a book!" argument... well.... my PC is like a filing cabinet. I don't want to pull files out of the filing cabinet (open in new window) until I find what I'm looking for. I'd rather sift through the open drawer (tree list at side of browser window for example), until i find what I want.
"BAD" interface design is when the implementor makes decisions on behalf of the end-user that increase work-load for *no good reason*.
"Because its bad interface design" is NOT a self-justifying reason. If it makes my work more efficient, it is not bad.
I'll bet the supporters of this crock are akin to those who think that storing every file they create under the root directory is a good idea as well, because sorting through 10,000 files in the same folder is good interface design.
smash.
"Abused Tabs" (Score:5, Funny)
My beef with nautilus and why it doesn't matter (Score:5, Insightful)
What I dislike is the "mime-magic" feature, where it attempts to read every file in the current folder to determine the file types, for 3 reasons:
1) You can't turn it off without downloading the source and rebuilding.
2) It makes the file browser run unbearably slow.
3) Nautilus will ignore your file type settings almost entirely, except to refuse to open a file when it disagreees with you on the type of a particular file. There's no way to tell it "screw you, I'm right and you're wrong, so stop bugging me and let me open the file with a double click"
This is not all entirely bad. Gnome has become an experimental desktop, with cool bleeding edge ideas mixed in with some bad or underdeveloped bleeding edge ideas, the better of which will survive in the long run. If we don't have at least one desktop environment on the bleeding edge, developing new ideas before anyone else, Microsoft, Apple, or some other company is going to patent those ideas and all open source desktops, not just gnome, will be held back by stagnation and threats of patent litigation.
So on the whole, we shouldn't be criticizing gnome, but helping to make it better.
God you people just never stop whining (Score:5, Interesting)
I've been listening to this stupid Nautilus flaming ever since it first came out. Unfortunately, it seems that today's computer using community is largely divisible into two groups. One group likes the Windows way, and one group likes the MacOS way. Then there's the minority who prefer the CLI, Amiga, Atari, VMS, or the C64.
I just want to know why anyone even cares what the default on Nautilus is. I mean, seriously. Who here on Slashdot uses the default for anything. Aren't you geeks? Don't you edit your damn .zshrc to your liking, or the equivalent for whatever shell you use? I've seen this gconf-editor (I don't use GNOME, or KDE, or any other fruity desktop environment, for that matter) and it's not that big a deal. It's not like you couldn't figure out how to do it.
Personally, GUIs annoy me. I probably would prefer the browser paradigm to the spacial paradigm, but I'm not such a fucking pansy that I can't be bothered to change a little, well documented configuration option, and I certainly wouldn't be here whining on Slashdot about it.
For those of you that like the browser system: use it. For those of you that like the spacial system: use that. The GNOME devs are guessing that the majority of new users (ie, the grandma you dorks are always going on about) are going to prefer the spacial system, and you know what, they're probably right. My Grandma could use early MacOS. Not so with the new versions, no matter how pretty they may be. I'm sure (though I don't pretend to be a UI expert, unlike every geek on Slashdot) that the spacial paradigm had something to do with that.
God, you guys are the worst. I've been saying all along: if you want Joe User on Linux, you're going to end up with a shitty default UI -- keep it hobbiest, so we can do what we like -- but NOOOooo. Gotta make "desktop penetration" a goal. Gotta "bring down MS". Couldn't let a good thing be. So now you have all these "user-friendly" efforts going on that are exactly what Joe User would benefit from, and GUESS WHAT? They suck for power users. Thats how it works. As they say, if you sleep with dogs...
For those who don't know what the fuss is about: (Score:5, Informative)
I really don't see the fuss, it's not like anyone's forcing GNOME 2.6 on anyone. No button to turn off the feature? If it is that big of a deal, then someone will create said button... it ain't rocket science.
Spatial Rules and He Is Wrong (Score:5, Interesting)
The benefits of having deep heirarchies over shallow broad ones applies to spatial metaphors as well. You don't have to remember where a thousand pieces of the puzzle are placed individually in a single directory, but instead have to remember a few discreet pieces of information per group, which is easier for most people to handle. This article is amazingly flawed in ignoring this, and totally ignores the benefits of organizational division.
Spatial isn't perfect by any means. I've found that adding custom icons to folders helps quite a bit as well (on Debian
Spatial interfaces suck (Score:5, Insightful)
The "real world" system is intuitive, but it's too damn inefficient. I mean, why can't I have the pub, toilet and a selection of restaurants right next to my bed? Why do I even have to get out of bed? Why can't I just have a list of places I like to go and click one and go straight there?
At least on my computer I can use the equivalent of a teleporter, even if doing so upsets some wannabe hack on OSNews.
Too late to be modded... (Score:5, Insightful)
The main point of a spatial interface that he fails to emphasize (but mentions briefly in passing) is that every time you open a window everything is exactly as you left it. The icons are in the same spots, the view options are set as they were, the window looks the *same*. Each folder is unique.
I can glance at my screen for a split second and tell you exactly what folders are open, just based on their position and view options - all of the "major" folders have distinctive views set. As I click through windows, I'm already moving the mouse to the next icon because I know exactly where it will be. Although he beat his metaphors to death, it *is* just like a desk. I always keep these files here, I can look at my filer and tell how much I have left to do, etc.
Many of you are using spatiality in your web browsers and not even realizing it. When you open a lot of tabs at once, I'll bet you know instinctively where each site is (Megatokyo, Real Life, then PVP, etc) and don't necessarily have to read the titles - you just know that "that's the one I want". That's spatiality.
The reason spatial interfaces on Windows and most Linuxes have failed is *not* because spatial = bad, but because their implementations have generally sucked. The whole point of a spatial interface is that everything maintains its state - it's where you left it and predictable. Linux and Windows (especially Windows) fail in this regard because thye only seem to keep state for a while, or not in all circumstances. Every so often on Windows all the folders lose their state information. That makes a spatial interface impossible to use effectively.
Recently the Mac (where all of this really got started 20 years ago) has screwed it up with its brushed metal windows that interfere with state maintenance in particularly brain-dead ways. Nautilus is the first really good implementation of a spatial file browser in a long time.
To all of the people touting the explorer view, consider this. How often do you need to copy files and end up scrolling the tree pane up and down, clicking through directory trees, or even try opening two explorer windows at once and resize all over to copy? It happens a lot because you're trying to show the entire directory structure in a window at once, and *that* doesn't scale well. However, having one window for one folder does scale. In a spatial model, I open each folder (maybe by clicking through other folders to it, maybe by using a menu or shortcut) and then drag.
Honestly *try* it for a while. Don't like it? Switch it off. Done.
Re:Disclosure? (Score:5, Insightful)
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? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
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. (Score:5, Insightful)
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. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How to turn it off. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:"likely to want to change" being the key phrase (Score:4, Insightful)
My father is a good example of such a user. I see him using Windows Explorer with the tabbed view constantly. He organizes his files very carefully, and he thinks about them in a tree-like structure. But he is not going to want to climb through some kind of registry editor to make this change, since in Windows it has always been as easy as Tools | Folder Options. That's right, it's a preferences dialog right off of the window itself.
Keep the dangerous and esoteric preferences in gconf. But put the common, safe ones in a preferences dialog. Remember: the customer is always right.
Re:"likely to want to change" being the key phrase (Score:5, Insightful)
Using the "browse filesystem" feature requires right-clicking and making a selection from a drop-down menu. Using spatial view, by contrast, requires only a double-click. In other words, there is under the current situation a small penalty attached to browser view that becomes non-trivial when compounded over multiple instances.
Why is it such a big goddamn problem to add a "browser-view-by-default" menu item to fscking Nautilus? What is the major malfunction of people like you such that you're so goddamn opposed to making it trivial for users to do things the way they damn well please?
The Gnome team seems to forget that in between "newbies" and "31337 h4x0rz" is a large middle ground of "power users" who may not be up to programming and shit, but who understand the behavior of the apps they use in fairly sophisticated ways.
Windows does not win because it bends over backwards for newbies. (Apple does, and it loses). Windows wins because it aggressively cultivates power users. These are the people who shut off spatial view as soon as they booted up Win95. They are also the people who drive purchasing decisions.
Do not fuck with them.
Re:"likely to want to change" being the key phrase (Score:5, Interesting)
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. (Score:5, Insightful)