Submitted by Ah, Nautilus, GNOME’s default file manager. It’s been with us for a long time now, and it has certainly been at the centre of a number of controversies. Do we go with a spatial or a navigational Nautilus? Should we replace the location bar with a breadcrumb bar? And now, it’s time to move on. Recently, it has become apparent to many that Nautilus could use a make-over.
I’m strongly in the Nautilus-could-use-a-makeover camp. It fulfils its intended roles quite well, but the user interface could certainly use a designer’s touch. There’s a lot of duplicate functionality and wasted space, and especially in the light of the popularity of netbooks, that’s something you don’t want.
Below is a screenshot of my Nautilus. The issue has been raised a number of times already, but a perusal through the various interface widgets in a default Nautilus window reveals numerous widgets that duplicate functionality. Because of the breadcrumb bar, the up button is duplicate. The stop button has become a relic. The reload button, while useful in some cases, takes up too much space compared to its importance. The home button is useless too; use the sidebar. And so on.
By carefully redesigning Nautilus’ interface, you can save a tremendous amount of screen space. The funny thing is, though, that every Nautilus mockup I’ve seen more or less comes down to “make it like the Finder”, and the most recent one, by Ian ‘Izo’ Cylkowski, is no exception. Note, though, that this isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
The interesting part here is that Izo took it a step further, and also thought about Zeitgeist integration when designing his new Nautilus. Currently, you access Zeitgeist mostly through GNOME Journal, which presents the data collected by Zeitgeist in a usable way. Izo argues, correctly so in my opinion, that Zeitgeist should be integrated into Nautilus, eliminating the need for GNOME Journal. The mockup is entirely self-explanatory.
I’m hoping that a redesign of Nautilus is high upon the GNOME developers’ agendas. I personally prefer Thunar, but since it’s not possible to integrate Thunar into GNOMe without losing Nautilus’ desktop, I just stick to Nautilus (at best you can have Thunar open using the Places menu; otherwise you must replace the Nautilus desktop with Xfce’s).
Whoever said there shouldn’t be more than one way to do something?
Should we remove keyboard shortcuts because you can just use menus? What about context menus?
In other words, leave my up button alone!
Otherwise, I like the mock-up.
If all the really unnecessary duplication eats a lot of screen space and confuses new users then it should go.
You will find people who love the Home, Up and Reload buttons too (don’t get me started with the stupid Stop button, that is just a sign for a bad implementation)
I guess to make everyone happy you have to tell people to use Dolphin. It already does everything (except the Zeitgeist stuff) and can be customized in any fashion (dual pane, tabs everywhere, custom buttons .. the list goes on)
I guess to make everyone happy you have to tell people to use Dolphin
Dolphin doesn’t sit in GNOME at all. It looks totally out of place, and it doesn’t integrate with anything there. Besides, not everyone likes Dolphin.
Sure, but it does nearly everything like Nautilus should according to this and it can be customized to address every nitpick people have (add Delete, Stop, Home, Up etc if you like. I personally added Copy/paste/delete on my netbook)
Dolphin doesn’t really fit KDE either. Dolphin took a lot of hints from GNOME, particularly the philosophy of “remove all functionality that enables to user to operate in a way the developer finds unaesthetic”. Fortunately there’s still enough classic KDE customizabilty left that it remains usable.
More to the point, Most of the Linux User Base *LOATHES* the nonsense the “so-called” UI “EXPERTS” that hang out on this site wants to inflict on them.
In other words, *GET A FRICKING LIFE MORONS*
Well, it’s then a case of pick your poison. How long are people going to wait for a decent file manager, nevermind one integrated with Gnome?
I’m sure not everyone likes Nautilus either.
If something is duplicate it doesn’t mean it’s also unnecessary. Doing the same thing in different ways doesn’t mean one of them is the only one there should be.
Yeah, I know that the Gnome project tries to reduce alternatives to one, but simple eliminating the toolbar buttons is not the answer. They contain useful paradigms and usage scenarios. For example:
Home: The main problem is that I find it very difficult to think of my home dir as “username” as opposed to my “Home”. Some people may use the left pane and think of themselves as “username”. I don’t. I’d find it very awkward if I was forced to. And yeah, I want the home in an easy to spot and reach location. The side pane right now is cluttered and tight. Alternative: I may be willing to accept a redesigned side pane. It needs better categorization and more white space. The Izo mockup is on the right track in this respect.
Up: Using the location bar is not the same as being able to press Up several times to go up in the path, dir by dir. The location bar is very awkward to use for such a task; you need to move the mouse horizontally a lot, to scroll the bar and so on. Using the Up button is very easy: you place the mouse once, then just click and scan the file list, click and scan. Alternative: scrolling the mouse wheel over the bar. Yeah, I know it’s implemented now already, but needs a bit more tweaking to be perfectly usable.
Reload: It can arguably be moved to a context menu. But it’s needed, for non-local filesystems, which don’t refresh automatically.
Finally, Stop: It’s actually useful for non-local filesystems which don’t load for whatever reason. What should I do? Use Back? Close the window? Wait for a timeout? I can imagine scenarios where none of these actions is acceptable. Alternative: have the button appear on the toolbar during load only. Or combine the reload and stop buttons into only one (the actions are mutually exclusive) which only shows up for non-local filesystems.
Reload and stop button could be one. If nothing is happening in the folder a reload button is present and if you click on it (for refresh) it changes to stop button. This way you have both functions but only one button.
I think you missed the point… a modern file manager should not have a reload button (The folders should update as files are modified) at all I could only see stop for large folders or perhaps network filesystems.
The refresh is also needed for network filesystems.
Bideshedding, and I dare you to imagine one of those “stop is useful”-situations that aren’t totally niche use cases as well.
… ssh/smb.
– Gilboa
Edited 2010-03-02 16:50 UTC
does nautilus know the difference between local and non-local?
Yes it does and, while I won’t say it’s the best network fs browser around, it is better than a lot I’ve used. Certainly beats OS X Finder with it’s spinning beach ball everytime I just want to browse an SMB share. There’s already several options you can set, such as previewing and item counting, differently for network folders vs local folders, so I don’t think enabling the refresh/stop buttons only for networked folders would be that hard.
Why not just have an option for customizing the toolbar? Put every action that makes to sense to have available right there there, but not have them all displayed. That solves that problem. UI details like what buttons exist in a toolbar aught to be adjustable by the user, to match the user’s workflow and possible out-of-the-ordinary needs. Everybody wins (except the guy not curious enough to look for the toolbar customization dialog, but he doesn’t count).
Also, put me in the pro-ripping-off-Finder camp. Apple takes plenty from FOSS. FOSS can take some back, every now and again
.
Totally agree. I really miss the ‘Up’ button in Windows 7.
I know it all breadcrummy now, and I that’s all well and good, but you get used to the position of the up button, so when you want to go up 1 folder, clicking the button becomes instinctive.
With the breadcrumbs you have to stop briefly to find the location of the appropriate breadcrumb.
Handy trick, works in Windows and GNOME: use the backspace key on your keyboard. It’ll take you up one folder just about anywhere.
They broke this in Windows 7 (and maybe Vista). Backspace is now equivalent to “Back”. Use ALT-Up to go up a directory.
This was really confusing because backspace still seems to work most of the time but if you bounce in and out of directories backspace may take you back down the hierarchy and you’ll be left scratching your head.
Which is why up is nice, and should remain, at least as an option. Breadcrumbing in handy for going up several directories, but less so one or two, compared to the up button.
Likewise, you’re changing dirs a lot, the extra work to go from breadcrumb to address bar gets annoying, and many FMs seem to have gone with that combo route.
well crap. I hate it when up buttons get removed. It’s great in Konqi, both in file manager and web browser mode. Sad to see Nautilus get the usability treatment. Dolphin for example still has a crap filetree pane (that doesn’t show the root dir). Nautilus as it has been I actually prefer to Dolphin, but there it goes. I guess I’d care more if I used Linux much anymore
Nautilus does indeed need a visual overhaul; even when I usually disable the menu bar (it’s useless, all the functionality is available even without it) there’s still lots of unused space, and the sidebar on the left is not only hideously ugly, it’s rather cumbersome.
Now, those Ian ‘Izo’ Cylkowski’s mockups.. damn I love them! It doesn’t matter if they resemble Finder, OSX users should just take it as a compliment. It just happens to look fantastic, and it’s a whole lot more useable than the old one.
Now, who do I need to sleep with for this to become reality?
Agreed, although I dislike his choice of theme and icons. The general gist is right though, and the fact that it looks likes the Finder is because, well, the Finder looks alright.
So, uhm, what does the Internet Code of Conduct have to say about women talking like that about women?
*runs*
So, uhm, what does the Internet Code of Conduct have to say about women talking like that about women?
When it comes down to geeks and cool software everything is allowed
You’re writing this only to encourage more people to pick up programming, aren’t you?
No where did I put my “C for Dummies” again….?
Now that’s a question you don’t want to ask to the internetz 😛
According to what I see on the internet, it is perfectly fine.
DougInKY
Simple and straight forward is what people need.
Leave the visual candies to the web pages.
They should clone Thunar and be done with it. A search field would be nice, but not necessary if I can hit Ctrl+F to open a search.
I want “delete” buton there..
It’s on your keyboard.
Nice, but except the remote control, i have controls on my TV too..
“…Because of the breadcrumb bar, the up button is duplicate. The stop button has become a relic. The reload button, while useful in some cases, takes up too much space compared to its importance. The home button is useless too; use the sidebar…”
That is the reason I always just switch off main toolbar and have never missed any functionality it provides. Also – it is quite screen space efficient this way.
Edited 2010-03-01 16:25 UTC
Yeah, like thats a problem on my 1920×1080 monitor.
My monitor is 2560×1600 but I still remove unnecessary pixelhogging stuff if I can.
gnome always talk about screen estate but it has a lot of large buttons and icons. Why not start with reducing them?
Amen. GTK+ makes terrible use of screen real estate. I know you can get/tweak some themes to be better, but Qt and Windows and even Mac still win by default. Also, layout is generally terrible, so that everything takes up way more space than it should.
Because they can’t. People have different size resolutions and screens and now with Netbooks and other mobile devices the problem is magnified.
GTK and the Gnome infrastructure just don’t have proper resolution independent and GUI layout support, so every few years we get these ‘redesigns’ that serve no useful purpose other than to bring Nautilus (and other applications) in line with the average resolution a user uses. Layout is also a pain with getting widgets to align and relate to each other as well.
“…Because of the breadcrumb bar, the up button is duplicate. The stop button has become a relic. The reload button, while useful in some cases, takes up too much space compared to its importance. The home button is useless too; use the sidebar…”
This is true only when bread-crum mode is on, I regularly toggle it off so I can type in a long path. I normally don’t toggle it back on manually, bread-crum mode will be enabled automatically when I open a new window. This behavior lets me use the convenient bread-crum mode 90%, put switch to address bar mode as needed without losing functionality.
I supposed an option would be to toggle the bar with the up/home/etc icons on and off when the address-bar/breadcrum is toggled between modes.
I agree with you about the Up button. The rest, I can side with Thom on.
Also, the Izo screenshots seem to lack a way to toggle breadcrumb mode. Otherwise I like what I see. In true Gnome fashion, the mockups look to be implementable today without having to change everything.
Well, this is only true when your previous folder is the the folder a map higher. When you was at your USB disk and clicked on your home folder the back would take me back to the USB disk.
Garret LeSage, a employee of Novell has posted some mockups of a redesigned Nautilus.
http://linuxart.com/log/archives/2009/07/24/nautilus-streamlined/
Garret LeSage, a employee of Novell has posted some mockups of a redesigned Nautilus.
http://linuxart.com/log/archives/2009/07/24/nautilus-streamlined/
Jesus christ, those mockups waste EVEN MORE space than Nautilus does now! There’s no way that’s the right way to go.
Edited 2010-03-01 18:08 UTC
Looks like a bad copy of Finder to me.
As if finder was not bad enough. Recently everyone seems to copy Finder, while literally almost every OSX user hates Finder.
Well Finder would not be so bad by itself, but it lacks tabbing and splitting and VFS integration.
Call me nuts, but I still have yet to find something which is as powerful as Konqueror (with all its hidden functionality which you have to learn) or Total Commander on OSX, and no PathFinder does not cut it it is too slow, although it is the program which comes closest. So if someone designs a filemanager please… do not copy Finder, do something else, but do not copy it!
Krusader is not quite as ambitious as Konqueror, but it’s a fine tool to have at your disposal.
Change in Nautilus doesn’t have to be drastic. Why not allow users to toggle between different styles to suit their interests?
1. I like the whole address in proper format to be displayed. One of my pet peeves of the new trends with file managers is the breadcrumb trail. Surely they can toggle the modes to be one or the other.
2. There should be panes on the left side of the window that can be toggled on/off. I like how Windows allows you to toggle between modes. You have the equivalent of “places”, links to your My Documents folder (~ equivalent), common tasks, etc. It would be nice to minimize the ability to use these modes or to enable them as one sees fit.
3. Allow you to create a customizable toolbar like in Firefox. Give you icons to sort how you see fit!
Icons I’d like to see…
3a. BACK.
3b. FORWARD.
3c. REFRESH.
3d. UP! This needs to stay.
3e. STOP! Need to be able to kill a slow loading folders without killing Nautilus.
3f. HOME! This needs to stay, but as a drop down box. You should be able to go to ~ or your key subfolders from the list.
3g. NEW! New what? Files, shortcuts, virtual links, folders, etc.
3h. SEARCH. A mode actually; bring up a pane on the left.
3i. COMMON TASKS. Another mode; bring up a pane on the left.
3j. TREE. Show location in relationship to root.
3k. MOVE. A drop down box of options to browse a location or to the last used.
3l. CUT.
3m. COPY.
3n. PASTE.
3o. UNDO! Recover from the last command.
3p. Flexible Space/Separators
3q. PRINT.
3r. VIEW! Toggle between different folder views like detailed, simplified/compact list, icons, thumbnails, etc.
3s. COMMANDER. Toggle between single view, multiple views (not to be confused with TREE command),
3t. SHOW. Toggle between icon sizes, text and names, pie chart view, tree size view, etc.
Probably a ton of others. I love these TreeSize-types of programs. The functionalities would be sweeter if they could be integrated natively into the file manager. You get the idea.
Because the more options you have, the complexity you have in the code, which someone needs to write and maintain. And the greater the complexity of the code, the more bugs you tend to get, with all the little permutations of options that don’t get well tested because hardly anyone uses them.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating giving the user zero-choice in their interface. But every time you give the user a choice, there’s a cost, the extra effort for a developer to support each of the possible options.
If there is added complexity it is because too much of the functionality is hardcoded into the GUI. Bad design. Only a poor design would introduce complexity when adding an Up button. What you need to is a good layer between the front and the back ends. For example, factor out the commands into command objects. Just the layering itself reduces complexity. Then you can apply different GUIs to the same backend.
p.s. My big gripe with Nautilus though, is that it won’t show backup files. This is with the RHEL5 I have to use at work. There’s an option to show hidden files, but the backup files remain hidden. Very frustrating.
Edited 2010-03-01 20:46 UTC
The post I was responding to wasn’t asking for an Up button, but for a fully customisable toolbar – something I’m sure you’d agree involves a *lot* of complexity, all of it in the UI layer.
Adding layering doesn’t reduce complexity, just hides it in the code supporting those layers. It makes the UI code easier to work with, but adds a big piece of complexity for managing your command objects and widgets, and the connections between them.
Now that’s obviously a good thing, in that it makes changing the UI easier. But you’ve not removed the complexity, just moved it into some new package that will invariably end up labeled “Black magic performed here – do not touch!”.
That’s why you have reusability. Customizable toolbars have been standard for KDE since almost the beginning. I’m somewhat surprised that GNOME doesn’t have anything like it. But even without it, it’s not that huge of a deal. At least not enough to get all pissy with the user about.
Its not like the rest of gnome wasn’t built modular. Nor is it treading on new water as most of what I mentioned has been done one time or another for gnome! It would be adding consistency to their design to build a customizable toolbar, toggle modes, multiple views in the same window, etc.
I would LOVE to see an option for column view added to Nautilus. Finder has had it for a while, Dolphin has it now, and Nautilus should be next. In my opinion it is the most space-efficient layout.
I’m in agreement with you 100% on that one. Column view is great in OS X Finder, my favorite way to use a file manager actually. If Nautilus gets that I’ll be very happy indeed.
…which has a wider toolbar (with fewer icons) than IE6.
My problem with this proposal is not that I dislike it, it’s that, then what happens with menubars in other GNOME apps?. ‘Cos, if you do away with them in Nautilus then other apps should follow, or not?.
I sure hope so since not many apps actually need a menubar. And while we’re at it, please for the love of god, get rid of the hideous “File” menu. It is especially grating in applications that doesn’t even work on files.
Well, that’s something you can lay at any platform. Even on Windows and OS X everything’s got a file menu whether it needs one or not. As for no menu bar though, sometimes that’s the only way to get a list of supported shortcut keys and their actions. Perhaps make the menu bar hidden with the option to show it when needed. Another way would be to tack tooltips onto the toolbar buttons that list their key equivalents, this would work in GNOME since you can usually get to the toolbar from the keyboard anyway.
A very long time ago at a sysadmin job far far away… There used to be a gui file manager that actually didnt make me want to tear my finger nails out. “gmc” I seem to recall and I also seem to recall it was some variant of the Gnome Midnight Commander or perhaps it was just that. In any regards, putting aside the fact Nautilus leaves a LOT left to be desired one feature it has been missing forever is the ability to affect your file readout via shell like commands. ie: “ls *.mp3” and it only lists matched “*.mp3” files in the window for the current viewing location. Im not talking about the weak and worthless “select items matching either”. The ability to run commands within the GUI FM is an absolutely must and without it *all* GUI FMs are 99% worthless accept to all the users who simply do not know how to use them. Even they though would ultimately benefit from learning such techniques and each generation is getting more fluent with system uses such as that mentioned. If we are not concerned about the more “advanced” users then frankly a pretty, big icon, Im going blind 3inch button telephone like interface is satisfactory for all the “other” users. While several applications satisfy the one specific feature I mentioned above they all lack crossover between the different types of file managers, at least in my experience. What is needed is a GUI System Shell or at the least a GUI File Manager Shell. A hybrid if you will which is not emelfm2, mc, gmc, nautilus or gnome-commander. Of course personally, my hearts content with my bash shell so perhaps Im just spoiled.
Edited 2010-03-02 00:40 UTC
You should like the emelFM2 GTK+2-based file manager.
http://www.linuxlinks.com/portal/content/reviews/FileManagers/Scree…
Features include:
* Built-In Command Line
* ACL (access control list)
* User-defined menu
* Configurable Keyboard bindings
* Configurable Toolbar
* Drag and drop
* Thumbnails
* Bookmarks and History Lists
* File compression and file encryption
* Tiny text-editor
* Flexible filetyping scheme
* Multiple actions selectable for each filetype
* Filename, Size, and Date Filters
* Runtime loadable plugins
* Simple text-file viewer which handles several different protocols for line-ends (UNIX, DOS etc), and tries to interpret and convert various character-encodings
I thank you for your comment. Combining usability and modern concepts of a shell with a versatile graphical file manager is something worth thinking about.
You mentioned the Midnight Commander. This tool is one of my most important tools in daily work. Its layout, the well-known “two panel mode”, illustrates that many day to day tasks can be called “source target operations”, such as moving files or copying them. The two panels really help – you don’t need two windows (instances) of one file manager to have source and target on your screen, you don’t need to care for overlapping windows.
The ability to interact with the file manager with the mouse AND the keyboard is essential. Actions that are done very often should have their key, e. g. PF5 for copy, PF6 for move, PF8 for delete – examples from the Midnight Commander. Graphical file managers give you the chance to “point and press” (like how modern window managers can do this) – you point to something and press a key on the keyboard, and a certain action will be taken.
In my opinion, good (!) keyboard support is something “modern” GUI applications seem to forget too often. But don’t mind, I’m an old keyboard guy. 🙂 Honestly, good keyboard support can be of high benefit both for novice and professional type of users. But you (i. e. the developers) have to think carefully about it.
Most “modern” file managers seem to put the “how you see your files” in the foreground, not paying enough attention to “how you handle your files”. For example, having thumbnail previews of images and even movie files is a very handy feature, especially when file names don’t tell you anything (like “DSC0842.JPG” or “New Letter.odt”). But a file manager should not be reduced to a file previewer. There are more things you use it to do than just looking at your files. (At least I think it should be the way.)
In the example of Nautilus, as presented, it seems that I miss a thing, or did I oversee it? Is there a field where I can type a directory name (or other specification for a place to browse with the file manager), preferably with auto completition (e. g. using the TAB key)?
Personally, I never understood how the edit buffer (copy, cut, paste) got so popular for handling files… but well, I’m an old-fashioned and lazy mind. 🙂
Allow me to add some things:
Yes, operating on selected files (according to some criteria, like name, date, date span, size) is often a very useful functionality. The combination to use group selections along with arbitrary selections (e. g. in Midnight Commander: grey + *mp3, then Insert to add some jpg and txt files to them, then PF8 to delete them) is one of the things that I’d really miss here.
The GUI gives you another great idea what can be done: let’s say you’ve selected some files, then you want to open then with one program, e. g. some odt files with OpenOffice.
This seems to be due to my observation that “modern” GUI file managers want to intendedly use a certain set of concepts for how things have to be done. Entering a command, and maybe even combining it with file selections, is not one of them.
For most users, “average users”, I think having two windows of a file manager and dragging files around, or dragging them into a place within a tree view, or using ^C/^V is how they use them.
You mentioned the word that will stop them using it: “learn”. Because most of them are coming from a “Windows” background, they expect those strange concepts (which they never would admit to have “learned” them, by the way – they simply “can do” them) to be present everywhere. A GUI file manager that would not implement them won’t be used for very long, even if they wouldn’t make work harder, slower, less productive.
Again, those are not part of the oh so important oh joy oh market share. 🙂
And if it would come with some kind of profile manager – e. g. “novice”, “experienced”, “professional” – which could be used to hide or show (or change how to show) several graphical elements, then it would be really awesome. The last program I’ve seen that had such functionality was GeoWorks Ensemble (e. g. in the word processor program, you could change the level of assistance and the availability of icons and options by changing the profile).
Well, then I am, too, caught within the tradition of using the Midnight Commander. So combine a good screen layout, previews, information presentation, mouse support, keyboard support, shell support (for the shell of choice, please, because not everyone likes bash) and FAST (!!!) operating speed into a program with as less dependencies as possible, and I may consider leaving my traditional path.
I think the Home, up, reload and stop buttons should be moved into the breadcrumb bar. Home > Up > Path
I also think the first thing that should be done when changing folder is to draw the breadcrumb with the stop button tacked to the right border, then remove it when the directory is done loading.
I have no preference for refresh, it should be configurable, and in the menu bar. Either way, I should be able to make it go away, because I usually just use F5 anyway.
The search box is a great idea, especially when looking in /usr/bin, but it should only filter the current directory and be positioned to the right of the breadcrumb bar to symbolise that you are searching the current location.
View should also be on the dro pdown for each breadcrumb, so you can store views for each crumb along the way.
That just leaves back and forward, which should stay in the standard icon bar, (which can have anything added to it) but be able to be themed, so you can make them smaller and less cumbersome.
I believe that copying from MacOSX won’t be any good, the idea that is behind gnome to constantly improve what you have is fine for me.
I threw my 2-cent-worth idea on 2 gifs.
The areas in the first mockup could replace back, forward and up.
In both mockups you could ad the refresh, list type and option icons after the breadcrumb area. I thought of putting this in the bottom because I actually use more the back, forward and up buttons to navigate than the path buttons.
Besides, having tree and resources view available would drastically reduce the need of such area on top.
The two mockups:
http://raid996.altervista.org/images/nautilus_mockup.gif
http://raid996.altervista.org/images/nautilus_search_mockup.gif
PS: Mind me I am absolutely not a mac expert, I’ve own a mac for 3 years and I actually used it something like 10 times… that was the period I actually used only my old IBM T20 with dapper to do just about everything. So i’m not sure whether or not this resembles any mac osx behaviour
Edited 2010-03-03 14:11 UTC
Looks good overall. Clean. One complaint, the dreary colors. Otherwise it reminds me of KDE’s start menu behavior. It would be nice if one could move the two views on the left to their own column. Drag and drop it in a customizable configuration.
Not familiar with the buttons on the bottom. What are they for specifically? Edit: Is that the bread crumb view?? I like it separated from the address bar. Much nicer than replacing the addressbar!
Edited 2010-03-03 17:06 UTC
What do you mean by “separated form the address bar?” isn’t it like I did it… my choice comes from the fact that myself as 90% of the people I know dont use the breadcrumb…
I believe that repositioning the bars should be included farly easy so that could be easily customizable….
R.
I’m going to have to be the odd-man out on osnews, and say that nautilus suits me just fine, and doesn’t need much changes. What we don’t want though is bloating simple and elegant designs, because some users want a waffleiron with cdplayer and built-in elevator.
Edited 2010-03-04 02:56 UTC
I’ve never had any real complaints about Nautilus either, though I do wish it had one thing: A column view similar to that of OS X Finder. Barring that, a list view similar to that in Windows Explorer, i.e. one that is not a combination folder and file tree but has them separated.
This is your brain:
“Why would you put an elevator in a CD player? Why a CD player, in this day and age, anyway?”
This is your brain on Konqueror:
“That’s it! A waffle iron! I knew my CD player needed something.”
I really cannot critizise much about Nautilus, or Gnome, or the Ubuntu Karmic 9.10 distribution, which I am using professionally. The same people as always seem to disagree, when I find a distribution like this, that is of so high quality. It is amazing though, that they managed to build such a tight distribution, no-nonsense, no-obscurity. And with a beautiful theme like NewWave. Lets hope they keep gathering “the best of opensource” as Mark Shuttleworth said, and while I cant critise much of Ubuntu 9.10, it’s nice to see that they are improving boot times, and other things, that can actually add to the distribution.
I always wonder why Nautilus always seems to have problems. It’s neither the best organised file manager, nor the most powerful in any useful way or even the easiest to use for what it gives you. You’ve got to ask what’s wrong if you’re continually having to redesign your file manager.
After over ten years of hacking, a lot of it pumped in initially by money from Eazel, you’ve got to ask the question. Other desktops and desktop operating systems have had seriously evolved file managers or even completely new ones made in that time.
Redesigns are always touted but nothing ever seems to get done or it ends up being too difficult or the ‘usability’ concerns derail seomthing. Even then, changes end up being purely cosmetic rather than impacting the functionality in any way. All we have had is a basic tree layout and a spatial Finder wannabe, which is understandable since it’s never shake off the Mac OS mindset.