Much has been said, and been discussed about “spatial views” (found on Mac OS X’s Finder and on BeOS’ Tracker). Ever since the GNOME hackers decided that Nautilus, the file manager in GNOME, would sport a spatial way of working by default, the word “spatial” has became infamous. Colin Charles tries to clear up the waters and explain the advantages of using a spatial interface.
The Spatial Way
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
“GNOME has done something ground-breaking by doing away with the browser-styled”
For goodness sakes… How is doing something that windows did in 3.1 ground-breaking?
Some of us dont even use a file browser, just the command shell
Perhaps becourse Windows 3.1 never was spacial!!!!
Neither was Win95 for that matter, give Spacial Nautilus a try before you nock it!
Exactly, how is this ground breaking? That’s the behavior that both Windows and Mac OS went away from after years. You would think that they’ve done their homework before they did that.
I remember in my Win9X days that one of the first things I would do after a new install is to configure the Explorer to browse windows in tree view instead of filling up my screen with folders and folders.
Anyways, good thing is that they are considering putting a preference option in Nautilus so at least one could easily change that w/o going through gconf, etc.
For goodness sakes… How is doing something that windows did in 3.1 ground-breaking?
Well, sometimes reverting back to something that has been abandoned by the rest of the world is groundbreaking. A very rough comparison can be made when after the Renaissance Democracy started to appear… Democracy wasn’t new at all, it was “invented” in ancient Greece. This is kinda the same; an old concept, abandoned, but reintroduced (and improved). Sometimes it proves useful to think before posting.
I myself did not like the spatial view; but, on the other hand, I didn’t really take the time to get used to it. This article has sparkled my interest again…
GNOME has done something ground-breaking by doing away with the browser-styled, Navigation metaphor, as a default.
So the Amiga had it right all those years back, before Windows 1.0 was even released. Like hairstyles and clothes, everything eventually comes back in style.
I still think the biggest complaint I’ve heard from most people that are not fans of Spatial browsing is that it’s the default way things are set up and there’s not a simple menu option in Nautilus to not make it the default, you have to go to GConf to do this. It should be one of those settings that happens the first time you open Nautilus, it shows you the two ways you can view things and gives you the option to choose at that time, and tell you where you can change the option later if you feel like it; instead of assuming that since you put a new feature in people want to use it. Macromedia has this in a lot of their programs the first time you start them up; you can choose something like designer view or developer view, instead of just thrusting one of them on the user and letting them change it to what they really want.
Well, we’re going to get a lot of flame-wars on this again, but I can’t fault the article for trying to explain why it has been done – I question some of the enthusiasm though. Things don’t always work out like that, but all power to them.
The e-mail on the subject was interesting, and with some of the sensible replies from Jeff Waugh, Havoc Pennington and Michael Meeks you wonder how the spatial concept got fully implemented at all.
In the example, on the left, notice that the “python” and “rpm” folders have already been opened, and their icons are significantly dimmed, in comparison with the “evolution” folder. Such feedback is just genius, and even if you do not notice it and click on say, the “rpm” folder again, it would just bring to focus, the window that has already been opened.
I wouldn’t exactly call this genius. This behaviour has been around for the best part of twenty years.
However, in many ways I have come to agree with a spatial concept in a limited way, even though I was dead-set against it. I can’t help feeling that there is a better way of doing it somewhere along the line though; perhaps that wouldn’t be spatial though. It has certainly given some food for thought.
Each folder opened will open with the same exact size, in the same exact location
Certainly useful and senible, but is it realistic?
Each folder opens a new window, just like files do (so viewing a PDF launches the PDF viewer, rather than placing it within the file manager)
In a lot of instances I find this behaviour sensible. In other instances, not so sensible.
Less screen clutter, so concentrating on files is easier (dragging & dropping, and moving of files are a lot more convenient)
I think that’s a bit subjective.
So rather than posting to the mailing lists, or writing factually incorrect articles, it seems that the time has come to move on from the fact that Nautilus by default, has become spatial.
Hmm, come on. I don’t think we should dismiss everyone else as wrong and label everything that doesn’t support spatial browsing as factually incorrect.
“I remember in my Win9X days that one of the first things I would do after a new install is to configure the Explorer to browse windows in tree view instead of filling up my screen with folders and folders.”
win 95 didnt have a spatial mode. opening up new folders doesnt make a interface spatial.
FC2 nautilus had a critical flaw and I was forced to reinstall FC1. I wasn’t able to copy files from a CD to my HD. I think we have a case of too much innovation here because the FC1 nautilus is rock solid.
“Certainly useful and senible, but is it realistic?
Each folder opens a new window, just like files do (so viewing a PDF launches the PDF viewer, rather than placing it within the file manager)
In a lot of instances I find this behaviour sensible. In other instances, not so sensible. ”
you can middle click or right click and choose browse and choose browse filesystem from the application menu
“FC2 nautilus had a critical flaw and I was forced to reinstall FC1. I wasn’t able to copy files from a CD to my HD.”
its working fine here. maybe you have something misconfigured
I remember in my Win9X days that one of the first things I would do after a new install is to configure the Explorer to browse windows in tree view instead of filling up my screen with folders and folders.
About the only usefullness this had in Windows was each new window that was opened spawned a separate instance of explorer, so if one window was a share to some network drive and the network went down it would only crash that instance of explorer (in theory, sometimes worked), instead of bringing down all instances. Maybe that’s why Windows has it as the default. Still I always change it.
“Such feedback is just genius…”
this article makes me want to give up on the linux desktop. trying to justify having 15 windows open just to navigate your folders. — but no, you can use these complicated key strokes to hide the windows. sighhhhh
maybe novell can straighten these gnome people out – they are definitely off in their own little world.
and, OT, from a developer’s pov, please, standardize on 1 desktop, novell. someone has to make a decision and take the heat. if you choose kde, say we will have mono bindings for it, and let there be a centralized FOCUS for developing apps. will ximian be mad? too bad, they got paid off in the buy out.
because if you don’t, both desktops and app frameworks will wither, because another OSS desktop will arrive that simplifies everything that makes linux difficult (maybe one of the new Be OS’s)
”
this article makes me want to give up on the linux desktop. trying to justify having 15 windows open just to navigate your folders. — but no, you can use these complicated key strokes to hide the windows. sighhhhh ”
just use middle click. it has been mentioned in the article. go read it first completely
Well, I’ve tried many OS’s with spatial browsers, but I never could get used to the mess this particular ‘inspiration’ causes on my desktop… Here’s my little piece-of-mind on this topic: http://www.valdyas.org/fading/index.cgi/hacking/mess.html?seemore=y
If I never, ever have to work with a litter-bug filemanager, I’ll be very glad.
“Perhaps becourse Windows 3.1 never was spacial!!!!
Neither was Win95 for that matter, give Spacial Nautilus a try before you nock it!”
I have used the new Nautilus, and I like it. I’m not “nocking” it, but the idea that it is ground-breaking.
Also, I think that Win 3.1 and 95 do fall under the definition of “spatial”.
Main Entry: spa·tial
Pronunciation: ‘spA-sh&l
Function: adjective
Etymology: Latin spatium space
: relating to, occupying, or having the character of space
– spa·ti·al·i·ty /”spA-shE-‘a-l&-tE/ noun
– spa·tial·ly /’spA-sh(&-)lE/ adverb
“Also, I think that Win 3.1 and 95 do fall under the definition of “spatial”.”
it does not. its a very poor implementation
The ratio of people that likes the new spatial interface seems to be about 1 to 500 or something, looking at mailing lists, news sites and irc channels.
Have the developers listened to the users here making this the default , or are they trying to enforce something theoretically better upon us ?
At least for certain things. It certainly isn´t what you want to use if you browse the depths of your file system, but if you just want to go a few folders deep it´s fine.
What I still can´t understand is, that there is no easy to reach option for changing nautilus default behavior. And having no easy way to view hidden folders and files is simply ridiculous on a linux system.
A further problem is that nautilus in browse mode still isn´t really good. At least I have noticed no improvement over gnome-2.4.
I have not studied this enough to say if it really helps people to grasp the concept of drag&drop for example but I’d like it to.
I’d personally like to ditch open/save file dialogues in applications alltogether and use D&D instead. To me it’s a lot more logical to work that way in a desktop environment. It makes much more sense to drag your document to a folder to save it than to choose save as from the menu and drill through the folders to find the right place to save it. Most applications have D&D support for opening files but few apps has it for saving files, which is probably the reason why file dropping is rarely used for opening files as well.
I don’t know how many times I’ve seen people using the “Add files” in the playlist editor in Winamp, choosing a few files, adding them, opening the dialogue again, adding a few files. It’s not only illogical, it’s a timewaster. When I showed to them they you could D&D the files from the filemanager over the the playlist they wen’t “aah, ooh” and used that method from there on. The problem isn’t the user, but the application giving them the option to open the “Add files” dialogue.
D&D is a wonderful feature but it’s only half implemented as it is now. It would make sense to be able to D&D documents, images, sounds etc all over the place where the format is supported. But at the moment, it doesn’t work everywhere, so few people get used to it.
The BeOS Tracker supports most of this allready, you can drag an image or a text to the Tracker and it will show up as a file. But the app has no idea of where the file is, so you’d have to drag it to the Tracker once again to save it after making changes to it. It should be easy to implement, but the hard part is getting the apps to support it.
Yay, another spatial nautilus page. I have used the new spatial nautilus for quite awhile, only because I’m too lazy to change the default.
I can see some good points to how it works but I’m still not sold on how it makes browsing system easier for new users. For instance new users would either have to remember different key combinations to reduce the number of open windows, which could be daunting. OR they can remember when they need to left click right click or middle click. OR they could just leave the all the windows up, which could overwhelm them. While this isn’t hard for a person who knows even a little about computers but my grandmother might have a hard time remembering all this.
Also i don’t know about other users folder use in the “Real World” but I don’t typically put folders inside of folders inside of folders. Again, as above, grandma might not get it.
Navagational browsing has its drawback as well but everyone I’ve taut how to use navagational browsing have understood it.
That’s the behavior that both Windows and Mac OS went away from after years. You would think that they’ve done their homework before they did that.
Yes, one would think that the developers of Windows and MacOS would have done their homework before switching away from spatial file managers, but apparently not…
And yes, that was a disingenuous answer to your argument-by-appeal-to-authority.
“For instance new users would either have to remember different key combinations to reduce the number of open windows, which could be daunting. OR they can remember when they need to left click right click or middle click. OR they could just leave the all the windows up, which could overwhelm them. While this isn’t hard for a person who knows even a little about computers but my grandmother might have a hard time remembering all this. ”
just use applications -> browse filesystem. not that hard at all
Maybe the rate of spatial:non-spatial might me 1:500, I for one do support the Spatial Nautilus. It almost made me switch from KDE to Gnome.
The reason is easy: the spatial mode makes moving files around really easy. For example, just imagine a file in /export/home/john/Documents/Letters/Work/auction.txt, which should be placed in /export/home/john/Documents/Letters/Home. Now in normal mode, you have to open two windows and browse the entire directory tree twice before you can drag-and-drop the file. With the Spatial mode, you first open one of them, switch back to the parent, open the other folder and done! So much quicker!
And indeed, I believe there is no better way to manage files than Mac OS 8 and above – with the Spatial mode for managing your files, and the list view to quickly find them without the clutter.
just use applications -> browse filesystem. not that hard at all
just like it wouldn’t have been hard to have browse be the default and just use applications -> spatial? again, it all comes down to introducing something new, making it the default, and hiding the way to implement the old instead of making it obvious. the first time i used Gnome 2.6 i didn’t know about editing GConf, right clicking and choosing browse, making a shortcut to nautilus -browse, etc. shouldn’t have to do a Google search or read a man page to get something back to the way it’s always been.
Also, I think that Win 3.1 and 95 do fall under the definition of “spatial”.
They don’t, at least not their filemanagers. The win3.1 file manager was good ‘ol winfile.exe (or fileman, can’t remember), a two-column dealie which was definitely not spatial. If you mean the behaviour of groups within the Program Manager, I guess it’s debatable that those behaved in a spatial manner – but the discussion here is on file managers.
I don’t have access to a win95 box at the moment, but there were some things about its filemanager that made it not spatial. Off the top of my head, you could have the same folder open simultaneously in two different windows. If it’s not clear how this makes it “not spatial”, I suggest reading John Siracusa’s article on the subject.
http://arstechnica.com/paedia/f/finder/finder-2.html#spatial
The only major problem I have with the form of navigation is the extra mouse movement and key strokes required to manage all the extra windows that pop up all over the place. In a single window system, the navigational controls stay in the same place on the screen as do the window controls (close, maximize, minimize). This (for me at least) make it easier to control objects on the screen.
The reason is easy: the spatial mode makes moving files around really easy. For example, just imagine a file in /export/home/john/Documents/Letters/Work/auction.txt, which should be placed in /export/home/john/Documents/Letters/Home. Now in normal mode, you have to open two windows and browse the entire directory tree twice before you can drag-and-drop the file. With the Spatial mode, you first open one of them, switch back to the parent, open the other folder and done! So much quicker!
or you could also have the old tree directory view and drag the auction.txt file in work over to the Home folder in the left tree view pane. since you’re in the Letters folder it would be expanded exposing both Work and Home sub-directories. No need to have two windows open for that.
And puts less strain on my poor wrist.
I have the same feeling. When I originally started with Linux, I was looking for exactly this feature, but I couldn’t find any file-managers that could be configured as such.
This is seriously making me consider using nautilus more on my KDE desktop. KDE’s one click policy just isnt very usefull for file-management. Unfortunatly last time I tried out nautilus it was all surface: Looked pretty but completly useless. I fear the same disappointment this time.
Any time you have to write an article explaining why the feature is so good even though most people think it sucks; you know you made a mistake!
Any time you have to write an article explaining why the feature is so good even though most people think it sucks; you know you made a mistake!
With that attitude, we’d still be climbing trees and thinking the world is flat
I can’t really say I’m a fan of the new spacial Nautilus since I haven’t used it yet. But like many other people here, I prefer the tree view of a file manager.
While we’re on the subject of tree view file managers, you guys should take the time out to try i.File. It’s early in its life but is very easy to use if your accustomed to windows explorer.
http://www.memecode.com/ifile.php
I managed to simulate the spatial behavior on Windows XP.
All I did was:
choose to open each folder in a new window and to remember the settings on each folder.
I don’t have FC2 yet, but I think this is quite the same. If I open a window that is already on the desktop, I get it on top. CTRL-double click opens the new windows and closes the old. Sift click opens a browser (in a new window), what else do I have to get to have spatial Windows XP?
>Now in normal mode, you have to open two windows and >browse the entire directory tree twice before you can >drag-and-drop the file. With the Spatial mode, you first >open one of them, switch back to the parent, open the >other folder and done! So much quicker!
Or, if using KDE, you could simply navigate to the first folder, split the view and go up one level in the second pane. Then you just drag and drop the file from one pane to the other.
Yeah, XP has it too. But this isn’t about Linux vs Windows, but rather OO vs Navigational.
As a Linux user I should be able to convert to the old nautilus. I should have the knowledge to be able to use the source code and resist change (innovation), if I choose to. That is the what I should be able to do.
Maybe the reason why spatial nautilus does not work for
some people is because the way they organize their files
is not really compatible with the spatial paradigm?
I can’t wait to get Slackware or something setup so I can give the new Gnome a try. I usually set Windows to treat explorer like a browser, however I see some differences. Most importantly, folders open in one location. Does this apply to applications too??
Just 30 seconds ago I got annoyed again with windowsXP opening MS Access on the wrong screen. It should open where I last had it open!!! Why is that so hard for the OS to understand.
Maybe they need to add some sort of Bayesian user prediction scheme underneath the OS so that over time it predicts what I want to do and how I want it done. This isn’t so far fetched, the new Saturn automatic transmissions impelement Bayesian networks to better fit when to shift based on a drivers driving habits! Hey, maybe thats how i’ll contribute to OS project, once I got time.
Think of how many repetitive tasks you do on your computer every day, these are perfect imput to feed a bayesian net on how the computer is used!
On the whole i like the spatial nautilus, and it fits in with the way i prefer to use my PC better than a ‘tree’ type arrangement, which i have never liked.
Spatial Nautilus does need more polish and a couple of changes, in my view, both of which should be relatively trivial to implement.
1) A way to drag the ‘current window location’ – having to finding its parent window (and in some cases e.g. the ‘Computer’ location, there is no parent) so you can drag a shortcut to the desktop or elsewhere is just plain stupid.
Especially when there is a small menu (bottom left of window) with the heirarchy displayed, but none of its entries are draggable.
2) Have a button to close all windows except the one currently being viewed – if you have opened a bunch of folders to get to the place you want to see, there should be an simple way to eliminate the clutter – I think this would help a lot of people deal with what they see as the mess spatial nautilus makes of their desktop.
the gnome developers just lost their mind i never think i will here such an bad idea , gnome developers become like a cult they can anything but their self it just a waste that a good desktop become less and less freindly with each new version.
If the source code for the old nautilus is available, than the new nautilus is a choice, you are not forced to use it.
Have the developers listened to the users here making this the default , or are they trying to enforce something theoretically better upon us ?
You must not be familiar with the tyranical ravings of Havoc Pennington. I beleive that he has already stated to the effet that users don’t know what’s best for them and that he, in all of his glory, will decide for them. Makes you want to use his software, no?
I tried out the spacial browser for about a week after I installed Gnome 2, and it nearly drove me insane. My main reason: speed. I’ve used a tree-view file manager all my life, and can navigate the things quite quickly. That wasn’t the case with spacial – even using the double middle click to open folders, it was a lot slower to navigate folders that were popping up at semi-random positions all across the screen. The fact that I use a fairly deep directory structure, with the files fairly well categorised doesn’t help (for me, my well-categorised file system also makes all the new “database-oriented” file systems they’re working on a waste of my time and system resources).
I just checked how many files my computer has, 86475. That is a lot of files. I suspect that I have a vastly higher number of files on the computer at work (not to mention netshares etc). What is the point of trying to make my brain remember the position of a file that I will use a few times before I delete it, or a large number of files (developing mobile phones tend to give you a lot of .cpp files) that I will only use occasionally, in very deep hierarchies as well.
I understand the value of keeping things at the (relative thank you) same place each time, especially if used often. But I do not see the point of this when browsing files. Especially since I have given up on any large icon view a long time ago (the image the icon represents very very seldomly has any unique meaning to me after all).
What needs to be solved is how to arrange and find large amounts of data, not trying to reverse engineer the first Macintosh.
”
I understand the value of keeping things at the (relative thank you) same place each time, especially if used often. But I do not see the point of this when browsing files. Especially since I have given up on any large icon view a long time ago (the image the icon represents very very seldomly has any unique meaning to me after all).
”
you are not going to manage 80,000+ files in your computer. typically you are managing less than 100 files in your system. if its organised in a logical manner its pretty easy to manage them through a spatial interface
“ou must not be familiar with the tyranical ravings of Havoc Pennington. I beleive that he has already stated to the effet that users don’t know what’s best for them and that he, in all of his glory, will decide for them. Makes you want to use his software, no?”
he has never said such things. dont lie
Gee, if on of the reasons moving files around is hard in browse mode, why don’t they do it the Konqueror way.
That is, have a “Split View” feature.
That way you can easily split the file manager i 2 or more
views showing diffrent directories, making drag’n’drop easy.
Remembering back when I moved to Linux, I thought this was a killer feature, infintily better than the Windows explorer.
I’m waiting for the new GNOME 2.6 to be distributed with my distro, and if I don’t like it spatial, start hacking, thanks to Open Source.
Shouldn’t be so complicated to get the behaviour of “double-middle-click” on “double-left-click” and visa versa (including the other short-cuts).
I usually also close a folder before opening another one in the real world — otherwise my real desktop would also be cluttered with open folders. And that’s soon a problem if your desktop is not ‘that’ big.
I just want to know how to copy a file from my CD to my home directory. I can’t keep up to this nautilus “innovation”. The CD files magically dissapear when you run the cursor over them.
“I just want to know how to copy a file from my CD to my home directory. I can’t keep up to this nautilus “innovation”. The CD files magically dissapear when you run the cursor over them”
stop trolling on every post with this bogus information
..might be masochistic or something…there was a huge thread about spatial nautilus just a week ago, why go back to it all over again?
“might be masochistic or something…there was a huge thread about spatial nautilus just a week ago, why go back to it all over again?”
colin charles has blogged about this and people are supposed to be discussing that particular blog but obviously a lot of people havent bothered to read. i hear the same old arguments answered in that blog
Where do the files dissapear to? Where do they go when you put the mouse over them and they dissapear? I’m talking about off of a cdrom. The files dissapear!
So I’m leaving it although to have BeOS folder browse menus would be really nice. Oh well.
Well at least KDE still works. I’ll be using that I guess.
KDE looks like Gnome! WTF.
“KDE looks like Gnome! WTF”
if you are using fedora core/redhat you have a common theme called bluecurve. go to the kde control center and click on plastik for everything. should look good
That’s more like it. Thanks.
“Where do the files dissapear to? Where do they go when you put the mouse over them and they dissapear? I’m talking about off of a cdrom. The files dissapear!
”
tell me step by step what you are trying to do.
1. I put a data CD into the drive.
2. An disk Icon appears on my desktop.
3. I press the icon and a folder opens, it shows all of the files on the CD.
4. I put the mouse pointer over a file and click it, and the file magically disappers (hopefully not to redmond). Every file disappers as soon as I put the mouse pointer over it.
KDE works fine though, the files don’t disapear and I can drag and drop a copy of the file to my desktop.
I don’t know about everyone else, but I navigate my FS fastest from the command line. In terms of RAW SPEED, nothing beats tab completion and ls with colors enabled.
Nothing, that is, except a machine that also has access to Nautilus 2.6.x.
What’s great for me about the new nautilus is that if I want a graphical view of my current directory from the command-line, I just type nautilus ./ and I get an undecorated window (exactly as I left it the last time) with all my files in it. From there, I can rubber-band some files to create a tarball using file-roller, or I can drag-and-drop those files to evolution as attachments.
Basically, the new spatial nautilus for me makes it much easier for my command-line navigation to “integrate” with my Gnome desktop in an elegant way.
For me, neither the browser interfare NOR the spatial one will let me get to my files quickly. The command line is the richest environment for this. But having a graphical representation of my files comes in handy, and spatial nautilus serves that purpose quite well for me.
This allows me to browse my file system without cluttering my desktop, and then only open up a nautilus window _WHEN I REALLY NEED IT_.
It surprises me that no one has written about this aspect of the new nautilus…
“Have the developers listened to the users here making this the default , or are they trying to enforce something theoretically better upon us ? ”
What’s “theoretical” about it? It can be measured if people are interested in the answer?
[anonymous (IP: —.nycap.rr.com) ]
“For instance new users would either have to remember different key combinations to reduce the number of open windows, which could be daunting.”
Or since a lot of people have multi-buttoned mice. It would make sense to assign “close parent folder” to a thumb button.
“1. I put a data CD into the drive.
2. An disk Icon appears on my desktop.
3. I press the icon and a folder opens, it shows all of the files on the CD.
4. I put the mouse pointer over a file and click it, and the file magically disappers (hopefully not to redmond). Every file disappers as soon as I put the mouse pointer over it.
”
i guess highlighting it causes it be invisible due to colors or something
1) try changing the gnome theme to something else other than the current one and check
2) add a new user and check if its reproducible there.
I logged out of KDE than logged into Gnome and tried it and it worked. I didn’t change the theme or anything, all of a sudden it works now for no reason.
Acutally wait, I did an update with the up2date utility, maybe that fixed it. I hope that it keeps working.
“Acutally wait, I did an update with the up2date utility, maybe that fixed it. I hope that it keeps working.”
stay updated. fedora probably will have a good amount of updates.
glad that your problem got fixed
I have another question. When I download something, where does it get downloaded to? It doesn’t go to the home directory, where does it end up by default??
It goes to Downloads, but where is that directory? Man this new nautilus design is totally confusing.
$HOME/Desktop/Downloads
Okay I have a handle on it now. Well as long as it works I’ll eventually get used to it. I still fear the day of the 3d desktop, especially if we have no choice, but since the source code is there we are supposed to have a choice, that’s what makes Linux different, however even with the source code there I think it’s still difficult to change file managers.
Seriously guys, to be spatial you have to do more than open a new window for each folder. The new window must remember everything changed in it from previous uses (so it knows what icons you put where, how large the window was, etc). I think Mac OS did have a spacial system though, I’m not sure though. Anybody know?
For goodness sakes… How is doing something that windows did in 3.1 ground-breaking?
Windows 3.1 wasn’t spatial, but MacOS 7.x (and probably earlier versions) certainly was, and it dates from around the same era.
I’d personally like to ditch open/save file dialogues in applications alltogether and use D&D instead. To me it’s a lot more logical to work that way in a desktop environment. It makes much more sense to drag your document to a folder to save it than to choose save as from the menu and drill through the folders to find the right place to save it. Most applications have D&D support for opening files but few apps has it for saving files, which is probably the reason why file dropping is rarely used for opening files as well.
But which UI element should the user drag & drop to save a document ? How should they indicate they want to “Save As” ?
I don’t know how many times I’ve seen people using the “Add files” in the playlist editor in Winamp, choosing a few files, adding them, opening the dialogue again, adding a few files. It’s not only illogical, it’s a timewaster. When I showed to them they you could D&D the files from the filemanager over the the playlist they wen’t “aah, ooh” and used that method from there on. The problem isn’t the user, but the application giving them the option to open the “Add files” dialogue.
No, the “Add Files” (or equivalents) is good UI because it is discoverable. D&D behaviour might be quicker, but it is inherently difficult to discover and the results difficult to predict. Having only D&D behaviour would be bad UI.
But at the moment, it doesn’t work everywhere, so few people get used to it.
Few people use it because a) it isn’t intuitive – hence not discoverable and b) the resultant behaviour tends to be inconsistent and very contextual.
Seriously guys, to be spatial you have to do more than open a new window for each folder. The new window must remember everything changed in it from previous uses (so it knows what icons you put where, how large the window was, etc).
This is just fluff. The distinguishing feature of a spatial file manager is that you can’t have more than one view of a folder open at the same time.
I think Mac OS did have a spacial system though, I’m not sure though. Anybody know?
MacOS has had a spatial file manager since at least the 7.x days. It was similarly painful to use for any non-trivial file management tasks.
I don’t know about everyone else, but I navigate my FS fastest from the command line. In terms of RAW SPEED, nothing beats tab completion and ls with colors enabled.
I’d be 99% confident that if you actually got someone to time you with a stopwatch, you’d find this to be untrue. At least, that’s assuming you’re as competent with the GUI filemanager as you are with a commandline.
That’s an average measure, of course, some things are going to be faster in the CLI (anything using wildcards, for example) but similarly some things will be faster using the GUI (eg: lots of non-contiguous filenames and lots of folders or interacting files with applications).
What’s great for me about the new nautilus is that if I want a graphical view of my current directory from the command-line, I just type nautilus ./ and I get an undecorated window (exactly as I left it the last time) with all my files in it. From there, I can rubber-band some files to create a tarball using file-roller, or I can drag-and-drop those files to evolution as attachments.
This has zero to do with naughtilous being a spatial file browser.
It surprises me that no one has written about this aspect of the new nautilus…
That’s because you haven’t described anything that’s unique to the “new nautilus”. The distinguishing feature of a spatial file browser is the inability open more than one view of a folder, it has nothing to do with the things you have described.
About the split view in KDE: thank you for pointing out – in fact that split view is a feature I described as being very useful in my own OSNews article (that one I quickly put together for the Xandros contst)
Now that Gnome has the Spatial Nautilus, it might be time for another new feature: Spatial Colors. The idea comes from OS/2 Warp 3. There, you have a “Colors” control panel from which you can drag colors to buttons to paint them. The funny thing was that you could give each button another color, and that OS/2 remembered those colors.
Now why not implement that on Gnome? That would finally fix the inability of changing Gnome’s colors, and allows you, for example, to paint the “Yes” button green with saving files and red when deleting them.
@rain, drsmithy:
I’d personally like to ditch open/save file dialogues in applications alltogether and use D&D instead. To me it’s a lot more logical to work that way in a desktop environment. It makes much more sense to drag your document to a folder to save it than to choose save as from the menu and drill through the folders to find the right place to save it. Most applications have D&D support for opening files but few apps has it for saving files, which is probably the reason why file dropping is rarely used for opening files as well.
But which UI element should the user drag & drop to save a document ? How should they indicate they want to “Save As” ?
ROX http://rox.sf.net/ and its intellectual ancestor, RISC OS, currently implement drag-and-drop saving by popping up a dialog box when save is chosen. You get a file icon which you then drag.
An alternative method, which would require communication between the program and the window manager, has also been suggested. I very much like the sounds of it. Basically, you’d drag-n-drop the icon in the titlebar, naming the file by editing the window’s title. See this blogpost about it:
http://zsau.firespeaker.org/blosxom/computers/xds.writeback
Few people use [DnD] because a) it isn’t intuitive – hence not discoverable and b) the resultant behaviour tends to be inconsistent and very contextual.
As for (a), that’s entirely incorrect. Many unintuitive things are discoverable. As an example, you can easily discover that the shutdown command in windows lives under the start menu, even though you’re stopping. Unintuitive, but very easily discoverable because the start menu is where you begin doing everything. What you mean is DnD isn’t discoverable. As to (b), that’s something that should be addressed. DnD should generally represent copying the dragged source to the dropped location. I’m not familiar with any horrible exceptions to that general rule (apart from things like Windows’ randomly moving stuff).
I think the problem with drag-and-drop is more that you can use it at some places but not at others. If all applications supported it, I think more people would use it. The Windows behaviour of moving within a drive and copying between drives isn’t very consistent, indeed.
What I would suggest is that dragging always moves an object, if possible. For example, even if you drop a file on your e-mail window to attach it, the original is removed. If you want to keep a local copy, you would first need to duplicate the file and then attach the copy.
That might not sound very practical, but it is the most consistent way I can think of. I mean, if the default action was to copy, what would happen when you dragged files to the trash?
Duplicating first and then moving might give problems when you want to copy a 1 MB file from a floppy disk to the harddisk. Maybe some kind of hard links could be used for that: if you duplicate a file, it is first only a link to the original, unless you change its contents or you move it.
Bob wrote:
For goodness sakes… How is doing something that windows did in 3.1 ground-breaking?
drsmithy wrote:
Windows 3.1 wasn’t spatial, but MacOS 7.x (and probably earlier versions) certainly was, and it dates from around the same era.
I used Apple’s System 6 alot when I was growing up and can tell you that Finder certainly was spatial at that point. I think Finder became spatial with version 4.1, when Apple introduced the Hierarchal File System in 1985.
For the people who always thought it was perfectly sane that MS won out in the initial desktop competition, have a look at The GUI Gallery; http://toastytech.com/guis/guitimeline3.html – under year 1987 you can see System 6 compared to Windows 2.03. The first usable/popular version of Windows (3.1) came out in 1992, which was about a year later than System 7. As you can see from that page, NeXTSTEP had also come quite a bit longer than Windows at that time (not that it ever was an alternative for most people).
ROX http://rox.sf.net/ and its intellectual ancestor, RISC OS, currently implement drag-and-drop saving by popping up a dialog box when save is chosen. You get a file icon which you then drag.
Seems to me the difference between this and “traditional” dialogs are, at most, semantics.
An alternative method, which would require communication between the program and the window manager, has also been suggested. I very much like the sounds of it. Basically, you’d drag-n-drop the icon in the titlebar, naming the file by editing the window’s title.
This would be a nightmare from a discoverability perspective, not to mention inconsistent with other aspects of the UI (unless they planned to make *all* title bars editable).
Also, neither of these methods appear to distinguish between “Saving” and “Saving As”.
As for (a), that’s entirely incorrect. Many unintuitive things are discoverable.
Perhaps I worded it poorly. What I meant was, that dragging & dropping (between applications, in particular) is not something that is immediately obvious as possible. Further, doing so will involve a very different set of interface semantics to dragging & dropping in, for example, the file manager.
As an example, you can easily discover that the shutdown command in windows lives under the start menu, even though you’re stopping. Unintuitive, but very easily discoverable because the start menu is where you begin doing everything.
I’ve seen this argument before and it’s specious. The Start Menu is simply the starting point for everything you do in Windows. It’s not simply for “starting programs”. The Start Menu is the most logical place for things like “Shut Down” and “Log Off”.
What you mean is DnD isn’t discoverable.
Yes, but it’s not discoverable *because* it’s not an intuitive action. Indeed, from the aspect of physical device interaction, it’s one of the hardest skills to master (followed by the double click).
As to (b), that’s something that should be addressed. DnD should generally represent copying the dragged source to the dropped location. I’m not familiar with any horrible exceptions to that general rule (apart from things like Windows’ randomly moving stuff).
Unfortunately, D&D into applications has (and *must* have) completely different semantics. For example, consider dragging & dropping some MP3s into an MP3 player that is already playing. There are 3 basic outcomes that can all be considered reasonable (ie: any normal person could expect any of the to happen the first time they do it).
1. The dragged in files replace everything in the playlist.
2a. The dragged in files are inserted before the current playing file.
2b. The dragged in files are inserted after the current playing file.
3a. The dragged in files are appended to the end of the playlist.
3b. The dragged in files are inserted at the beginning of the playlist.
Similarly, consider dragging & dropping a file onto a word processor with a document already open:
1. The file could open in a new window.
2. The file’s contents could be inserted at the current cursor position.
3. The file could be linked (OLE) at the current cursor position.
Please note that all these possibilities are consistent with the principle of “copying” into the application, but the results are all different.
Now, many existing applications deal with this by making the D & D operation contextual – that is, reacting different depending on where the file is dropped. For example, dropping a bunch of MP3s onto the title bar of the MP3 player might replace the existing playlist, whereas dragging them into the list inserts or appends. However, this further negatively impacts discoverability and makes what appears to the typical novice user as different behaviour from the same action – a big no-no.
Also, this isn’t even getting into more advanced operations like dragging & dropping stuff *between* applications.
Drag & drop is an excellent piece of functionality. Properly used, it dramatically increases efficiency and productivity. However, you should always keep in mind that like context menus and keyboard shortcuts, it is a functionality that will almost certainly only be used by experienced and/or advanced users, so it should never be the only way to achieve something
For the people who always thought it was perfectly sane that MS won out in the initial desktop competition, […]
Well, when you take *cost* into the equation as well as *functionality*, it makes a significant difference
.
The first usable/popular version of Windows (3.1) came out in 1992, which was about a year later than System 7.
Actually, the first “big” version of Windows (ie: the one that business actually started using in preference to DOS) was Windows 3.0. Windows 3.1 was a big improvement (and looked much prettier), but didn’t change the UI basics that much.
As you can see from that page, NeXTSTEP had also come quite a bit longer than Windows at that time (not that it ever was an alternative for most people).
Again, cost. People still consider Macs expensive, but comparitively, they’ve never been anywhere near as cheap – and NeXT boxes were priced as professional workstations back in the day.
If all applications supported it, I think more people would use it.
Most applications support it, IME. Again, the problem isn’t the level of the functionality, it’s the accessibility.
The Windows behaviour of moving within a drive and copying between drives isn’t very consistent, indeed.
It’s as consistent as anyone else.
Dragging within the same drive -> Move.
Dragging to different drive -> Copy.
And the modifiers are:
Ctrl -> Force copy
Shift -> Force move
Ctrl+Shift -> Create shortcut
I’ve not seen any inconsistencies with these rules since Windows 95 (and maybe 98, I very rarely use it). Certainly this is what happens with Win2k and XP.
What I would suggest is that dragging always moves an object, if possible. For example, even if you drop a file on your e-mail window to attach it, the original is removed. If you want to keep a local copy, you would first need to duplicate the file and then attach the copy.
Firstly, having a destructive result as the default action would probably not be a good idea (at least not without a *very* comprehensive “undo” facility). Defaulting to “copy” would probably be a better idea, albeit somewhat inconsistent with the general desktop metaphor.
Secondly, a better solution to your proposal would be a modifier key, rather than having to create a copy and then act on it. Far more efficient. It would have discoverability issues though.
I mean, if the default action was to copy, what would happen when you dragged files to the trash?
I’d propose that having one inconsistency as opposed to a default destructive action would be a *far* better tradeoff.
For example, imagine a user creating an email and attaching a file, then deciding to just close the email and not send it. *Poof* and their file (which could be *extremely* important) is gone forever, probably without any real warning. It’s as bad as the old MacOS leaving stuff “copied” to the Desktop on the same physical media it originated from. Not good.
Not to mention, if copying things in the Real World was as easy as doing it on a computer, I’d also propose the logical default action *would* be a copy, and not a move. I’m a stickler for consistency, but not when it requires a significant cost to efficiency and (practical) usability.
Well, with that e-mail, you have a good point, and a music player would be even more problematic. Files should of course not disappear when you play them, that would be a very bad idea.
Now why not simply display a menu after dragging something? KDE also does this, and it has the advantage that you can cancel the entire operation rather easily by just pressing ESC or clicking outside the menu.
Such a menu can make things much clearer than a little icon that appears. For example, let’s take RagTime (text processor). To insert a picture, you make a picture frame and drag a picture onto it from the file manager. Now why not display a menu with these choices:
– Link to image
– Copy image
In that way the user can easily choose whether the picture should be linked to by the document (thus changing the picture file also changes the picture in the document) or if should be copied into the document (making the latter larger, but changing the picture file doesn’t change the document).
The same could be applied when moving mails between folders (move or copy), when dropping mails and text files on a compose window (insert in mail, attach or attach copy), when dropping files to attach them (attach or attach copy) and when moving files (move, copy or link).
Now why not simply display a menu after dragging something? KDE also does this, and it has the advantage that you can cancel the entire operation rather easily by just pressing ESC or clicking outside the menu.
Too inefficient. Remember, you should optimise for the common case.
A menu like that would make drag & drop practically unusable because it would make dragging & dropping a complex operation will multiple interactive steps, as opposed to the quick action it is supposed to be.
The basic problem here is that you’re trying to shoehorn drag & drop into being newbie/ignorant user friendly, when the simple fact is that it is an advanced method for increasing efficiency and productivity
. Inexperienced users don’t really need the advantages D & D offers because, to be blunt, they don’t *do* anything – and advanced users are able to learn the various forms of vulcan nerve-pinch necessary to produce different results.
Dumbing down drag & drop would be a lose-lose situation. Advanced users lose out because it becomes too inefficient to use and beginner users will *still* have trouble discovering the functionality (because there aren’t any UI cues to tell them what to do).
A better investment in programmer and UI designer time would be a triggered, interactive help system to recognise when the user performs an action that could be more efficiently done via drag & drop (and/or keyboard shortcuts). But then you just end up with Clippy
.
I was thinking a little more, and I thought: the mail application you describe actually isn’t really spatial. I would say that a real spatial document model would have, in “My Computer”:
– Disks
– Control Panel
– Trashbin
– Unsaved items
The latter is really important. If you create a new mail, it is automatically saved in the “Unsaved items” folder. If you really don’t want the mail anymore, you can simply trash it. If you do want to save the mail, you just drag it to any folder on disk to save it.
And this mechanism also solves the problem of how a “Save” window should be constructed in a way that promotes drag-and-drop.
And about the music player, why can’t it be like a real jukebox? If you put a disc in the jukebox, you don’t have it anywhere else anymore, so why should it be different with computers?
Of course, humans make errors, so some kind of undo functionality should always be available. But that is nothing new, right? Just like the overwrite behaviour of Windows isn’t really undo-able, I would say that it were better if the original file would be put in the trashbin if you overwrite it.
I installed Fedora 2 last night on my Linux machine (Linux Machine = hand-me-down laptop). After configuring Gnome how I like it (Gnome default, NOT Bluecurve) I started playing around. I immediately started trying out the new “Computer” icon and spatial nautilus. I must say, I like it. For general manipulation of files, it is excellent.
Of course, there are times when a browser view is preferable. (ie. “Where the heck is folder “x”) For regular use, the spatial view suits me fine.
One thing I anticipated that I would NOT like about spatial nautilus is jumping to a folder deep in the system tree. The nautilus folks planned for that. If you type “ctrl+L” (or click on the menu equivalent) you get a little location window (with tab completion)and you can jump to ANY folder in the file system. So, I can go from my home folder to “/usr/share/themes/Bluecurve” VERY easily.
Try it for a little while…BEFORE you knock it. Just like the author said, if you don’t like it….turn it off.
@drsmithy
Seems to me the difference between [ROX DnD Saveboxes] and “traditional” dialogs are, at most, semantics.
Well, no. It isn’t. It provides a different way of saving files; there’s no need to browse to a particular folder multiple times. (It also means you can drag from one program to another, for instance, you can create a file, edit it, open the savebox and drag it straight to a gzip creator, from which you can drag it straight to your email client without ever having written the file to disk. Or you could drag straight from your browser to a tarball extractor and not litter your HD with .tar.bz2 as well as the extracted files. You may or may not find them useful, but I do.)
[DnD saving from the titlebar would be a nightmare from a discoverability perspective, not to mention inconsistent with other aspects of the UI (unless they planned to make *all* title bars editable).
Is all text on your computer editable? On a webpage, can you edit the text? Well, then textboxes are inconsistent! It makes no sense to save my buddylist window, so why would I try? OTOH, it makes plenty of sense to save my conversation window, so one window titlebar makes sense to edit and the other doesn’t.
Also, neither of these methods appear to distinguish between “Saving” and “Saving As”.
Well, with the editable titlebar, you probably still want a save command, otherwise you’d have to DnD save every time you wanted to save, which’d get tedious. In the case of ROX-style saveboxes (or indeed the current method), you don’t actually need a distinction; it’s not hard to press ctrl+s, enter and it provides some feedback that something’s happened. Nevermind, there’s no necessity to not have a save command; it’s just a design decision. It could be added as simply as it’s been added to save as dialogs.
Perhaps I worded it poorly. What I meant was, that dragging & dropping (between applications, in particular) is not something that is immediately obvious as possible.
So DnD within a single application is something immedialety obvious? Are users that frightened of computers that they don’t realise they can move objects, just like they can move objects in real life? Or how about the fact that there’s no difference in look between a menubar and a label? How do I know that clicking one results in nothing, and the other results in a menu coming up, other then learning?
Further, doing so will involve a very different set of interface semantics to dragging & dropping in, for example, the file manager.
I don’t quite understand why. In either case, they’re copying something (filer: a file, text editor: the file) from its present location (filer: a folder, text editor: the screen) to another location (a folder).
As an example, you can easily discover that the shutdown command in windows lives under the start menu, even though you’re stopping. Unintuitive, but very easily discoverable because the start menu is where you begin doing everything.
I’ve seen this argument before and it’s specious. The Start Menu is simply the starting point for everything you do in Windows. It’s not simply for “starting programs”. The Start Menu is the most logical place for things like “Shut Down” and “Log Off”.
The argument wouldn’t’ve been invented if it weren’t at least vaguely unintuitive. And intuitivity is different from logic, as any logic student will attest. And I never said it was bad in the sense that it was confusing; it’s very discoverable.
What you mean is DnD isn’t discoverable.
Yes, but it’s not discoverable *because* it’s not an intuitive action. Indeed, from the aspect of physical device interaction, it’s one of the hardest skills to master (followed by the double click).
Whether something’s physically easy in one medium has little bearing on whether it’s intuitive. I might have a collection of dozens of people here all using touch screens or tablets, neither of which make DnD physically difficult (or no more so then moving a mouse/using a trackpad without DnD is).
There are 3 basic outcomes that can all be considered reasonable (ie: any normal person could expect any of the to happen the first time they do it).
However, any normal person would expect only one of them to happen. A well-designed application will make one of them more obvious, even if others are possible, and will make that the default. Furthermore, a well-designed application will give feedback as to the most likely outcome (for instance, DnDing onto a playlist would result in a horizontal bar between other items on the playlist, indicating that the files will be inserted into the playlist between the two songs on either side of the bar).
In some cases, there may be no way to make it obvious. In this case, choose a reasonable default and have every app behave the same way.
Sorry, I’ve had to cut this short. I didn’t realise how late it was here (twenty past midnight)!
Can you _please_ try to write your ramblings in one single post, instead of posting 4, 5 messages in a row with insightful things like “…That’s more like it”?
I am sure I am not the only one annoyed with that.
if you use the current paradigm of a directory tree you cannot use the spatial browser since it would really be boring to work with the thousand of directory we have actually, but if you start thinking of a “database filesystem” (WinFS? Reiser4?) it start making sense since you could ignore directories and start thinking about metadata, you could have an *OBJECT* on your desktop called “My Music” for instance and have all your music files in it regardless of their position in the filesystem.
Iknow you can do that with directory too (in fact they exists for this reason) but in real world nobody uses directory right, and there is no way to make the os enforce the right use of dirs (and the unix dir structure is one of the most complex in the world).
The thing is, this article only compares spatial mode with navigational mode without the tree. And ofcourse, that makes the spatial mode MUCH better and MUCH easier to use, especially for newbies.
If the folder tree is used in navigational mode, it’s just as easy/powerful as spatial, or even more imo. But for newbies it might be somewhat confusing to use, if they aren’t former Windows users that is..
All in all, I can understand why they use spatial mode as default, but it should be (and is in newer versions afaik) very easy to switch back to navigational mode with the tree without having to right click and choose “browse folder” every time..
As long as people can easily choose which mode that should be default on their desktop, there’s no problem at all having spatial as default imo..
Been playing with GNOME 2.6 for the past few weeks in Fedora 2 Test and now Fedora 2 stable.
I love the new spatial nautilus. It’s cool, consistent, simple , elegant and super-fast. It fits better with the rest of the GNOME experience than before.
Heck! Nautilus now is a true filesystem *manager*. If I wanted a browser, I’ll use mozilla instead.
All the gnashing of teeth in this forum by people who don’t like GNOME in the first place is worthless. It’s like when someone who hates Macaroni and Cheese complains that goat cheese doesn’t make good Macaroni & Cheese.
One point in the article was mentioned, but was not nearly highlighted enough, IMO. At any time, you can right click on a folder and select ‘Browse Folder”. This feature is the best of both worlds!
Here’s another useful tip. Use symbolic links. Do you have a folder that you browse to frequently (e.g. Documents)? In a Nautilus window, right click on the folder and select “Make Link”. Now drag the new link to the desktop, rename it, and you can go directly to that folder. Have multiple folders you go to frequently? Then create a folder on your desktop called “Bookmarks” and drag and drop lots of folder links to that folder. Since Spatial Nautilus remembers the size and location, you can have your bookmarks folder appear long and skinny along one side, or along the top or bottom.
I’m convinced: the new Nautilus goes a long way in helping you work the way you want to work.
I know this is Off Topic, but what does everyone think of the new “Open File” dialog in Gnome 2.6. Could they make the simple act of opening a file a little more complex?
Mouse gestures are intuitive, promote muscle memory and are super fast once you get the hang of it… just like spatial navigation. This seems like a perfect marriage, and aside from web browser extensions, I don’t know why more open source developers aren’t adopting them into the UI. It’s something that would set Gnome apart from Apple and Microsoft OS’s as well.
Doesn’t KDE already support universal mouse gestures? They are certainly not ideal, I know, but KDE does have them!
KDE has mouse gestures but they need a lot of work. The seem to work on a very small grid (9 locations or so) so you need to be accurate. On windows there is StrokeIt which provides very natural feeling gestures.
Someone mentioned newbies feeling overwhelmed by lots of windows thrown around by nautilus. The important thing to remember there is that anyone who has had the opportunity to create that many folders must have had some chance to learn how to manage windows; after all, a new user will generally have one folder only (that they can see anyway).
And finally, I feel that one of the problems with nautilus is that there is no easy way to make a shortcut to a folder on the desktop. Someone mentioned you can alt-drag and create link, but this is unix symbolic link, meaning if you then link to something inside that folder, you can’t remove the initial link or you break the new one. A way to drop folders and create launchers to them would be more sensible.
The nautilus folks planned for that. If you type “ctrl+L” (or click on the menu equivalent) you get a little location window (with tab completion)and you can jump to ANY folder in the file system. So, I can go from my home folder to “/usr/share/themes/Bluecurve” VERY easily.
So users are too stupid to change colors, but they are supposed to remember/know about these rather obscure short cuts. And they’re supposed to be able go into gconf to turn off the “spatial” behavior. Yeah, very easy, very user friendly!
Try it for a little while…BEFORE you knock it. Just like the author said, if you don’t like it….turn it off.
I’ve tried it, I didn’t like it. And I think I’m entitled to complain about it!
Thank God for KDE!
I’d be 99% confident that if you actually got someone to time you with a stopwatch, you’d find this to be untrue. At least, that’s assuming you’re as competent with the GUI filemanager as you are with a commandline.
I don’t see how you can say this. No level of competency with a GUI filemanager could ever lead to it being faster, unless that GUI filemanager basically copied every feature that common UNIX shells like bash have.
This has zero to do with naughtilous being a spatial file browser. […] That’s because you haven’t described anything that’s unique to the “new nautilus”. The distinguishing feature of a spatial file browser is the inability open more than one view of a folder, it has nothing to do with the things you have described.
Obviously you misunderstood me. The ability to open nautilus from the command line always existed (quite obviously). But when nautilus was still in “browser” mode instead of “spatial” mode, when I opened a directory by typing nautilus ./, I would get a full browser of my file system that _just so happened to be looking at my current directory._ In the spatial metaphor, I am essentially “displaying the object representing this directory,” in the sense that nautilus remembers exactly how I left the directory. This not only saves me screen real estate (hence my use of the term “undecorated window”), but it also makes more sense from a UI point of view. If I am in ~/Music/Don Ross/, and I want to drag-and-drop all the music in that directory into rhythmbox, it makes sense that when I use nautilus to open that directory all I should get is a window (a container) with all of my MP3s (objects) which can then be d-n-d’ed onto Rhythmbox. This convenience is all I am talking about.
I don’t understand _at all_ what you mean by the distinguishing feature of a spatial browser being the “inability to open more than one view of a folder.” That is not at all what a spatial browser is, and you are quite mistaken to think so. In nautilus, in spatial mode, I can open more than one view of a folder (go to the View menu and you can display the folder as a list if you like).
But although we can argue over all this, one thing is for sure–no filemanager I have ever met has allowed me as rapid access to my files as command line access. There is a reason people like the CLI, you know. It’s not just because Linux hackers are crazy people. It’s because it actually saves a hell-of-a-lot of time.