

File manager ideas - renat_yv
https://www.evernote.com/shard/s158/sh/3768de51-a54e-43e8-bb8e-62de16acac61/e4bf827e4dd3b83140d7d993952d755f
Some thoughts on nautilus file manager
======
lubutu
These are all completely obvious — idea 2, though, only in retrospect. For a
long while I've wondered about how to combine path editing with hyperlinks.
Numerous browser extensions have tried various methods: mode toggling,
modifier keys, the direction whence came focus, and so on.

The OP's approach is perfect: always navigate to wherever the caret is placed.
I would personally drop the ugly gradients in favour of hyperlink-style
underlines, but seriously, thanks for an elegant solution to a simple problem.

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kabdib
Hmmm. The Explorer in Windows 7 does this, somewhat better than proposed here
(in my opinion) since it eliminates slashes.

There are additional operational semantics that are important, such how you
bail out of a bad edit, what happens if you type in something non-existent,
and so forth.

I hadn't realized how involved this UI is. People take a lot for granted.

~~~
nakkiel
> People take a lot for granted

I would say the average user doesn't understand correctly a good 70% of what's
on his screen. Programmers sure do take a lot for granted.

Edit: missing "user".

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huhtenberg
Mixing breadcrumbs with a text field is a dangerous thing to do. Take for
example input selections. I click in the middle of the path and then shift-end
the cursor. What should I see in the content pane?

Second thing to consider is how it's going to work on the file systems with
lag. Anything over-the-network. Not only moving the cursor left and right
would generate a lot of traffic, it would also fail to provide feedback
comparable to that of local drives.

Third, take a step back and think who would actually use this. For example,
the only time I use Location field is to _copy_ current path to be pasted
elsewhere. I tried remembering when I actually typed anything except for
c:\temp in there and I can't. I'm sure there are people who _do_ type in long
paths, but the question here how many of them are there and if the UI should
be optimized for their usage. If they comprise a percentage point, then
clearly all this optimization is pointless -- it may very well still exist,
but it should be off by default. In other words, as nice as this exercise is,
it jumps to the design phase without first defining the problems it is trying
to solve nor its target audience.

\--

As others have noted W7 has something similar in Windows Explorer, but the
field switches between the breadcrumb and text input modes. This looks like a
sensible solution, and yet I personally find it fairly annoying in a day-to-
day use.

~~~
progrock
As for typing in the location bar, there is a kind of autocomplete/tab
completion mode which is really useful. The behaviour seems to have changed in
more recent versions, I think the tab key doesn't work now, as it's a UI
control to move focus. I prefer the shell style tab completion, but
nonetheless it's a useful feature.

Which reminds me that navigating around nautilus with the keyboard is really a
bit of a pain. To be able to do this easily would really help. I noticed in
Mint's nautilus the last time I tried it arrow keys would let me move back and
forth between the sidebar and the file lists, it may not be the right key to
do it - but makes using the file manager much easier.

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progrock
Regarding search, something that always trips me up in Nautilus is the find as
you type feature, which I also love.

If you are in the folder list and you start typing - you can select folders.
Say you start typin P-i-c, it will select say your Pictures file or folder. I
then go to copy the folder but I'm still in the find as you type box, but I
don't notice. I move to another folder view and paste, and find I have done
nothing. Then have to navigate back to where I just was. To get around it you
have to hit escape first before the copy. I'm aware of how to do it correctly
- but I repeatedly trip myself up.

The other issue is the text find tool overlay is hidden in the bottom right
hand side of the window, which seems to sometimes escape your eye. And the
interface then feels non-responsive. Love the feature, but there's something
amiss in the interface.

If you start to type the name of a folder, and it matches something, hitting
return will open that folder, which is great, but is slightly out of tune to
trying to use say CTRL + C (which copies the text you are typing in the
selection box.) The latter is something that you might want to do - not that I
have ever done it. But there are two conflicting behaviours here.

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jrajav
One of the main take-aways (clickable breadcrumb folders) is already present
in both Windows and OS X. In Windows, the current path is represented as a
series of clickable buttons, including dropdowns to the right of each folder
to show their contents. You can also click to the right of the path to convert
it back to text form. The new path bar was by far one of my favorite features
of Windows 7, and I use it every day at work where I still have to use a
Windows PC.

In OS X, you have the path bar, though it's not very obvious that you can
double click each path element. You can also right-click or control-click the
folder name on the title bar to get a menu of the path hierarchy.

As for the other point, searching paths, I can personally see that being very
useful, but most people expect that a search in a file manager will, you know,
search for files. This would introduce a jarring discrepancy.

~~~
Flimm
It's also present in Nautilus, as the article pointed out. It's called "button
view".

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wazoox
Hum, IRIX file manager had both editable path and buttons in 1994 or 95. The
buttons were thin,over the path. Seemed quite easy and practical back then,
search for IRIX on this page :
<http://www.guidebookgallery.org/screenshots/filemanager>

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twelvechairs
I prefer the default existing. Its the top bar of a file manager, it should be
as clear as possible to anyone using it. I don't want to see slashes, and If I
want to search, I don't want to have to delete all the text containing the
current directory I'm in to start doing so. 'Instant search' works on web-
browsers because when you click on the title bar it automatically 'selects'
all the text there, so the first letter you type will start a search (after
deleting all the existing text in the title bar). This is not how a file
manager would work. As you show, when you click on the title bar you want to
'edit' the current title...

I'd rather get rid of the 'back' and 'forward' buttons, which are quite
extraneous for most users (browsing a file system is generally not like
browsing the web). Agree that 'location' can go though.

~~~
progrock
Why would you prefer the non-slash version? The only reason I can see a use
for it is to either make the path more readable (which could be resolved
perhaps with a more readable font,) or that it's designed for a touch
interface. The latter which makes more sense.

The button view (not the slash view,) kind of reminds me of breadcrumbs,
having recently viewed folders showed (with shortcuts) would actually be a
pretty useful addition to Nautilus.

~~~
twelvechairs
Because it is more readable visually when its separated by whitespace rather
than looking like a long string. Maybe I just have different preferences to
anyone else in wanting the file manager of a desktop-aimed system to be simple
and understandable rather than powerful (I have a terminal for that)...

The slashes aren't the main point really. Its the confusion of not knowing
whats going to happen when I click somewhere and start typing that I really
disagree with strongly.

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progrock
Nautilus does change it's behaviour every once in a while. Sometimes for the
worse. You used to be able to open folders ala Finder style I think it was Alt
and right arrow on a folder, when pressed repeatedly you could open up the
folders decendents. This feature has gone, which is a shame as it was great to
get a quick overview of the file tree. I now have to resort to the 'tree
'command.

Another feature I always feel is missing is right click a folder, and have the
option to create a new folder or file inside the highlighted folder.

Another feature missing from nautilus is being able to do multi-select with
the keyboard alone. I think you can do this with the Kde file managers.

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sktrdie
These are the kind of ideas every software developer should practice with.
Forget the technicalities: the programming languages, the databases, the
frameworks. A good piece of software is not judged by its code, but by its
interface.

Every software developer should answer questions such as "What can make the
experience easier for my users?", and constantly practice with UI concepts.

I talk more about this in my post about how I think "Interface Is All That
Matters": [http://www.pseudocodice.com/post/27983862986/interface-is-
al...](http://www.pseudocodice.com/post/27983862986/interface-is-all-that-
matters)

~~~
progrock
Agree. The difficult thing here though is that it's an intrinsic part of the
desktop, and you need to standardize interfaces across the OS, and preferably
if they are shit hot (in that you can navigate them easily and barely notice
them,) across different OSs.

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sciurus
If you're interested in the development being done on Nautilus (which is bring
renamed to "Files" in GNOME 3.6), see these two blog posts:

<http://blogs.gnome.org/mccann/2012/08/01/cross-cut/>

<http://blogs.gnome.org/mclasen/2012/08/30/on-nautilus/>

See the post discussed at <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4465904> for
more changes in GNOME 3.6.

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holloway
I did this mockup a while ago... the list of buttons for the directory
hierarchy looks a bit weird and I thought something like this would be better,

<http://holloway.co.nz/gnome-nautilus/>

And when it comes to monitor layout within Gnome I thought something like this
would be good,

<http://holloway.co.nz/gnome-display-properties/mockup2.png>

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klrr
I hardly use file managers, but some of these points seem quite interesting, I
dislike the idea of hiding the search button when you click in the middle of
the search field though, this will most likely only make it confusing for the
user. A better options is to disable the search button when the user interacts
in the middle of the search field(I think that's possible in GTK, isen't it?).

EDIT: Ignore my comment above, I missunderstood the part about the search
button in the article.

~~~
lubutu
I think you misunderstood; the OP was saying that there should be no search
button, ever, as in (e.g.) Chrome.

~~~
klrr
Oh, I'm sorry. I'm taking back that then.

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progrock
The most useful thing you could do with Nautilus is to make it keyboard
friendly without having to resort to Function keys, and other odd key combos.

How about Super key and arrows to move between panes of an applicaton side
bar, location bar etc. And make it very clear which part of the application
window has the current focus.

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WildUtah
My first thought was: You'd better not try making those changes if you want to
run on mobile. After all, Apple invested sweat and imagination to innovate the
idea of a useful user interface and now has many patents on it (US Pat
#8086604, among several others).

Sad.

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figital
Give dolphin a try : <http://dolphin.kde.org>

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mpunaskar
While we are at topic of file manager - is there a file system manager for ios
devices? I mean i want to browse disk of my iphone & see where and how it
arranges files

Is it even possible?

~~~
Bro_Merch
They are correct. iFile works great for giving you a Finder styled file
manager inside the idevice. iFile is also the best utility for doing things
like decompressing etc.

If you want to see the files inside your phone in a file manager on your
computer most people go with OpenSSH/Cyberduck. Personally I like Netatalk
which makes your device just show up as though it was an external hard drive
and breaks down the folder hierarchy the same any Linux distro.

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w1ntermute
OT: why does this site render so poorly on mobile? You can't even properly
scroll.

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username3
buttons or shortcut keys to go to sibling folders

