The GNOME Development Release 2.5.0 which will lead to 2.6 is ready for testing. It is available from ftp.gnome.org and mirrors. This version includes the new spatial Nautilus, the new GTK+ fileselector (however applications don’t use it yet) and among the proposed new apps for inclusion are Ximian Evolution and RhythmBox. A stable Quick Lounge and gThumb would be great to be included too.
GNOME Development Release 2.5.0 is Out
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
I run Fedora Core 1 and this damn thing keeps on crashing and does not play any mp3’s ! I would rather people develop XMMS or something else. I do like Evolution, gThumb though I haven’t tried Quick Lounge.
I disagree for Quick Lounge to be include Gnome. Serious, I think this app is useless.. Why not use the menu instead? Since, they are doing the same thing.
that is an issue with Fedora core’s crippled version… I am playing with Rhythmbox 0.6.1 … it is REALLY nice… (up until this version it has been to slow to use..)
The comment about fedora being garbage isn’t a real slam… I am just saying that if you don’t like Rhythmbox because of MP3 stuff, then the garbage is from FC, not RB!
The fact that Rhythmbox doesn’t play mp3s is Fedora’s fault not Rhythmbox. I got tired of Rhythmbox acting weird myself. Try out Jamboree or Totem. Jamboree is faster, small and much better than Rhythmbox, and did I mention it is stable. Totem plays virtually everything from audio files to video files. I don’t know if Totem can play mp3s on Fedora.
***Hint get a better distro***
http://www.imendio.com/projects/jamboree/
http://www.gnome.org/~jdahlin/jamboree/
http://hadess.net/totem.php3
> and this damn thing keeps on crashing and does not play any mp3’s
RhythmBox 0.6.1 is much better than the version shipped with Fedora. Upgrade and enable mp3 support on your gstreamer, there are online FAQs on how to do this.
> I disagree for Quick Lounge to be include Gnome. Serious, I think this app is useless
No, it is not useless. It is a quick launch app, but it is a great utility for the users who use Red Hat, Mandrake or SuSE which come with the 48pixels height of gnome-panel instead of the default Gnome 32+32 height panels. For *these* users, quick Lounge saves a lot of space as the launching icons are 22×22 (in two rows) instead of 44×44 each. And if the users in question run on less than 1152×864 resolution, then QLounge can be a real space saver.
My only problem with Quick Lounge is that it is not bug free, and this is exactly why I said in the article “a stable Quick Lounge..”.
Mp3 support is not included with Fedora Core because of legal reasons, and was removed recently from the past versions of RH Linux, talk to anyone in IRC chat and they can direct you to a simple RPM to install for MP3 support.
what the heck is the spatial nautilus?
btw, where is the nautilus website? I found one some days ago.. but it looked so outdated (gnome 1.4 ?)
it almost looks like the project is stopped..
>what the heck is the spatial nautilus?
My thoughts exactly. ^_^
I really like nautilus, btw. Intuitive, complete, and it looks extremely polished. The only downside is that it’s kind of slow.
i dont complain about nautilus being slow, i complain about GTK being slow… specially with themes that use pixmap textures.. its so painfully slooooowwww to redraw….
how did this turn into a fedora discussion?
anyhow, i dig gnome, updates (that work well) are allways a nice thing
i don’t really care about them including rhythmbox, i’m an xmms man myself….to each their own
i am interested in the new nautilus though, should be fun
=)
I’ll try to explain that quickly (as far as I can):
Spatial basically means, that each windows represents a folder (e.g. if you resize the window, you resize the “folder”). If you open a folder from your desktop, you will get such a spatial window. You can move and resize those “folder-windows” and there can only be one window showing each folder at the same time. Those windows do not contain any navigational widgets, you can’t navigate back and forth, etc. You can only open new files or folders (which will show them in their own window).
The advantage of this is, that it’s very simple and leightweight, also easy to understand for new users.
It is not very useful to browse deep trees though (because you’d have to open countless of windows), so Nautilus also has a navigational mode in 2.6, which will basically act like the old default Nautilus but even more navigational (the old Nautilus, while beeing mostly navigational, also had spatial features like storing the size and position for each folder seperately).
In other words: If you click on a folder on your desktop, you will get a very simple object view of this folder. If you want to actually browse your filesystem, then you explicitly open a “Browser” window.
Of course advanced users can change the default mime action for folders to this navigational window, should they really hate spatial windows for any reason. Also AFAIK there will be (or is) an “Open with ->” entry to open a folder in a navigational window.
A stable Quick Lounge and gThumb would be great to be included too.
I agree those are really nice features.
What is the news about syntax highlighting in gedit. I forget which release that is mean’t to be in.
Would you believe that is the only thing keeping me using KDE. Yes I know I can run Kate in GNOME.
thanks Spark!
it should be interesting to see… any screenshots? ^_^
Hey I didn’t wish to be Anonymous, I clicked to quickly.
🙂
WTF? i have syntax highlighting in gEdit since 2.4.0
It’s not a bad app but it’s damn slow. It’s also a CPU hug… It uses up to 10% of my CPU just to play MP3s or OGGs. XMMS doesn’t even use 0.5%. I don’t know if it’s a bug with the app itself or GStreamer but they have to fix that before inclusion in Gnome.
gThumb does look good but I never tried it. It is similar to ACDSee or KuickView (or whatever the name… the one included in KDE)? Nautilus’ built-in image viewer sucks so I hope that one is better.
The fact that Rhythmbox doesn’t play mp3s is Fedora’s fault not Rhythmbox
I agree it is just like noatun in KDE in redhat9.
I do not know what it is about redhat, and now fedora. The distro is mostly good, but they always release with these little problems.
Doesn’t Jamboree and Rhythmbox look alike.
What makes Jamboree leaner than Rhythmbox, don’t they both use Gstreamer?
http://www.imendio.com/images/jamboree.png
http://www.rhythmbox.org/screenshots/Screenshot-Rhythmbox.png
> Nautilus’ built-in image viewer sucks so I hope that one is better.
But still better than Konqueror. Nautilus scales images down to let them fit into the window while Konqueror doesn’t (AFAIK).
WTF? i have syntax highlighting in gEdit since 2.4.0
Sorry I am still using Redhat9 with slow internet, taking forever to download fedora.
Doesn’t Jamboree and Rhythmbox look alike.
What makes Jamboree leaner than Rhythmbox, don’t they both use Gstreamer?
Jamboree is faster and more stable than Ryhthmbox is. Read their website for more info, and why the project was started and might not be continued. But I much prefer it to Rhythmbox.
Now I use Totem exclusively for my media related stuff. I removed Jamboree and Rhythmbox from my system. With Totem, I don’t need them.
right on spark
thanks for taking the time for posting that
the whole “spatial” mode idea sounds so odd and foreign, haha, i look forward to trying it out
totem is supposed to be a video player.. not a music collection manager
right on spark
thanks for taking the time for posting that
the whole “spatial” mode idea sounds so odd and foreign, haha, i look forward to trying it out
How is it odd and foreign considering that this is how every operating system with a GUI used to operate before the big “task based”, “make everything look and feel like a bloody browser, even if it means mass confusion for the unwashed masses and lundites such as ChocolateCheeseCake”.
Windows 95 was like that, then in Windows 98 they moved to the “make everything like a bloody browser” phase and unfortunately they’ve revved it up by having the “catagory” control panel even though EVERY user I have come accross is is in complete confusion and would much rather have a list of icons with logical names.
As I said in the “Task based” story, we have so-called “GUI” experts who are more concerned about pushing the latest hype rather than sitting down with users and actually finding out how users interact with the computer. The end user doesn’t want more confusion, they want icons with GOOD descriptive names.
In the control panel, if they see a picture of a phone, they can then assume it has something to do with their modem, if they see a picture with a screen with a paintbrush on the side, they can assume it has something to do with the background of the screen. Locating them under difference “catagories” doesn’t help the situation one iota.
Is that the Amiga way of doing things. You click on a folder and you get a simple window view of that folder. In it you can see other folders and files etc? Has no navigation controls? Interesting!
Is that the Amiga way of doing things. You click on a folder and you get a simple window view of that folder. In it you can see other folders and files etc? Has no navigation controls?
Yes, exactly. Mac OS had the same until OS X. Steve Jobs obviously didn’t like it.
And now OS X will have it again (or has) as an option because users wanted it back.
OS/2 had it, too, IIRC.
Windows 95 also was partly spatial, but only partly… Like many other things, Microsoft copied the concept without really understanding it, so the implementation was crap. No wonder many people (including me) didn’t like it at all in Windows.
hmmm seems very weird to me. i like to go from anywhere to everywhere fast!
so lets say i’m in my home dir.. i click on my Documents folder, a new window is open. and because i dont need the home window anymore i close it(this is annoying).
then i found that i want to move a document to my home folder.. i copy it.. but there is no button to go one directory up or back… so i have to open a new window… is that the way it works?
Eugenia once posted some pics of the spatial nautilus… post it again, please, Eugenia
Victor.
Found the screenshot Eugenia once posted:
http://www.silverpen.de/wooosh.png
Victor.
O_o .. that’s…. weird
Would you believe that is the only thing keeping me using KDE. Yes I know I can run Kate in GNOME.
There are more things keeping me in KDE. I miss the “unclutter windows” feature in Gnome. Also, I miss the “snap zone” windows feature as well. Nautilus is not that advanced as Konqueror. Can I split windows and get a Midnight Commander Interface? Can I make profiles as to save different Konqueror configurations? Can I use the sftp protocol in Nautilus and can I browse the Web with it?
The performance of GTk widgets is poor compared to QT. For example, a large list widget can get very sluggish when resizing the pane. This is more than obvious when using dc_gui2 and loading a large public hub list.The overall performance of GTK is lacking. Perhaps this has something to do with buffering the sections of the screen, I don’t know.
Anyway, the nice thing about Gnome are the themes, but that’s it. I feel that Gnome is not that integrated compared to KDE. Components do not really communicate, thereby making Gnome feel like an enhanced window manager.
I’ll stick with KDE, but Gnome does indeed evolve like there is no tomorrow. I’m looking forward to use it when it is more mature.
The problem is probably with Fedora, RhythmBox runs perfectly fine on Mandrake. Yeah, I much prefer XMMS because I’m used to the WinAMP/XMMS kinda players, but overall, I rarely have stability issues. In fact. RhythmBox for me is more stable than XMMS.
Windows 95 was like that, then in Windows 98 they moved to the “make everything like a bloody browser” phase and unfortunately they’ve revved it up by having the “catagory” control panel even though EVERY user I have come accross is is in complete confusion and would much rather have a list of icons with logical names.
Nah. People used to the old control panel are like that. After all, it is one of the few parts that hardly changed through all the Windows versions. Even 3.1 had control applets in a folder-like window. And to add on to that, Microsoft didn’t implement it properly. Some of the applets open in new windows, akin to Windows 2000 with small changes, others are integrated into a web-like view.
Other than that, my biggest complain would be that it seems like some kind of Flash crappy webpage than a proper web application. I much prefer Mac OS X’s Preferences, with some of Windows XP’s new features. And continuing from my first point on people not used to the new web-based interphase, I noticed that people that hardly ever used a computer before and starting off with Windows XP find it easier than with “Classic” view.
In the control panel, if they see a picture of a phone, they can then assume it has something to do with their modem, if they see a picture with a screen with a paintbrush on the side, they can assume it has something to do with the background of the screen. Locating them under difference “catagories” doesn’t help the situation one iota.
Again, bad implementation, and especially bad icons, and not too good labeling (why is hardware listed under Printers and etc.?) Not the fault of web-based interfacces, but rather the fault of Microsoft.
And on the whole spartial view thing, I much prefer a browser-like file manager rather than a spartial file manager like Finder in pre-OS X Macintosh. No, I don’t mean something like Windows Explorer, which IMHO is a bad implementation, or Konqueror, which again IMHO, is a worser implementation, but something like OpenStep. Why? I keep my stuff very organized in layers of directories/folders. Makes it easier to manage my files, but would be hell with a spartial browser, like Finder.
But that’s just me.
here’s an interesting link i found related to the nautilus subject.
it shows screenshots from different file managers through the ages. windows, mac, amiga, mac, openstep etc…
http://www.aci.com.pl/mwichary/guidebook/components/system/managers…
remove the toolbars and the sidebar in nautilus and there, it looks like spatial nautilus now :p
http://tuggy.home.sapo.pt/almost-spacial.png
what’s the difference?
Isn’t this the way BeOS (R5) does it? IMHO the R5 way has its good and its bad side but many of the shortcomings are removed by the awesome right-click navigate menus – which rocks! Open tracker appears to have gone down the browser type route which also has its pros and cons but overall I prefer the spatial system.
The Gnome guys should take a long hard look at BeOS as a prime example of a usable desktop! They should also read (if they haven’t already) the inspirational ArsTechnica article from a few months ago which discussed some cool ideas for a spatial OSX finder
http://arstechnica.com/paedia/f/finder/finder-1.html
One difference: when you open a folder, it opens in the same window, not on a new one.
So you’ll still be “navigating” through the folders (going up and down through the directories). The idea of the spatial design is that you don’t “navigate” through the folder… the folder is treated like a real-life folder.
Victor.
look at the preferences window! i selected to open each folder on a new window… so i dont navigate through folders… is that it?
Yes, basically that’s it. You can see that Nautilus always was a little bit torn apart between spatial and navigational. Because of that, it doesn’t work great when used spatial like and it doesn’t work great when used navigational.
So the biggest change in 2.6 isn’t actually that the default is spatial now, but that spatial and navigational windows are separated from each other. This means no compromises anymore and you can use _both_ spatial and navigational windows, which is very important IMO. Just spatial would be too sucky.
I somewhat see the navigational model as a practical tool to “locate” files and the spatial windows as the most practical tool to “access” files, especially directly from desktop folders.
Dude… thank you!… where is that option in the preferences? Never saw it!
yup, now that’s spatial
Victor.
Because of that, it doesn’t work great when used spatial like and it doesn’t work great when used navigational.
Why do you think so?
Victor.
you can find it in the preferences menu -> behavior
i was just hoping that removing these toolbars could make nautilus just a little bit faster.. but did not :/
I’ve been praying for many nights for them to get this included.
I could never manage to install that from sources and could not find a suitable rpm anywhere.
Great!
totem is supposed to be a video player.. not a music collection manager
Totem is a media player. It plays any media format you throw at it, with xine as its backend. The media format could either be audio or video. It also features a play list were you can load, save and manage you audio and video files.
I prefer it to Jamboree or Rhythmbox.
Totem is a media player. It plays any media format you throw at it, with xine as its backend.
of course it does.. and you can also use OpenOffice writer to edit a simple text file!
it simply isnt made to do that… ok, it can play a music if you want to.. great, it has playlists too… but for people with huge collections of music, rhythmbox simply rules.
selecting from artists, genres, albums, making searches, could not be easier. very soon cd burning will be there too, and smart playlists (just like iTunes) are already starting to show up.
AND, it is also great for internet radio, currently only mp3 streams AFAIK (gstreamer’s fault).
look at the preferences window! i selected to open each folder on a new window… so i dont navigate through folders… is that it?
It’s not spatial unless it remembers the location and size of the window for each folder. For example, if the last time i opened my music folder i dragged it to the bottom right of the screen, then the next time i open it it will be at that same position. Each folder has a memory of its spatial position. I don’t think you can enable that through preferences in the old nautilus.
Each folder has a memory of its spatial position. I don’t think you can enable that through preferences in the old nautilus.
just tried it now, and yes it does remember the positions and sizes. altough its not an option i guess..
Actually, this spatial folders feature is directly based on the Mac Classic’s Finder. Folders in Win95 and BeOS were one-per-window, but they were *not* spatial. There is a very good Ars Technica article on the new spatial folders.
I still remember spatial windows from old systems like Windows 95, Windows 3.1, and I guess Amiga (although I didn’t use that much).
I found it to be terribly annoying. Things *always* went like
open folder a
open folder b
open folder c
close folder a (or else you get a tangle of windows)
close folder b
Access file.
If there is no way to go up a directory, then the spatial idea because even more annoying. Seems like a step back to the dark ages. Thank god there will be options to turn it off.
Can someone who likes spatial tell me *why* it’s useful? I mean, other than “I think it makes more sense”. A situation where it’s more efficient (because this is what we really care about) would be nice.
Well, seems like the spatial feature has always been there, like tuggy showed. So, the only new feature of Gnome 2.5 is the file selector, which is not being used by any application? Ugh…
Victor.
yes, but gedit does not support as many languages as kate does. it would be REALLY nice to get gedit up to par with kate.
of course it does.. and you can also use OpenOffice writer to edit a simple text file!
it simply isnt made to do that… ok, it can play a music if you want to.. great, it has playlists too… but for people with huge collections of music, rhythmbox simply rules.
selecting from artists, genres, albums, making searches, could not be easier. very soon cd burning will be there too, and smart playlists (just like iTunes) are already starting to show up.
AND, it is also great for internet radio, currently only mp3 streams AFAIK (gstreamer’s fault).
The only advantage Rhythmbox has over Totem is its advanced playlist. It is cool, but it is not a big deal as it is hyped. Totem on the other hand plays CDs, VCDs, DVDs in addition to music and video on your hard disk, or custom playlists you designed. Not to mention Rhythmbox is still very buggy and slooooow!!!!
I just finished installing the new GARNOME and testing it now… The first thing I immediately noticed: The spatial Nautilus is lightning fast.
I don’t mean fast. Or a bit faster than before. Or “I think it’s faster”. It’s just instant. Every folder I click opens instantly. Boy that rocks! Okok, it takes almost 5 seconds to open the /dev folder, but then again, that one has about 8000 items.
It also feels a lot more solid then before. Unfortunately I can’t test the browser window, because it always crashs.
However I can see that there is both a “Browse Filesystem” entry in the main menu and a “Browser Folder” item in the toplevel context menu of each folder.
The desktop also has a “Computer” item, which includes “Filesystem” and “Network”.
Also there is a “Close all parents” item in the menu of each spatial folder, which doesn’t seem to work very reliably yet though. Other interesting menu entries are “Open Parent” and “Connect to Server…”.
Pressing backspace will also open the parent window in it’s own window.
Oh and I just noticed that it shows thumbnail previews for HTML pages now.
Very very promising (and unstable).
I see two things missing:
1. Shift + click on icons should make it start in navigation mode (just like with Windows Explorer). Right click->Browse is a bit annoying when you are used to Shift+click
2. Why can’t I select List view in navigational nautilus and continue using icon view in spatial nautilus?
Cheers,
It seems like the nautilus in xd-unstable doesn’t include the Tiles view (I don’t remember its name) nor the abbility to preview html pages.
“Because of that, it doesn’t work great when used spatial like and it doesn’t work great when used navigational.
Why do you think so?”
Spatial problems of 2.4:
– It’s slow
– Backspace will open the parent window in the current window, which is completely wrong
– Bookmarks, same problem
– Other things that I forgot because I’m really no expert when it comes to spatial interfaces (there was a very interesting email on the mailinglist lately, outlining the current problems of Nautilus when used spatially)
– You can’t switch to navigational without changing lots of preferences
– It’s slow
Navigational problems of 2.4:
– If you click a desktop folder, it will save position and size of the window for each folder separately, which is bull from a navigational perspective.
– People were rather reluctant in improving the navigational interface, because there always was the spatial vs. navigational argument.
Problems of both in 2.4:
– You can’t use the right choice for the job because you have to make an either/or decision.
– Lot’s of redundant options.
– Bloat, because the code of both navigation models is intermixed.
hey Spark how easy it easy do download and install the new versions using GARNOME? doesnt damage the current gnome/nautilus version i have?
Those might be two good points (especially the second one), maybe someone can bring them up on the mailinglist. Don’t forget that spatial Nautilus is still very young.
Many things will change for sure before this is finalized for 2.6.
“hey Spark how easy it easy do download and install the new versions using GARNOME? doesnt damage the current gnome/nautilus version i have?”
Yes, it installs in a separate folder. It’s pretty easy, you just type make install and then hope that you have all required dev libraries installed.
Takes ages to compile though and it might mess with your config if you don’t back it up.
Yes, it installs in a separate folder. It’s pretty easy, you just type make install and then hope that you have all required dev libraries installed
can i just try nautilus or do i have to build everything?
can i just try nautilus or do i have to build everything?
This should work I guess, but then it becomes a bit more difficult to test it and you don’t know if you really see “the real thing”.
You could also just edit the gnome-desktop Makefile to depend on only the basic stuff and Nautilus.
maybe i’ll give it a try, thanks
btw, is the look different from the usual? do you have some screenshots?
Is there really not a single application which uses it? Want to testdrive it.
Man, post some screenshots! =)
Victor.
Hmm, not really different, no. It looks pretty slick and clean, but nothing you couldn’t get with 2.4.
Here is a screenshot showing some of the network stuff and spatial folders:
http://liebesgedichte.net/Temp/Screenshot.png
It’s getting really really cool. The main problem still is, that GNOME VFS can’t ask for your password, so you have to put it into the URI. Alexander Larsson is working on it though!
Maybe you could post those ideas? I really don’t like subscribing to so many mailing lists.
Yes, I know spatial Nautilus is very young – but I also know that GNOME 2.6 isn’t that far in the future. There is not really time to fix that many things.
> Those might be two good points (especially the second one),
> maybe someone can bring them up on the mailinglist. Don’t
> forget that spatial Nautilus is still very young.
Many
> things will change for sure before this is finalized for
> 2.6.
I was wondering if this feature gets in there? I haven’t used it myself, but this is apparently one of the neater features of the MacOS9 Finder.
IMHO, a spatial filemanager is kind of useless without a method that will facilitate access to deeply nested folders.
Example
Desktop
folder1
folder1-2
folder2
folder3
file1 (file-I-want-to-view/edit)
Anyway I really do not think that this will matter much in the long run (5 years). The future of filemanagers is definitely not going to be spacial or navigational browsing, or hiearchal filesystems.
The future of filemanagers is definitely not going to be spacial or navigational browsing, or hiearchal filesystems.
agreed… things like gnome storage will be the future.
but they’re too far away i suppose…
“Anyway I really do not think that this will matter much in the long run (5 years). The future of filemanagers is definitely not going to be spacial or navigational browsing, or hiearchal filesystems.”
You will always need containers to actually show the data. Things like pre defined queries could replace traditional folders in the long run, but you could still use spatial objects to display them.
http://www.gnome.org/~seth/storage/screenshots/gargamel5.png
Also developers will probably always need a file hierarchy and I would be surprised if folders (as desktop objects) will ever die completely (just like you will always want fixed playlists for your Music for example).
Spatial creates some serious clutter, and i’m not a fan at all myself. I think they should model off the new OS X finder, I find it incredibly useful.
However, if they are going to stick with spatial, there is another OS X feature they need to rip-off: Expose. That would at least make it a little more bearable for power users. I know that is a Metacity thing rather than a GNOME thing, but hopefully the hack that popped up on gnomedesktop.org the other day will make it upstream.
Take a look at Expocity (Expose + Metacity):
http://www.pycage.de/expocity.html
Victor.
but hopefully the hack that popped up on gnomedesktop.org the other day will make it upstream.
It certainly won’t, because it’s really just a hack (a really cool one though) which probably won’t ever work good enough. The compositing stuff of the new Xserver would make this fairly trivial though. Hopefully, it will make it.
An amusing quote from a copy of the Macintosh Plus Owner’s Guide:
“You can design as deep a structure as you like with the hierarchical files system. Most people, however, find that retrieving a file nested more than four levels deep becomes tedious”.
And so we have the various features/hacks (many mentioned in this discussion) applied by Apple and 3rd parties to the Mac Classic Finder over the years to work around the tediousness. Maybe GNOME needs to look into why Apple felt this necessary (and have drifted away from that model) instead of blindly aping the pure form.
And these workarounds usually require precise mousing skills (deep menu hierarchies and windows appearing and disappearing on mouseover) and constant window management to uncover source and target for drag and drop operations that a navigational (and task oriented, to tie into another discussion) model and the concomitant reduction in clutter can alleviate.
I also wonder how companies like Sun will look upon this model, seeing as they like to promote their similarity to current Windows UI with their Java Desktop System. Will they default to spatial when the version based on this GNOME comes out?
Rayiner Hashem:
Actually, this spatial folders feature is directly based on the Mac Classic’s Finder. Folders in Win95 and BeOS were one-per-window, but they were *not* spatial.
How is Tracker not a spatial file manager? I’ve read John Siracusa’s various articles on spatiality and the MacOS Finder, and the concepts seem to apply to the Tracker as well (when it’s not in Single Window Browse mode, that is). Actually, there’s one annoying new “feature” which blemishes OpenTracker’s spatiality: you can have the same folder open in more than one window, as long as they’re not in the same workspace. Bleh, and there’s no way to turn it off.
A.K.H.:
I still remember spatial windows from old systems like Windows 95, Windows 3.1, and I guess Amiga
(although I didn’t use that much).
Windows 3.1 didn’t have a spatial file manager, it just had good ‘ol winfile.exe.
found it to be terribly annoying. Things *always* went like
open folder a
open folder b
open folder c
close folder a (or else you get a tangle of windows)
close folder b
Access file.
Or hold down a modifier key so the selected folder is opened and the current one is closed. Which you can’t do in Windows, unfortunately – probably what the poster who called it’s implementation of spatiality “broken” was referring to.
If there is no way to go up a directory, then the spatial idea because even more annoying.
All (both) of the spatial file managers I’ve used have at least a keyboard shortcut to go up a directory.
Can someone who likes spatial tell me *why* it’s useful? I mean, other than “I think it makes more sense”.
I prefer to have folders remember their size and position, which doesn’t happen in a browser-style file manager. Well, it does, but it’s easy to over-write them. Eg., I have My Documents sized so that it all fits without scrolling, then close the window, and that size/position will be remembered. But, say I open up My Computer, browse to Documents and Settings, then that user, then the My Documents folder, and close the window. Now, the next time I open up My Documents, the window will be the size of the My Computer window – because I reset its size/position by browsing to it and closing the window.
A situation where it’s more efficient (because this is what we really care about) would be nice.
It certainly makes me no less efficient. That said, I can see how people who are primarily used to the Windows Explorer might dismiss spatiality, as using Windows spatially approaches exercise-in-futility status.
My ideal would be a spatial file manager that had the option to make “open selected folder and close parent” the default action when a folder is double-clicked. One of these days, I’ll have to learn C++ and add that feature to OpenTracker (and bring back the old effect when dragging multiple files, and add the ability to have the toolbar in multi-window mode too while I’m at it).
anon:
However, if they are going to stick with spatial, there is another OS X feature they need to rip-off:
Expose. That would at least make it a little more bearable for power users.
Power users are probably already aware of virtual workspaces, which contain most of the functionality that Expose does (and some it doesn’t).
DCMonkey:
“You can design as deep a structure as you like with the hierarchical files system. Most people, however,
find that retrieving a file nested more than four levels deep becomes tedious”.
And so we have the various features/hacks (many mentioned in this discussion) applied by Apple and
3rd parties to the Mac Classic Finder over the years to work around the tediousness.
And how is that operation less tedious under a browser-style file manager? The same “hacks” are required in a navigational file manager to aleviate the tediousness if, say, it’s a commonly-accessed file. You know, thinks like putting a link to its containing folder in a convenient place (tabbed folders, shortcuts, quicklaunch, etc).
“My ideal would be a spatial file manager that had the option to make “open selected folder and close parent” the default action when a folder is double-clicked.”
Actually, Nautilus does this if you doubleclick a folder with the middle mouse button. I just tried it and it kinda rocks.
I’d have to take Expose over virtual desktops anyday. It can be tedium slogging through 4 or so desktops just to find the window you want. I do like the switcher ala MacOS classic in GNOME though.
Hi guys !
I have some questions about the new Nautilus:
– What are the default icons on the desktop now ? Is there a “Home” icon ?
– What happens if you are in ~/ folder in spatial Nautilus and open the “Desktop” folder ? Does it open a “Desktop” window, thus breaking the spatial behavior ?
– Are media icons (CD-ROM, floppy, camera…) still on the desktop or are they in “Computer” ?
Thanks !
Yes, the spatial and navigation models both share the same set of shortcuts(“hacks”) for avoiding navigation of hierarchies altogther.
My point was that tools for navigation (navigation history, visualization of the user’s organization hierarchy, current location within the hierarchy) are inherent to the navigation model, yet had to be grafted onto the spatial model to make it less tedious (or maintain its level of tediousness) as the amount of files a user must manage increased.
I also posit that the spatial versions of these tools are harder to use for many users (fine mouse control for navigating deep menu hierarchies, spring loaded folders, and heavy reliance on drag and drop).
1) GTK speed issue is known and hopefully the problem will cease to exist in GTK 2.6 which is rumoured to be linking into Cairo Graphics which should bring in a raft of other nifty features.
2) Some people bring up the tedious nature of navigating 4-6 levels deep into something. With GNOME, it is a different situation with pre-definded fobah:/// like addresses. For example, if I was forced to spartially navigate from root to home to username to something else, yes, it would be tedious, however, I would be surprised that if a person doubled clicked on “username home” from the desktop that they would be navigating further down than a few levels.
As for the issue of navigating the whole file system, the fact remains that the average user doesn’t need to navigate around the root of the filesystem. There is nothing there that needs fiddling with. If something does need to be changed that is system level deep, they can either use Gnome System Tools and assuming that they know what they’re doing, they would use cli anyway.
These topics were discussed on the Nautilus list in September:
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/nautilus-list/2003-September/thread….
Look for “Volume handling” and “spatial”.
I don’t know what descisions were made, if any. You could ask there I suppose. IIRC, the “consensus” (ie: no-one had talked those writing the code out of it) was was a mostly Mac OS X model.
I would like to try it out on my SuSE 8.2 box.
Sean
I personally think There is only Dropline Gnome that people can put all confident on it. Gnome/RH or /FC1 or MDK are more bugs than gnome in Dropline.
At least in my system, slackware and Dropline ve co-worked perfectly. A big and good decision of mine as I ve moved from RH to Slackware. excited Gnome2.5 on slackBox!
KDE, well it is alright, but somehow i see it is very colourful and it makes the desktop to be messed up by many options. A simple desktop is better for use.However, Linux in nature, is not related with some stuffs like those, whoever can use whatever kinda Distros or Desktop Manager, your choice!Just Slack for its simpleness, fastness and stability.
//END
anon:
I’d have to take Expose over virtual desktops anyday. It can be tedium slogging through 4 or so
desktops just to find the window you want.
1) Most pager apps show a representation of what windows are in what workspaces (admittedly, not quite as pretty as Expose).
2) If your consistent about it, workspaces can help with working in a spatial manner. For example, in BeOS I always keep Email stuff in workspace 2, and I can jump to it a lot quicker than I can (say) find Eudora’s entry in the taskbar. The reason being that, by this point, I don’t have to consciously think about the act of changing to workspace 2 because it’s almost reflexive. Whereas with my second example, it takes conscious thought to read through the list of applications, locate the one I’m looking for, and then move my mouse to click on it.
Human beings are good at learning to perform tasks “automatically” when they’re dealing with objects which behave and/or are arranged in a predictable way. Examples are: hitting the snooze button on your alarm clock without having to look for it, touch-typing, playing the guitar, finding your bathroom in the dark, etc. Spatial interfaces draw on these abilities by behaving in predictable ways.
There are limits to the usefulness of spatiality: it works best when applied to small numbers of things that are used fairly frequently. The example I gave with using workspaces would start to fall down if I had 20-30 workspaces open. Or to use a real-world example, there’s a difference between being able to hit the snooze button without having to think about it and grabbing a specific book from a bookcase without thinking about it. The amount of information one would have to memorize in the bookcase example, combined with the time it would take to memorize it and the frequency with which one would have to utilize the memory, make it prohibitive.
But I digress, as most of the criticisms of spatial file managers I’ve read here seem to be criticisms of the window clutter they sometimes cause. Window clutter, however, is not insurmountable (assuming a proper filemanager and an informed user) and spatial file managers don’t really get in the way when dealing with information in a non-spatial manner.
“As for the issue of navigating the whole file system, the fact remains that the average user doesn’t need to navigate around the root of the filesystem. There is nothing there that needs fiddling with. If something does need to be changed that is system level deep, they can either use Gnome System Tools and assuming that they know what they’re doing, they would use cli anyway.”
This alone should prove to you that a pure spatial filemanager+hierarchical filesystem is not really a good combination.
Some sort of tree view + spatial browsing would work very well.
Ok.. I’ve read through 85 posts and some of an Ars Technica article on spatial browsing and I still cannot see how this is not a step backwards. Aside from having your window open in the same place as it did last time (which to me seems to be trivial at best) does not justify losing (or not having by default) some type of tree view or at least shortcuts to folders.
If there’s one thing that every computer has in common, it’s the internet. People are used to browsing websites where they can easily go forward and back with browser buttons as well as navigate through multiple levels of information by using a list of links that expands to show multiple levels or at least multiple pages on the same level they are currently on.
While file browsing and browsing the internet are two different things, it doesn’t make sense to me to have such a completely different approach to the two most common tasks on a computer.
Aren’t popups (regardless of whether they are ads or requested content coming up in several windows) what make people despise browsing the internet? Isn’t spatial browsing essentially just bombarding you with popups? True, you’ll know exactly where the popup will land, but it’s still more desktop clutter.
Personally, I can’t imagine having to browse to:
C:Documents and SettingsMarcusMy DocumentsMy WebsitesMVsiteimages
using spatial browsing–I’d have at least 7 windows open just to get to one folder, unless I was manually holding down some key to automatically close the folders I was leaving, and even then there’s no way to easily go back to the “site” folder or any previous folder. How is this efficient? Easy? Intuitive? This is an extreme example, but even if it was only 2 or 3 levels deep the desktop is still going to quickly become cluttered.
Spatial browsing may be a more pure way of doing things, but in my opinion, it’s a step backwards–from just about anything.
I see a LOT of people here complaining about spatial nautilus and how it’s inefficient. Don’t like it? Don’t use it. Simple.
No need for a crusade. This is OSS, not OSX. Choice is well preserved.
LoL – Thanks for admiting that we are right ! Spatial browsing is a pain the arse to use and it is not very intuitive.
“jesus guys, ui develpment is going much the same as the rest of linux- bloated with too many opinions”
A similiar argument can be made for science. Too many opinions, not enough science.
You’ll get use to it eventually.
If the spatial nautilus works the way I think it does then it’s quite a useless feature:
> cd courses/cp
cpsc453 cpsc601.74 cpsc601.94 cpsc699
> cd courses/cpsc60
cpsc601.74 cpsc601.94
> cd courses/cpsc601.74/as
assign1spec assign1spec.zip assignments
> cd courses/cpsc601.74/assignments/as
assign1 assign2 assign3
> cd courses/cpsc601.74/assignments/assign2/q
q1 q2 q3 q4 q5 q6
> cd courses/cpsc601.74/assignments/assign2/q6/
and that’s just in my home folder. So I need to open 5 folders so I can access my files?
Rizo
LoL – Thanks for admiting that we are right ! Spatial browsing is a pain the arse to use and it is not very intuitive.
Gnome is using the spatial behavior to catch up the Windows explorer’s default behavior since win95.
The nice thing about Windows explorer is that it can switch to explorer view very easily – click View | Explorer Bar | Folders. This can be done in IE also, making the switch from a web page to local folders with only two clicks.
The “spatial” view in WinXP offers task based UI, which is much more useful and very easy to a novice user, you click a MP3 file, there are links to play it, or copy it to an audio CD, if you select a GIF image file, there are options to print the image, set as wallpaper or copy to CD.
IMHO, Gnome is at least 5 years behind windows in terms of features and ease of use and 10+ years behind windows in terms of speed and stability.
Ah, we spotted a win-troll. ’bout time, i say.
he thinks his os has actually has far advance in terms of usebility/etc /homer laught more/ hihihiih
win 10 years ago:
http://www.aci.com.pl/mwichary/guidebook/pics/gui/system/managers/f…
win 5 years ago:
http://www.aci.com.pl/mwichary/guidebook/pics/gui/system/managers/f…
Nautilus:
http://tuggy.home.sapo.pt/almost-spacial.png
hmmmmmmmm
holding down some key to automatically close the folders I was leaving, and even then there’s no way to easily go back to the “site” folder or any previous folder.
Yes you can go back to the “site” folder. You can ask it to open the parent folder (through the menu or through a key shortcut).
Victor.
This whole spatial thing is way above your heads. I say this cause all you are focusing on is this: it opens more than one window.
That is NOT the whole point of it. And as for GNOME playing catchup with windows … you expect us to believe that XP is the pinnacle of UI design?
Easy for novices? Do you know how complex the XP UI is? Do you? Or are you assuming you know how a novice thinks? Remember: A novice to computing is the one that must judge. A novice to linux might balk simple cause it’s different. Sometimes, different == bad/hard for people.
For once, read up on things, KNOW the material, and THEN comment. This whole spatial thing turned into a discussion on which OS opens fewer windows. And that person with the command line? He’s soooooooooooooooooooooooooooo missing the point. No, it doesn’t work the way most of you think. the problem is that Windows NEVER actually got the spatial thing right. Right now, Explorer is a mix of spatial and non spatial. Things like My Documents etc. appear to exhibit partially spatial behaviour. However the root itself doesn’t. Don’t judge nautilus based on explorer’s behaviour.
Oh, and judging something based on it’s beta is silly, ESPECIALLY when you haven’t used it for yourself. It’s just like that whole Longhorn thing: rumour. assumptions.
Someone saying “X will rock!!!!!” or “Y will suck” and the hordes judging it based on that. ack!
Nautilus is the best file manager I’ve used. Though I much prefer the terminal emulator, gnome-terminal, for file management.
Will there be tabs in the future releases of Nautilus? That’s the only feature, I think is missing is Nautilus. And of course some cleanups here and there.
“This whole spatial thing is way above your heads.”
“For once, read up on things, KNOW the material, and THEN comment.”
And why don’t you follow this rule yourself? 😉
“the problem is that Windows NEVER actually got the spatial thing right”
Believe me, they have tested it inhouse. Usability studies from MS and Apple showed that poor spatial file managers are not the king of usability. Gnome developers are already aware of this. And it looks already like Nautilus will not become poor spatial.
“Oh, and judging something based on it’s beta is silly”
No, this is the best time for critique. If you wait for the release it’s too late for improvements.
You use a spatial file manager differently than you use a navigational file manager. The whole thing is based on the simple principle that the window *is* the folder. Anything that breaks this behavior (navigational structures) destroys the whole paradigm. Novices do not have a good grasp of the metaphors of a computer, and thus a concrete, direct relationship is very important. The spatial Finder is one of the things that made the original Mac so easy to use. I have a strong feeling that most of the people bitching about it are Windows users who have never used MacOS classic long enough to get past the point where they say “ugh, its not like Windows, I hate it!”
Anyway, for advanced users, the CLI is the best. You just can’t beat it for efficiency doing file management. Integrated with something like Python, it becomes *extremely* powerful. Too bad the Windows CLI and the file system hierarchy is so utterly braindead. With paths like “Documents and Settings” its no wonder Windows users are scared of the CLI…
Nautilus is not a web browser, it it a file manager. I don’t see the usefulness of tabs in a file manager.
Nautilus is not a web browser, it it a file manager. I don’t see the usefulness of tabs in a file manager.
Having several folders open in respective tabs alleviates the burden of file management. I can copy and paste between tabs easily or even drag and drop between them.
It is more efficient than clicking your way through a large heirachy of folders just to paste a file in a deeply nested folder. It is also helps to reduce clutter on the desktop. I can also open several bookmarked locations in several tabs. Much the same way as I would on a browser.
Finally, there’s much similarity between a web browser and a file manager. The first being that both of them browsers. While web browsers is used to browse files on the internet, file managers do the same, except this time locally on your hard disk.
what still keeps me from using gnome is that u dont have a “keep on top” future in metacity. Is there any plan to include it in gnome2.6 ???