IsComputerOn reports that Axel Dörfler, OpenTracker’s maintainer, would like everyone’s opinion on a new feature he is working on: If, let’s say, you have folder A and folder B, both showing (their contents) in Tracker windows. You want to create a link (or move, or copy) folder A to folder B, you right-click and drag the little icon (screenshot) into folder B, no need to go to the parent folder of A and then drag it.
New OpenTracker File Manager Feature: What’s Your Opinion?
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Eugenia Loli
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OS X does that and I guess it’s OK. Just put in an option to turn it off, and even that isn’t really necessary.
That screenshot has NOTHING to do with what Axel is talking about.
…a decent, run-of-the-mill usability addition to me. It’s fairly simple and really should be in most decent file managers. The sad thing is that it is not in most file managers, decent or otherwise.
That screenshot has NOTHING to do with what Axel is talking about.
Um…yes it does. See the little folder icon at the upper right corner of the window? READ before posting, people.
Try dragging the little folder icon at the left end of the title bar on an explorer window to another location. Try it with both the left and right mouse buttons.
That screenshot has NOTHING to do with what Axel is talking about.
Um…yes it does. See the little folder icon at the upper right corner of the window? READ before posting, people.
Oh, yeah, that little icon makes the screenshot relate to the article in a completely obvious way. (rolls eyes).
If this is exactly the same as what used to be in Apple Mac OS 9 (drag the icon from the title bar to a destination to move the actual folder you’re viewing the contents of) I would like this. It should behave EXACTLY like the actual folders, context menus and all.
Silicon Graphics’ Indigo Magic Desktop implemented something similar to this, although it was more obvious that the icon could be dragged (because of the color behind it – a scheme which is maintained throughout the desktop [a non-default widget background color indicates that the icon can be dragged]).
I have a screenshot of the filemanager in IRIX 6.5.22 here:
http://reality.sgi.com/ralpht/resume/screenshots/fm-with-opengl.png
–ralpht
Sure, I like it.
Can’t say how much one would use it.
If you are that far you might as well complete it so we can see it included in the next MS. You had better patent that idea.
Too late…..Windows has it, and it works very well. See the previous post above ( “Windows does that too” – DC Monkey)
that’s some really nice font rendering!
Personally, I think it adds clutter and isn’t all that intuitive. What if you don’t right-click but rather, left-click and drag it somewhere? Are you then moving the current folder somewhere? Does it have a tooltip? Does that tooltip constantly pop up and annoy the user? Hmm…
Lesse. It’s been a while since I used BeOS. How do you go “back” in Tracker? Was it really necessary when you could instead simply right-click a directory and drill-down to wherever you need?
Would it be unforgivable to put a “..” directory in with the others?
{ducks}
No annyoing tooltips.
You can go back, forth and up a dir as well as type in dir or view current in a text box. These features are disabled in this screenshot though.
So – to your question – yes it WOULD be unforgivable adding a .. dir since it would duplicate an existing feature and clutter the window up.
I think this technique solves a significant problem with the desktop window model — how to refer to this window, for performing operations. The alternative of moving up a folder then locating the corresponding icon is much less straightforward. So I vote “yay” on the draggable window icon.
I’d also like to suggest that for a truly consistent and usable interface such an icon would not only appear on Tracker windows but also on every other application window that contains user data … dragging the icon to a folder would save the document in that folder. For changed documents it would be a “save as …”, in other words the existing file would remain intact in the original location.
This would eliminate one of the most aggravating elements of current GUIs – that you can have open a folder where you are working on documents, but still need to navigate the entire same file hierarchy using the clumsy Save dialogue.
I’m not sure about the right clicking bit, but overall I like it. What is needed is a way to operate easily one level above where you are.
Tracker is object oriented, so it needs to encapsulate the folder in a complete interface. This allows you to manipulate the folder as a conceptual object instead of a literal object. In the Tracker like file manager I have designed in my head, the same physical position on the folder window is used for a icon for the parent window. This allows easy access to the parent, making shortcuts to the parent, and (my personal favorite) an easy way to drill “up” as well as down. The rough part is that you wind up using the title bar icon to represent “self” and that overloads the title bar IMHO, and you don’t want a swarm of toobar buttons, effectively giving you a hybrid browser-spatial Tracker, like the mutt of a Finder on OS X.
Sigh. Design is hard.
Proxy Icons. At least, that’s what OS X calls them.
Weeh! It’s great for open save/load dialogs where you have the save/load folder open, and want to drag it to the dialog in order to point it to the folder. You wouldn’t have to go down one step!
Splendid!
Icons are the past, not the future of visual interfaces, no more icons please, this demonstrates that they are viral and spreading.
How about experimenting with the most efficient non-viral “icons”?: TEXT, LETTERS, NUMBERS. Dragging tiny icon A to tiny icon B is pretty straight, but go figure with this sort of little icon technique the dragging of A to B or C or D or E or F or G or … all in that pretty little file selector.
IMHO, a nice visual experiment in clutter would be dragging or right-clicking by numbers or brief text keys of open windows, instead of icons. You drag or right-click the desired directory to a single window selector that unfolds showing a number or key word depicting the other open directories. Any gain? No idea, but boy do I hate icons
Its a welcome feature in Beos i guess but i prefer if they put more
effort in speeding up NFS, god its slow copying movies…
Its been a while since I have used windows, but my memory of this feature in windows, was that because they have got the “webpage” layout, it wasn’t at all clear what dragging it did somthing, and I seem to recall accedently dragging it.
Having a special colour for draggable icons seems like a great idea to help illeviate this confusion.
One possible problem is it is quite close to the window border, it may be too easy to make the mistake of dragging the icon when attempting to drag the border.
yep this icons at the top of the windows is a good idea…
But it should be VERY great that SVG become standard to OT…
> Proxy Icons. At least, that’s what OS X calls them.
And it is/was “small icon” in CUA 91.
Displaying a document icon that can be dragged for saving
is a good idea IMO.
I remember RiscOS has such an icon, although it’s available via the file menu.
As long as it’s optional.
why not allow dragging to that up arrow icon? Of course, these multi-use widgets start throwing off the goodness of standardized interface elements
totally agree… don’t make it a default though…
can’t wait to try it out though
It’s OK as long as it’s not in the title bar. The way OS X handles it with the icon in the title bar is horrible – just imagine you wanted to drag the window by its title bar but accidently hit the icon.
Any new improvement added to OpenTracker is welcome! I think the idea is cool!
I’m not sure about the right clicking bit, but overall I like it. What is needed is a way to operate easily one level above where you are.
I seem to remember some builds of OpenTracker I’ve used having an italicized “Parent Folder” entry in the drilldown menu, though it’s not in the current cvs build I’m using.
Also, if you click on that grey bar in a Tracker window where it says “xx Items”, you get a list of the current folder’s parent folders – not “drillable”, but it still lets you quickly jump to a folder higher up in the filesystem.
I’ll repost what I put on another website about the proposed change:
I love the idea, but I think we’re tacking on something where we should integrate it better.
Right now, to navigate ‘upwards’ in the directory you use the box in the lower left corner. Since that already represents the folder and it’s place in the drive, use that. Allow dragging that to represent the current folder. Also, now might be a good time to make that tool more intuitive (although I don’t have any suggestions for that).
My suggestion is to avoid adding something when we already have an item to represent the current folder in the tracker window. Use what’s there more efficiently and the whole user experience will again improve.
To me, that’s the Be way of doing things.
“I seem to remember some builds of OpenTracker I’ve used having an italicized “Parent Folder” entry in the drilldown menu, though it’s not in the current cvs build I’m using.”
That was in the NewFS variant IIRC, and not in OT itself. I think.
> My suggestion is to avoid adding something when we already
> have an item to represent the current folder in the tracker
> window. Use what’s there more efficiently and the whole user
> experience will again improve.
Totally agree with this. Try to use what’s already there first.
> Its a welcome feature in Beos i guess but i prefer if they put more
> effort in speeding up NFS, god its slow copying movies…
I’ve fixed the NFS client for use with BONE, including all the lock ups that happen (was a nice race condition).
It’s still not very fast, but it does work quite well now.
I plan on implementing NFSv3 sometime.
That will be in Zeta as soon as soem issues in the Tracker regarding shared volumes are fixed.
Too late…..Windows has it, and it works very well. See the previous post above ( “Windows does that too” – DC Monkey)
Simpsons did it! Simpsons did it!
🙂
>> My suggestion is to avoid adding something when we
>> already have an item to represent the current folder
>> in the tracker window. Use what’s there more efficiently
>> and the whole user experience will again improve.
>Totally agree with this. Try to use what’s already there >first
I was thinking the same thing, except that using that particular element might interfere with the click-drag-release style of menu usage. I don’t know how many BeOS users are used to that from their Mac days (does BeOS even allow that? It’s been a while).
I suppose it would be an argument of which feature will be used more often (or how many users ever really liked that style of menu usage).
Recently I picked up a copy of BeosMax 3.0 and was kinda dissapointed to seethe old familiar tracker replaced by a newfangled one with some Net+ -like arrows (forward, back,up, etc)Being used to the traditional tracker where when you go to a sub directory it opens a new window I found this behavior to be most annoying,I really like to have ’em open so i can stack them like a card file and switch betwwen by right and left clicking on the tabs. this “new” feature reminded me of windoze explorer , a file tracker that is only outdone in it’s Klunkiness by the one that comes with KDE,
My point here is :
don’t add anything unless it can be shut off,One persons full featuredness is another’s bloat.the only thing i have ever really missed in the tracker is the right click cut, copy,paste menu and once you get used to doing it with alt -c and alt- v you forget about that too,altho I remember reading about an add on to do that too
sasquatch666,
I believe MAX uses OpenTracker, which is fully customizable, meaning that you can disable the navigation buttons if you don’t like them (I thought they were disabled by dafult, but I may be wrong). So, no need to be dissapointed about OT: it just has more options.
I had thought the same thing, but neglected to express it. Al did it well. My vote is for this, too. In fact, maybe moving that navigation funtion is a good idea too…
I agree with previous posts. The new icon isn’t really needed. We have the dropdown-menu in the lower left corner, it allready does what we need and more. The problem with it though, is that few people knows about that feature even existing there. Perhaps some thought could go into making it more obvious. And I don’t mean in a microsoft way with a large sign and a blinking error (and possibly some kind of animal running around it barking).
meanwhile you can use my quick fix for the issue.
http://www.bebits.com/app/2437
…let’s be creative.
Why not just do a SHIFT + title bar drag-and-drop to achieve the intended functionality?
Nothing to add, so no clutter. Simple and easy, but functional.
Maybe consider displaying a folder icon at the mouse pointer position while it is being SHIFT + dragged to help help the user visualize the operation he/she is performing.
This could also be used as a replacement for “Save As…” in apps as well.
Koki