Well-known tech journalist Nicholas Petreley tried Gnome 2.6 but he got baffled by the default Nautilus 2.6 behavior to open each folder on a new window and also from the inability to change colors on a GTK+ theme through a UI. On a positive note, Gnome’s Tim Ney informed us about the Guadec 5 event.
Gnome 2.6: Living Down to a Low Standard
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
that’s a serious panning. But he’s got a point.
I have a sneaking suspicion, after reading countless reviews of 2.6, that 2.8 will not include a “spatial” view by default.
type “nautilus –no-desktop –browser”, or make a desktop link to that command.
no need to make any changes to gconf. It’s really not THAT hard to read docs and manpages.
He is also complaining about something that is his own personal taste. Some people may like the spatial nautilus.
As for the colours, I don’t think that matters to most people. People at my office don’t know how to change the wallpaper in windows let alone the colours. But it is possible by editing the gtkrc file for your theme.
At last!
Someone not afraid to tell it like it is…
Now, let’s get the crowd shouting “Troll” and “FUD”, like children in the kindergarden.
IMHO, a spatial interface would make sense only if the filesystem was 100% attribute/MIME-based and not hierarchical. The way it is now, trying to use a next-gen idea on a 30-year old basic filesystem design (that has folders and not all its files are MIME), it creates one big mess.
In short, the spatial idea is good, but not when applied to any of the current filesystems.
The original Tracker on BeOS was spatial as well (and its filesystem was a hybrid of ‘old’ and modern design with attributes/MIME), and BeOS users still hated it. When Tracker got open sourced, the first thing BeOS devs did was to add the ability to open folders on the same window. That example alone should have given a glimpse of what people most want.
Hmmm… sadly, foljs, you can almost guarantee that someone will click “Report Abuse’ on your post, but you’re actually right. When anyone says anything negative at all, someone has to call them a troll.
Gnome 2.6 is actually very cool, but the spatial view, in my very personal opinion, should be the option – not the regular view. I think the review makes some good points.
Somebody must’ve been smoking the fattie when they came up with that one. I mean, to think that having each folder open in its own window, you gotta be hitting the reafer pretty hard. It sucked as the default in the Win95 classic interface, and it sucks now.
Sure, maybe some people will get used to it, but most won’t put up with it long enough to find out.
“Nautilus, no longer allows users to navigate through folders as one might use a Web browser or Windows Explorer”
just wrong
Yeah, one really has to question some decisions made by those in charge of Gnome’s design these days. But, I have to admit I’m getting used to spatial Nautilus, though I do remember this was the first thing I used to turn off in 95. I believe the browsing metaphor for file managers is more efficient, though the spatial consistency of windows is more settling in some situations like dragging and dropping files to and from different directories. I wouldn’t necessarily say spatial Nautilus is a step back, it’s just different. Perhaps the Gnome devs can diffuse this criticism by taking the spatial metaphor further than Windows or Mac OS ever did. If Nautilus is going to stick with the spatial metaphor it might as well extend it and perfect it. Nothing is out of reach especially with the limitless virtual canvas that is the modern computer.
>but the spatial view should be the option – not the regular view
In the tradition of real spatial browsers –in addition to Nautilus and Tracker –, Mac OS X’ Finder has also spatial face. But it is not the default, and I personally know of no one who uses that mode.
@Lame Comments
Personally, I really, really like Spatial mode in the new Nautilus. I didn’t think I would like going back to the old method of a new window for every folder. But, since it remembers the exact position and size of every folder I open, it’s become rather addictive.
I think the other thing this obvious “power user” is missing is that the spatial default is aimed at making Gnome friendlier to an older generation who can more easily understand the concept of opening “folders” that have a consistent size and position. I’ve never really cared for the web-browser-is-a-file-manager-is-a-browser thing.
(which is kind of unusual, when you think of it…)
Spatial nautilus is a good idea, but it should be the option. I also really dislike not being able to change UI colors on Gnome. I respect the “less is more” philosophy behind Gnome, but to me being able to change colors (easily, through a control panel) is an essential customization feature.
Call me superficial if you want, but I really like to arrange the colors of my UI so that they fit my current background image (even if it’s in an approximate manner). I don’t like having a “cool” UI (blues and greens) when I have a “warm” desktop image (reds and yellows).
That’s it, I’ve had my “artsy” rant for this year, I’ll shut up about this now. Other than that, Gnome is a fine desktop, and I wish it well even though I’m a KDE user. Peace.
This is the first time I agree with your post. EVER.
Every OSX user (that I know) still uses two views that vere present in OS9.
I just loved finder on OS9 and I must admit that Nautilus has become my favorite now.
Why are the comments “Lame”? Your opinion is no better.
For example, one GNOME developer says there’s a good reason why users can’t change individual colors in desktop themes: Someone might accidentally make both the text and background white, thus rendering the text unreadable.
A couple lines of code should stop a user from choosing a foreground and background colour that’s the same; instead of just removing the feature all together.
I like the spatial file browsing, although most dirs in my home directory are only 2-4 folders deep.
@Eugenia
You have an excellent point and I’m sure spatial file browsing would make more sence in an enviornment similar to what winfs is supposed to be.
Yeah, I agree. But sadly, as much everyone knows Petreleys quality, everybody read the article.
OSNews should post labels like: WARNING!!! TROLLS INSIDE!!! on articles like that.
I totally argee with you. I guess he was on a deadline. Maybe his next article is about how MacOSx sucks because
he cant run .exe files.
I dont think the article is a “TROLL” or “FUDD.” He is just
trying too hard not to sound like a “TROLL” or “FUDD”
And while we are on the topic of power users…
I’m really not understanding why people keep claiming spatial mode is anti-power user and pro-newbies.
I consider myself a “power user” and I absolutely loathed the idea when I first read about it. With that said it look me about an hour after I read about the following options until I decided I actually liked it and prefered it:
– center double click closes current window and opens the target in a new window
– control-shift-w closes the parent windows (available as a menu option)
– control-S lets you enter a pattern for selection that lets you specify wildcards, etc (available as a menu option)
– window positions, shapes, scroll bar positions, list view sort selections, etc are remembered based on the directory
I find myself getting the same job done with fewer widgets on screen and with slightly greater ease thanks to the aforementioned additions. I find myself not wanting to use the old browse mode anymore.
This power users vs newbie crap was invented.
At last an honest review, no longer zealous popmpously written and sugar coated propaganda!
so there isn’t a way to change the colors of a theme from a gui? You have to cut to the theme file? being a new linux user that was one of the first things i tried to do and figured i just missed it. I’ve long since moved onto other things but its nice to see vidication that I didn’t just miss it.
“he got baffled” does not validate and only displays reasonably in Konqueror if I switch browser id to IE.
disclaimer: I currently don’t use Gnome or Linux.
I think the biggest problem with new features(like the spatial Nautilus) is getting the average user to use them and gain the expected benefits. Because of this I don’t have a problem with the defaults enabling new features.
But…having to do command line switches or editing rc/ini/.config files to get their beloved features back is a mistake. Sure, those that can wade through docs may figure it out, but most users will just get frustrated and leave.
I’m a rather advanced Windows user but even I don’t like editing the registry/.desktop/.ini files. I use UI’s like TweakUI or TweakI or various other programs.
As for the changing desktop colors, if this is true then that would be a serious issue for me. IDEA: to prevent text/backgroud color issues, when a user changes their colors, detect when their changes might lead to problems and present a little popup letting them know and allowing them to preceed or cancel the change.
/my $5 — can I get a reciept for tax deductions
The article has good points.
I love Gnome, really I do. Somthing about KDE just feels to much like Windows XP’s Luna, i.e. gaudy, candy coated, bloated, and slow. Still though, as much as I like the simple, clean, and practical Gnome desktop, there is a MAJOR deficit of options. Certainly they shouldn’t have as many as KDE, but options like changing colors and switching between browsing modes in Nautilus should not only be GUI options, but should be some of the first options you see. Thats very basic stuff!
Woow, this guys has such a superior attitude! Most of us will agree that opening a new folder in a new window is not nearly the best default behaviour, but to rant so seriously and so damn negatively about it is just extreme. Seriously, didn’t you find anything good in gnome 2.6? Yes, nothing good? Not one? No improvements? Nothing to commend the gnome guys about? If so, you have the taste of an elephant. Get a life, dude, before you get an ulcer.
Works fine in Firefox 0.8 on Linux for me.
Of course, you are using a… questionable browser.
😀
“I have a sneaking suspicion, after reading countless reviews of 2.6, that 2.8 will not include a “spatial” view by default.”
I hope for the sake of Free Software that is not the case.
People do not realize how attached they have become to the “browsing file systems like with a web browser” model even though it doesn’t really make sense.
If free desktop projects are not given the chance to experiment and an open mind GNOME and KDE will forever be clones of Windows and Mac OS.
It took balls to make such an unpopular move among programmers and self professed “power users” but things need to be put into perspective. The vast majority of people in the world have not learned the “browser model”. Just because a tiny group of users are unwilling to consider something they have been familiar with for years to possibly be the wrong way to approach things does not mean the brain damage should be inflicted upon others.
With that said, I’m not trying to preach that spatial mode is the way to go. Spatial mode in Nautilus is a first revision currently and it _will_ need to go through some polishing.
All I know is when I first used Windows 98 I thought the file manager was retarded and now I remember why.
type “nautilus –no-desktop –browser”, or make a desktop link to that command.
no need to make any changes to gconf. It’s really not THAT hard to read docs and manpages.
But that needs typing into console. Do you think ‘dumb’ people (says like someone said : grandma and grandpa) wants to do that? And default matters.
If someone has to read docs and manpages to change their file manager, it shows that nautilus is not that intuitive.
Or may be Nautilis designed to be ‘the true one way’ so anyone elses will never need the way to change its behaviour?
As for the colours, I don’t think that matters to most people. People at my office don’t know how to change the wallpaper in windows let alone the colours. But it is possible by editing the gtkrc file for your theme.
Why do you think that changing colors doesn’t matters to anyone else.
And how can programmers think that no one ever want or need to do that without changing gtkrc files.
Isn’t that another one true way?
Do you want grandma and grandpa changing their gtkrc, or calling their grandson only to do that?
Eugenia: The original Tracker on BeOS was spatial as well (and its filesystem was a hybrid of ‘old’ and modern design with attributes/MIME), and BeOS users still hated it. When Tracker got open sourced, the first thing BeOS devs did was to add the ability to open folders on the same window. That example alone should have given a glimpse of what people most want.
I am one of them, I hate spatial. I don’t remember which version of Windows that does open the new window at the everytime when you browser directories. I remember, I always go right away to the options and change to open in the same window rather than new window and enable address bar.
I agree with him 110%! I keep trying to use gnome 2.6, but I always come back to kde. It’s nautilus that keeps me away. My screen can’t go any bigger than 1026×768, so 3 windows seem like alot!
Even with “browser” mode set to default, nautilus can’t hold a candle to konqueror. I can’t stand having only “icon view” and “list view” to navigate my files. For massive reorganization of my files, I love to have a “split” view with two “tree view” boxes. And for old DOS nostalgics, like my dad, nothing’s better than “text view”.
Oh, and I’m writing this in konqueror right now!
” If free desktop projects are not given the chance to experiment and an open mind GNOME and KDE will forever be clones of Windows and Mac OS.”
If the average dev’s idea of an open mind is to implement the old, discarded ideas of old os’s, we are all doomed. There’s a reason every major OS has has rejected the spatial model.
Yes, god forbid people retry something that showed promise in the past but never quite got there. God forbid they try new tweaks on it. God forbid they offer an alternative to the Jones.
As Ars Technia said (and I strongly believe):
“Although there is nothing wrong with the implementation of the spatial Nautilus, there is a problem of perception and education. All in all, we found the new spatial mode awkward initially, reminding us of the classic Mac OS and Windows 95 folder views, until we “got it”. Unfortunately, we’ve been using file managers that present the browser metaphor for so long that it is likely that many users will try it for 10 minutes and revert back to the browser/tree view permanently. This is unfortunate, since like coffee, spatial mode is an acquired taste that can make managing files and folders very easy and convenient.”
Spatial Nautilus is a victim of it not being an exact clone of what everyone else is doing. Hold on… I feel something… oh wait, that was me _almost_ giving a damn about the whining of people not even willing to give it a serious try.
To be labeled a “troll” is more about style than substance. A troll is usually making a very strong criticism, to be sure. It’s the *way* the criticism is expressed that makes the troll. Most trollish comments are uninformed, inflammatory without backup documentation, and lack constructive intent.
I believe that Petereley’s article meets the “troll” definition here. It is partially uninformed: Petreley states that there is no way to browse files by a navigational system. In addition to the ways named by people in previous posts, one may right-click on the desktop and select “browse…”. Similarly, one may find “navigate the filesystem” in either the Applications or Actions menu (I forget which one).
The article is definitely inflammatory, though I’m not sure if it meets the “without back-up documentation” requirement.
The article is certainly without any trace of constructive intent: the article is a full-out attack on GNOME. It makes no attempt to understand the rationale behind the changes. It makes no attempt at gauging the benefits of new elements of GNOME 2.6 (Petreley, I imagine, would have railed against the file selector if it had not been changed in the latest GTK/GNOME.)
As someone else pointed out, Petreley simply says: 1) I don’t like spatial file-navigating, and 2) I want to change my theme colors from a color-selecting widget.
As point 1) can be changed or selected in a myriad of ways and as point 2) seems an incredibly minor point, Petreley’s tone and vitriol seem misplaced and, indeed, trollish.
Dude! Are you f-ing kidding???! Seriously, this is a feature that is VERY widely requested and very desired (I won’t even get into the fast that it is also the *right* behavior). People want it so it should be easlily selected! Not hidden in gconf or in some esoteric command line option. Of course you can do crap like that but the whole push in gnome right now it to make things easy and obvious. This needs to be right in the normal preferences and it needs to be the default because it is the behavior that people want and expect!
Seriously, the tenacity with which people are clinging to and defending something that is so unpopular and really wrongheaded is freaking amazing!
A couple lines of code should stop a user from choosing a foreground and background colour that’s the same
I agree. That has to be one of the lamest excuses ever.
One more comment: making spatial nautilus the default may be controversial, but it also sets GNOME apart from its various competitors in the desktop field. A number of people (myself included) find the spatial mode to be very nice and, indeed, preferable to the navigational mode. GNOME with a default spatial mode offers this type of user a file-browsing metaphor that no one else is willing to provide and courts all the users out there who might find the spatial mode more intuitive or friendly.
GNOME may have cleverly staked out a novel marketing position by presenting an intriguing and different way to manage files. It is too early to tell how successful this positioning is, but spatial nautilus has certainly made people pay attention to Nautilus in a way we haven’t seen since the days of Eazel.
> … this is a feature that is VERY widely requested …
Who requested it ? Any Mailinglist threads, emails, comments about users and other things you want to show us which proves this ? Care to post some links ?
I just have to get in my agreement on this. I am a Gnome user and I like it. But some things aren’t quite right.
There are a lot of underlying technology that can be improved, but this I know is happening, so I relax. Now, a thing like changing the colors without changing the theme is incredibly stupid. I enjoy having simple preferences solid HIG and the general ease of use of Gnome, but in some ways it is just crippled.
This seems like something pretty easy to fix. In fact, it’s pretty easy to just edit the gtkrc file myself, except it is hopeless if you can’t select colors by looking at them. And at the very least one should be allowed predefined color schemes, like selecting icons or window borders in the theme selector. I never really saw a good explanation as to why things are like this.
Also, why don’t icons change when I select them in the theme manager. I mean, gtk icons don’t change, what’s that all about. The gtk themes should include a default icon set, but on should be allowed to alter this when using Gnome. Inconcistency always sucks.
And then there is the panel. As long as I use an ordinary theme and leave it alone, it works great. It’s just that if you use a custom background or transparency or similar, applets don’t. This is not very important, though.
This by no means implies I want a shitload of options and configurabiltiy, just some of what is in my opinion basic desktop configuration. I really hope Gnome contintues to do what it does well and that they don’t go over the top and render the desktop crippled. I hope for the first, but if not there is always hope that the other alternative can improve to my liking =).
But that needs typing into console. Do you think ‘dumb’ people (says like someone said : grandma and grandpa) wants to do that? And default matters.
If someone has to read docs and manpages to change their file manager, it shows that nautilus is not that intuitive.
Or may be Nautilis designed to be ‘the true one way’ so anyone elses will never need the way to change its behaviour?
That’s 100% bullshit. To open the browser, you simply click the Applications -> Browse File System menu entry, which you can move to a panel or your desktop if you want to.
The only thing that got _slightly_ harder is opening a desktop folder in the browser, because now you have to use the “Browse Folder” context menu entry to do this, otherwise it will just open the folder (which is 100% logical, unless you have been microbrainsoftwashed).
Now if you insist on having the browser everytime you doubleclick a desktop folder (which makes it impossible for you to use one of the two folder representations, unlike the default), then it would probably be handy for you to have this preference be available as an option in the GUI instead of just a gconf key. This might happen some day, though personally I think that this would be rather about pleasing the ignorants than designing good software (now welcome the “preference can never be ignorance” flaming crowd…).
Not many things make me angry, but trashtalking like this does. It’s not software developers who are unable to try new pathes, it’s you, the tech crowd.
Everyone is welcome to accurately describe what problems they have with using the software and we might be able to suggest improvements in your usage behavior or even improvements to the software. But this stupid flaming serves absolutely zero purpose, other than ruining the mood of some people and making yourself look like an ass (not directly aimed at you, but at everyone ignorantly trashing the object desktop concept and especially at the author of this piece of junk called an article).
I’m a developer and I have grown to love spatial Nautilus and especially the concept of a desktop which consists of objects and capabilities instead of nothing but abstract “windows”. I’m not the only one either, there are countless of my kind and the sheer number of people who hated spatial Nautilus at first, but are now starting to really like it, should tell you, that the world isn’t as black and white as you might like. I’m slowly losing all my respect for certain people and wish they would just finally shut the fuck up and leave us alone, those who enjoy the software and their increased productivity.
Ok. I’m using Nautilus 2,6 in Fedora FC2 Test3 right now and I’m not seeing what Petreley is complaining about. Folders do not open in new windows. In addition, clicking the “Information” link in te left panel will get you to a “tree” option which enables you to move through the filesystem to your heart’s content, all in one window.
People’s complaints about the spatial Nautilus make me think of a
snippet in Eugenia’s interview with Miguel de Icaza today on OSNews:
“Miguel is very happy with the developments of Gnumeric, he mentioned that it is now possible to separate the GUI from the engine part”
Am I the only one who noticed that? Your GUI should be the first thing to be separated from your engine BEFORE you even start coding. I shiver to think of what the Gnumeric code might be for a new coder getting on board.
To the point: while I think trying to reuse to good ends spatial mode in Nautilus is an interesting idea, I find it utterly un-pragmatic, just like not having split the GUI from the engine in Gnumeric. I find that it stems more from a programmer’s impulse than from a carefully thought and studied intention. When people started Gnumeric, I suspect they got down and dirty very quickly because there was the urge to get something out of the door. People had a killer idea (let’s make a free spreadsheet) and they went on with it immediately: I see the same urge to do thing’s one’s way in the decision of Nautilus’s developpers.
Not that it cannot be good: think of WindowMaker and how distinctive they are. The NeXT interface might not appeal to many people now, but I, for one
am enamoured with it. But I would expect a little more pragmatic thinking from a major and vital project like GNOME.
And I’m not talking about being conservative in the sense of “let’s copy Win32
or Mac OS and stick to that”. But being conservative in the sense of making
something that is _cognitively_ sound! MacOSX was quite a drastic change, but when you look at it, your brain adapts comfortably to it shortly.
Red Hat changed the default for Fedora.
Spark, it’s *you* who are being ignorant here. Did you not read most of the negative posts here? The majority of them went along the lines “I tried it and hated it.”
The concept of spatial file browsing is not new, it was used before, and as before, a small number of people loved it. But most hated it. The default should be something that is easy for the majority not the minority. Not everyone finds it efficient!
You know, Linux Desktop has a lot in common with vegan cookies. Stay with me here.
Cookies are wonderful things. They taste great, and I eat them whenever I can. However, since I’m vegan and have eschewed all dairy products, I don’t get to eat them as often as someone who isn’t vegan, as cookies are typically made with eggs and milk chocolate chips, but vegan no-nos.
So I have to find vegan cookies. Here’s a little fact that most vegans won’t admit to: Vegan cookies often taste like shit.
There’s a sort of collective agenda to not admit that most vegan cookies taste bad, as we vegans don’t want to admit to ourselves and to others that we’re giving up something as dear to the human condition as the cookie experience in order to be vegan.
But the truth of the matter is, a lot of vegan cookies are terrible. And one of the reasons why they are terrible is that no one will admit they taste bad. So the recipes haven’t changed.
This is the same with the Linux desktop. It’s come a long way, but it still has serious drawbacks. And few people are willing to acnknowledge that there are problems that need to be resolved, so they go unresolved.
So this guy really reamed GNOME, and he’s going to get a lot of flak for it. But good for him. He made very good points, and he dared to tell the truth. Some just don’t want to hear it.
Spacial view was terribly cumbersome in Windows 95 and the classic MacOS and I would never even consider using it again.
Being able to change screen colors is a basic right as far as I’m concerned. It’s times like these I am infinitely thankful for KDE, because if there were no KDE and the leading Linux desktop environment was Gnome, I would still be a full-time Windows user. Nobody likes a locked-down desktop for home use. The only people who like Gnome’s startling lack of customization options are people who want to set up kiosk-type systems to keep their secretaries from installing WeatherBug and HotBar. The idea has merit, but it is definitely not welcome on my desktop.
” Did you not read most of the negative posts here?”
Almost all of the negative posts (and the “article” that created this discussion) are of the “It sucks!” type. The best the negative comments is “it sucked under win95 so it has to suck now and forever”. They don’t compare the two models and say “I think this is better because it lets me do <foo> faster then doing it this other way” or similar.
The vast majority of negative complaints seem to be “it’s different!!@!@” and related justifications.
that this article is the kind of articles that open source developers should read. constructive criticism, though sarcastic at times
we open source devs should stop insisting that users “read the manual”…truth is, most users aren’t reading anything, yet they can work OK with other systems (e.g. windows). that should be the same standard for us.
I agree that spatial, should be an *option*, but personally, I really love it, it comes in handy because sometimes i need to switch back and forth between parent and child folders, and not having to run a new nautilus browser and then navigate to the parent folder is a blessing.
I loved it under BeOS, and I love it in GNOME 2.6
This seems like something pretty easy to fix. In fact, it’s pretty easy to just edit the gtkrc file myself, except it is hopeless if you can’t select colors by looking at them. And at the very least one should be allowed predefined color schemes, like selecting icons or window borders in the theme selector. I never really saw a good explanation as to why things are like this.
Because nobody has designed the interface and written the code.
Also, why don’t icons change when I select them in the theme manager. I mean, gtk icons don’t change, what’s that all about. The gtk themes should include a default icon set, but on should be allowed to alter this when using Gnome. Inconcistency always sucks.
They do change. All icons can be themed. Your theme might not provide icons, in which case GTK+ will use the default set. I don’t see how it’s Gnome’s fault that a theme doesn’t provide its own icons.
Like the subject says, it wouldn’t surprise me if they’ve made it the default, just to get people to test it and suggest improvements on it. Looking at these comments, I imagine all they managed to get, was inundated by “Feature Requests” of, “Change the default Nautilus view”.
I expect most people who are complaining also didn’t try it for longer than it took them to realize that it was opening more than one window, “just like the way Win95 used to”. Which would also be the thinking behind why not many would change it if it wasn’t the default.
It’s like when I loaded up KDE 3.2. Not having used KDE since the 2.x days, I was wondering where the FTP program was. Until I realized I was just thinking how bad/slow Windows FTP integration is and tried Konqueror for FTP. Now I realize I can set it up to work just like an FTP client, AND it works great, AND I can do even more useful things with it.
So ya, there seems to be a lot of complaining about developers of a filemanager deciding to set a default, that can be changed, and seems to be being changed by package maintainers. And likely all they wanted was for people to give it a fair shake and send some decent feedback.
As Ars Technia said (and I strongly believe):
“[…] Unfortunately, we’ve been using file managers that present the browser metaphor for so long that it is likely that many users will try it for 10 minutes and revert back to the browser/tree view permanently. […]”
Whoa, Ars have their timeline *way* wrong here (which is unlike them).
Directory-tree + file list style browsers (like Explorer) that they seem to be referring to as the “browser metaphor” have been in use since long before the “browser metaphor” was even a buzzword. Windows has had a filemanager like this since at least Windows 3.0 and I can remember using DOS-based filemanagers with identical interfaces back in the days of DOS 3.x.
[I}That’s 100% bullshit. To open the browser, you simply click the Applications -> Browse File System menu entry, which you can move to a panel or your desktop if you want to. [/I}
Heh, I was replying to the original author, why are you so angry???
There is some way to open navigational browser without typing –> that is good.
Now if you insist on having the browser everytime you doubleclick a desktop folder (which makes it impossible for you to use one of the two folder representations, unlike the default), then it would probably be handy for you to have this preference be available as an option in the GUI instead of just a gconf key. This might happen some day, though personally I think that this would be rather about pleasing the ignorants than designing good software (now welcome the “preference can never be ignorance” flaming crowd…).[/I}
Ignorants, why, because I like navigational better then spatial? Because I like different way then yours?
You grow to like spatial. That’s good for you, but I don’t.
I use it and I don’t like it. It makes opening deep folder more complicated to me. And yes, I only have 15″ monitor so having multiple window on my monitor is a pain.
Usually I always try to maximize every windows because my monitor is small, and add with multiple window because of spatial. Can you imagine that?
SO I AM IGNORANT because I want better options for me, and also easyness to change Nautilus from spatial to navigational, or one folder to two folder as an option in GUI (without having to touch GConf) ??????
I am more than willing to try new paths, but if programmer doesn’t give another easy way to revert back, tell me who is the ignorant.
So tell me, that there is no ONE TRUE WAY paradigm in all this.
[i]I’m slowly losing all my respect for certain people and wish they would just finally shut the fuck up and leave us alone, those who enjoy the software and their increased productivity.
I am slowly losing respect on you and will leave you alone (as you wish) because for your increased productivity, I lose my productivity.
This seems the most logical conclusion to me. Something very few people are admitting is that the official GNOME sources are not intended for the Joe-end-user crowd. They are intended for people who want the latest-and-greatest and developers of distros. Also, with the knee-jerk reactions to spatial Nautilus that pop up every other day, its possible that it would never get tested in the wide and varied “Real World” if it wasn’t made default.
As was previously mentioned (and I have not confirmed this), Fedora Core 2 Test 3 ships with the browser mode as default. Are there distros shipping with GNOME 2.6 and spatial-mode Nautilus? I ask because I’m not really up-to-date on current distro trends. Its entirely possible that distros will ship one way or the other based on their own testing and preferences for their users.
You didn’t read the second page?
For example, one GNOME developer says there’s a good reason why users can’t change individual colors in desktop themes: Someone might accidentally make both the text and background whitOf course, this flaw has nothing to do with the inflexibility of the primitive graphical tool kit upon which GNOME was based. It was deliOf course, this flaw has nothing to do with the inflexibility of the primitive graphical tool kit upon which GNOME was based. It was deliberately designed to protect users who are invariably too incompetent to pick their own colors but are smart enough to memorize shift-clicks and keystrokes or edit the registry to get Nautilus to work the way they like.berately designed to protect users who are invariably too incompetent to pick their own colors but are smart enough to memorize shift-clicks and keystrokes or edit the registry to get Nautilus to work the way they like.e, thus rendering the text unreadable.
Of course, this flaw has nothing to do with the inflexibility of the primitive graphical tool kit upon which GNOME was based. It was deliberately designed to protect users who are invariably too incompetent to pick their own colors but are smart enough to memorize shift-clicks and keystrokes or edit the registry to get Nautilus to work the way they like.
A couple lines of code should stop a usOf course, this flaw has nothing to do with the inflexibility of the primitive graphical tool kit upon which GNOME was based. It was deliberately designed to protect users who are invariably too incompetent to pick their own colors but are smart enough to memorize shift-clicks and keystrokes or edit the registry to get Nautilus to work the way they like.er from choosing a foreground and background colour that’s the same; instead of just removing the feature all together.
Dear sir why don’t write that couple of lines of code and send it to the developers. It is almost impossible to create such a feature. Moreover i am a power user who uses freebsd and gnome and have used windows xp but never once have tried to change the windows colour scheme. 90% of gnome users would rather goto a themesite and download some nice themes.
About all those rants about spatial nautilus, they are the dumbest things i have had. if you have a vanilla install of gnome you’ll see that under applications->Browse filesystem will open a browser nautilus, this is for those who want to view and open files etc.on their computer whereas spatial view is rather a file manager to manage files. if you had a 100 folders each with a 1000 files and you want to rearrange the whole thing you’ll appreciate spatial nautilus, drag and drop makes life a lot easier.
Of course, this flaw has nothing to do with the inflexibility of the primitive graphical tool kit upon which GNOME was based. It was deliberately designed to protect users who are invariably too incompetent to pick their own colors but are smart enough to memorize shift-clicks and keystrokes or edit the registry to get Nautilus to work the way they like.
He’s calling gtk a primitive toolkit!!! Mozilla from which i am writng now uses gtk and it looks very nice.
In all all the so called regressions of gnome are actually its advantages.
Though I seem to be one of the few people who like spatial nautilus, there is simply no justification for not letting the user change nautilus´ behavior easily.
And I think he´s right in pointing out that this reflects a deficiency in the gnome developers approach. You either do it the way they want you to do it, or you´ve got a problem.
I know that you can change a lot of things in the gconf-editor, but what I´m still unable to understand is, why on earth someone should be forced to use this kind of unintuitive tool.
And he is right about the many obscure shortcuts, that are in no way intuitive and simple. And if you are forced to use these shortcuts in order to achieve simple things (just press Ctrl+L to access hidden directories by typing their location in for example) this is a real usability problem.
Honestly I tried spatial Nautilus for approx. 4 days (solely because I wanted see what all the hype was about). My personal opinion — I don’t think I like it. I’m sticking with KDE 3.2.x
KDE may have a some cluttered menues/toolbars, but from using WinXP at work I’m use to poorly designed Menues (*cough* not-so NEW XP start menu *cough* — I’ve tried to use the new menu, but no matter how many times I’ve tried I always resort back to the “classic” menu style)
Anways I wasn’t aware the spatial Nautilus couldn’t be disabled via the GUI. My opinion is that the Gnome dev team should release Gnome 2.6.1 tomorrow with a GUI option to disable it.
Having just become a parent, I’ve realized that even really small children turn their heads away when trying to feed them something they don’t want, even if it’s a medicine that’s supposed to be good for them.
My reaction to 2.6 and Nautilus was very much the same. Gnome developers were trying to force-feed their idea of file browsing on me, I looked for gui setting to turn it off and when I couldn’t, turned my head away.
There’s a good thing in all of this. Desktop unification. KDE developers seem much more pragmatic about the whole thing. The only thing Gnome contributes at the moment is confusion. If Gnome continues along this path, maybe Gnome-2.8 will be the last contribution to the Linux desktop from the Gnome camp (the last that matters that is).
/Jarek
“we open source devs should stop insisting that users “read the manual”…truth is, most users aren’t reading anything, yet they can work OK with other systems (e.g. windows). that should be the same standard for us.”
Two things.
One people aren’t born knowing how to work with computers.
Two have you ever toured the computer book section? There’s a reason the “for dummies” series of books exist.
“Gnome developers were trying to force-feed their idea of file browsing on me”
Uh-huh. Now how can free software “force” anything from anyone? Use our monopoly on you? Maybe a better phrase would have been “lightly suggested”, or “recommended”.
Quite frankly I think that most of you are making a mountain out of a molehill. If a file browser bends you this bad? I hate to see how you handle life’s greater issues.
I’ve done a lot of user support and troubleshooting at the company where I’m the sole IT person and I can tell you that even users who have been using computers for years have no idea what the file system is.
They keep telling me “My document is in Word” or they search for their documents on the “Recent Files” menu on Windows and call me if it’s not there any more. They have no idea that the documents areon their filesystems.
I’m currently testing out Gnome 2.6 with spatial Nautilus on them (a few folders on the desktop, e.g. Documents, Music” and they seem to be adjusting to it well. I might write up the results if it seems worthwhile.
The point is for people like these, who only use 3 – 4 folders anyway, spatial Nautilus seems to be a very workable idea & I’ll probably be turning it on for them when I implement FC2
At first I really hated spatial Nautilus. However, slowly it sort of grew on me. I think a big problem is that everything is double click activated by default, meaning the action that should be the most used one in the new model, which is using the middle mouse button, is also a double click action. Double-clicking with a scroll-wheel is just painful. Double-middle-clicking a new folder closes the current folder and opens the new folder with all the spatial attributes (size, location etc.) of the child.
Another aspect that makes people frustrated is that the spatial interface limits the user by default. Want to go to the parent folder, and close the current folder (a reverse of middle clicking a folder)? Sorry, you can’t, the drop down hierarchy list in the window frame doesn’t support the middle mouse button. Aha, but the GNOME developers are smart people and know this problem, so they invented the keyboard shortcut Shift-Alt-Up that does what you want. The new problem is of course that nobody knows about this shortcut. I’m not really sure how to fix this aspect.
Anyway, if you want to give spatial Nautilus a second chance, try this: change Nautilus to single-click mode in the preferences (it’s really a lot better for spatiality), and check out the keyboard shortcuts at http://gnomesupport.org/wiki/index.php/KeyboardShortcuts. For instance, close all parent folders is Shift-Control-W. Suddenly that’s pretty powerful. Just keep opening up new windows, fill the whole damn screen if you want to see everything at once, and when you find what you want close the lot with a single combo.
It seems as if the file manager’s behaviour is a very emotional thing to some people here.
To me it is just a tool, and I really don’t care if the hammer has a red or a blue handle.
I dual-boot to KDE or Win2k. Both filemanagers allow me to eighter open several windows or only one. Without changing any settings (just open a new window if you want).
When I rearrange files I open 2-3 browser windows. That doesn’t happen very often. No need to keep rearranging files every day.
Most often, I only use the browser to view or open files or to run programs. And for this one browser window is more than enough. So this is my default setting.
> I don’t remember which version of Windows that does open the
> new window at the everytime when you browser directories. I
> remember, I always go right away to the options and change
> to open in the same window rather than new window and enable
> address bar.
WinNT4.
I installed it some days ago and the first thing I did was to change the options as you did!
“They keep telling me “My document is in Word” or they search for their documents on the “Recent Files” menu on Windows and call me if it’s not there any more.”
I believe you are the wrong person for this job then. If your clients are used to ‘My document is in Word’ and ‘Recent Files’ etc. then why do you want to test GNOME on them ? It’s quite obvious they want to use Windows. You as IT specials (as you claim yourself to be) are there to serve your clients with the software they need for their work and not force them what you think is right for them. This is entirely misleading and most likely not your job.
“I’m currently testing out Gnome 2.6 with spatial Nautilus on them (a few folders on the desktop, e.g. Documents, Music” and they seem to be adjusting to it well. I might write up the results if it seems worthwhile.”
Now that they found out after come cumbersome attempts howto use it they ask you where PowerPoint, RationalRose, Word, Excel, Microsoft Access, Microsoft Encarta and all the professional software are.
What people need is a nice wizard coming at them the first time they log into 2.6
It will tell them how to navigate folders, that it will remember windows posistions and middleclick will open a new window.
It is sooo easy to navigate around if you wan’t to copy things.
E.G I go to my Documents dir with middleclick. Then I go to som subdir with left click that opens a new window. Then i go forward with middleclick and find the document i want to copy.
Then click on the Document window which is still open, and middleclick to another subdir.
Then I drag my document from one window to the other.
The maximum numbers of windows I had open at any time is 2.
So a tutorial to new users would be nice. Since it really is pleasent.
“It’s quite obvious they want to use Windows. You as IT specials (sic) (as you claim yourself to be) are there to serve your clients with the software they need for their work and not force them what you think is right for them. This is entirely misleading and most likely not your job. ”
Well, if my users want to use Windows, they can go buy it themselves. And until they can afford to buy everyone a copy, they have to support it themselves.
-hugh
I really prefer Nautilus as it is now than how it was before. Spacial Nautilus is great because it very logical. Each folder is its own object: it has its own position/size/view mode/arrange options/background etc.
And when you really have to browse a deeply nested folder, just right-click on this folder and choose “browse folder”. Couldn’t be simpler…
Every Gnome 2.6 install I’ve seen so far (Fedora Core 2-beta & Debian experimental, which I’m using now) has a launcher in the in applications menu to open nautilus in browser view. The launcher being “Browse Filesystem”. Though it isn’t default it’s still there in plain view.
As for the spatial idea… I’ve been using it for a couple of days and I like it.
To begin with It’s not like it is in Win 95. The windows remember size and position (better than it sounds) and the backgrounds of the windows can be individually set.
I like the new features. Lets se how I get on with them…
I just want to say that I like GNOME, and I have used KDE for a long time.
now about the spatial view, I think it’s is funny and it works.
GNOME 2.6 just got better by
“Microsoft Windows just got better”
c u around
I have to concur with his point about Gnome going astray after 1.4. It’s been a long, downhill ride since that time of multiple paradigm shifts, buggy and underpowered software. It’s a shame that I’ve had to move to ROX just to have a decent GTK environment.
And, yes, it is extremely annoying that you can’t change the damn colors w/o editing a file. That is utterly ridiculous and something that should be fixed. The “we don’t want people to screw up their desktop” part could be fixed very easily by not allowing you to use the same color for widgets and text. That’s not hard to do.
Also, who the hell decided that the GTK widget icons wouldn’t be tied to the icon theme? That’s nonsense. If I want the Noia icons (for instance) and the Amaranth widget style, why must I be forced to have th Amaranth icons for my wigets? Absolutely preposterous.
Yes you can edit the .gtkrc files and all that business but haven’t we gotten past those days of Windows 3.1? I shouldn’t have to put up with that rigamarole every time I change my widget theme.
Its funny that I cannot remember the last time I tried to change colours on my desktop. Even in Windows. I have never done this. I do not do this. That must be because I suck at getting colours that work well together.
The bottom line is it is not a very big deal. I do not even know how to change colours in Windows either.
About Spatial Nautilus vs Browser, well, its is the distributors job to use the defaults they feel their audience will prefer. GNOME only provides the sources, and distrubtors can hack away and change default prefs. Its usually a mater of shipping a set of GConf schemas and keys set to certain values anyway.
About a GUI for changing those, then you may have a point.
But spatial Nautilus is pretty nice. I have gotten used to it already.
I’m still on Fedora Core 1, so I haven’t tried yet, but I’m really looking forward to the new spacial Nautilus. I have even changed the settings in Nautilus 2.4 to be as spacial as possible, and I have to say… WOW! I actually _felt_ an improvement in my productivity. It isn’t difficult to get yourself used to this new behaviour, and once you are familiar with that, you can’t go back.
So I really hope that GNOME 2.8 will not revert back to browse mode, just to please a vocal minority of its users.
While I like spatial nautilus, the fact that you have Gconf-editor for certain settings annoyies me. I have complained about this several times but asking for options to be put in the GUI in a user freindly way gets you flamed, and be accused as a troll by GNOME users and developers.
Some really needed features that are hidden in GConf-editor include
*Spatial/Browse mode (obvious)
*Window button order (not everyone likes Windows style Windows)
*Menu Tear offs
*toggling icons like computer and wastebasket on the desktop.
*Splash screen location
I believe as long as GNOME requires you to use GConf to change a setting, ANY setting, no matter what then it is NOT usable.
I tried GNOME 2.6 for a while, liked it because of spatial nautilus, went back to KDE 3.2 after STILL finding too many options in gconf, figured out that konqueror can do spatial too, and it lets you do other cool stuff like split view (like having two windows in one) and tabs.
So GNOME needs to dump gconf-editor and make life easy for both new user AND experts. KDE may be criticized at first for its options, but when you actually LOOK at the options most of them make sense.
Many Linux developers/projects are affraid of copying/reusing good ideas, sometimes some people are so eager to the corporative lies of ‘invent’ and ‘innovate’ that they screw up years of logical computing evolution.
The spatial navigation is only an example.
Come on guys, do as MS does, when something is a good idea, just use it, why reinvent the wheel again and again and again and again…
The Linux deskptop environments will be ready for prime time the day the user doesn’t feel any different from Windows or MacOS, but because the system is more flexible and powerful!
Hey there, we can easily remove gconf-editor from the next release if you want us to.
I think I’ll like the spatial mode, because at the moment my preferred Filer is the ROX-Filer, and the new nautilus-screenshots look very minimalistic to me, just like the ROX.
This new Nautilus could become the ‘perfect’ filemanager for me, because it can attach little icons to folders, a feature ROX is really missing.
The only thing that sucks is that you have to doubleclick to open folders and files, but thank god, this can be fixed in the Configuration-GUI
.
BTW. I’ve not used Gnome 2.6 yet, because I do not really care about installing a new DE every month.
One of the greatest features of Firebox / Mozilla web browsers is the tabbed browsing. Fixes the clutter of spatial new window browsing.
So why not apply the same metaphor to directory browsers?
Why the sarcasm? Thats not AT ALL what your USER is saying. No one wants to dig through a GUI that stores the options we want LET ALONE the command line. We want to be able to do these things in preferences tabs, via a GUI. Your users are not morons, but GNOME developers in general appear to believe they are.
Thats the primary reason I never stick with GNOME, it makes me feel like a retard within days. Sure I like some of the applications, but none are part of GNOME.
Then with comments like what you just made being the representation of GNOME devs, I think I might just stop using GNOME _FULL STOP_. You claim to care about your users, but look at that comment. You made NO ATTEMP to understand your user, you just came across as an arrogant fool…
Middle double-click with wheel mouse is the shortest way to RSI..I couldn’t use it for more than 5 minutes
Wow, what a dumb comment. If this is the way gnome devs think user input should be handled, I begin to understand why gnome is in the state it is in right now.
There is a KDE, which has all the features, that Nicolas missed on the GNOME.
I’m serious. We could remove it. In fact, there was quite a lot of discussion about its applicability when we first considered shipping it with GNOME 2.0.
I’ve just gone through GConf again – there’s very few settings available that are not already exposed in the user interface (particularly application settings, but also for the main desktop components). Most of them are tweaky little things which we (as very capable users) might find important, but general users won’t give a rats arse about.
(The Nautilus Spatial vs. Browser setting is a slightly different case – there will probably be a setting exposed in the File Management prefs dialogue for the next release.)
The point is: We ship gconf-editor as a troubleshooting tool with a simpler interface than gconf-tool, not as something that users should be required to use. You have to remember that in a forum such as this, you have totally capable technical users who care about things like gconf-editor and the few esoteric settings that are not exposed in the user interface. 🙂
Thus, I don’t think it’s ridiculous at all – nor evidence of sarcasm – to suggest that we could remove it from the Desktop release. We could ship it separately, or in a sysadmin’s kit or something like that.
To me it is just a tool, and I really don’t care if the hammer has a red or a blue handle.
Uh, the difference between a MacOS Classic or Nautilaus-esque spatial filebrowser and the directory tree + file list style of Windows’ Explorer is more like the difference between a hammer and a screwdriver than the colour of the handle. They require fundamentally different mental models to use and act in *very* different ways.
It’s not an emotional issue, it’s a practical one. I find a spatial filebrowser tedious and inefficient to use for any non-trivial file manipulation activities, and I’ve tried both types extensively.
Tabbed browsing for file managers would not be an improvement.
It works well for web browsers because web pages are, primarily, discrete, one-way communicative entities with little inter-document communication (which is to say, in english, you spend most of your time reading them and they rarely have to interact with each other).
It’s for much the same reason tabs work well for simple file editing and terminal sessions – you spend the bulk of your time working (interactively [0]) with only one at a time and they generally have little need to pass data between themselves.
Contrast this to file management, wherein the split for read/write is probably closer to 60/40 for high-end users (ie: you spend approx 60% of the time “reading” from a file management window (browsing, opening files) and 40% of the time “writing” to it (renaming, moving/copying, saving/creating)) and multiple “pages” are nearly always interacting.
Basically, with web pages, it’s uncommon to need two or more available simultaneously for viewing/manipulation, whereas with file management, being able to view/manipulate two folders at once is either practically essential, or unnecessary.
Tabbed browsing’s primary use is to allow opening of numerous “views” to load in the background for later reading and/or continuous referral. Again, this is something that isn’t really applicable to file management, which is mostly on-demand, short term activity.
[0] The “interactive” part is important, because if, for example, terminals are being used “passively” (say, to monitor logfiles for activity) tabs don’t work very well because they require manual switching between to check for activity.
If it would have an option, easily accessible from any Nautilus window, to turn it back to the browser style view I’d not have much against it. But it doesn’t. Lame.
stays the fact, that the user has no GUI to toggle the navigation mode. havoc and consorts want to sell us this as something like user friendlyness but in fact it is NOT.
From the article:
“For example, one GNOME developer says there’s a good reason why users can’t change individual colors in desktop themes: Someone might accidentally make both the text and background white, thus rendering the text unreadable.”
4 letters, lame
“For example, one GNOME developer says there’s a good reason why users can’t change individual colors in desktop themes: Someone might accidentally make both the text and background white, thus rendering the text unreadable.”
So how about this …
If a user attempts to change both the text and the background to the same color, just pop up a warning dialog or something asking the user if they’re sure they want to do this, or don’t allow them to select the same color for both. Doesn’t sound too complicated to me.
I think the spatial file browser is great. Its not simply just “Open folders in new window”, there can be only one window per folder. The memory aspect is great too, i know that when i click “Home” a folder will open in exactly the same place i left it.
I deliberately started using it with an open mind, and found it to be very fast to use. Im only quicker with the command line for the most trivial changes now.
For some reason, spatial nautilus just feels more natural and ‘real’ than the file managers of old. The only once i ever remember prefering to the command line was on RiscOS and nautilus is definately better than that.
i for one don’t give a damn if GNOME decide to fill the screen of its users with tons of windows. I use Konqueror as my file manager and i think it’s the only way to go, but natural selection will work also this time and we’ll see which way it’s better
ps
i also use OS X and my finder is NOT spatial
“So how about this …
If a user attempts to change both the text and the background to the same color, just pop up a warning dialog or something asking the user if they’re sure they want to do this, or don’t allow them to select the same color for both. Doesn’t sound too complicated to me.”
It’s not that simple, if someone chooses color r:255;g:255;b:255 for the foreground and r:254;g:254;b:254 for the background, the colors would be diferent but you would still end up with unreadable text.
It would be possible to put some sort of limit based on the distance between the two colors in an RGB (or HSV) color space.
On my desktop i have one magical icon which reads “Browse Filesystem”. So, when i want to search for something in my utter chaotic filesys i click on it. When i want fast and logical access i click on my desktop directories (ie spatial view). That’s, IMHO, the main purpose of new and productive GNOME desktop.
Frankly i can’t leave without it. I wouldn’t go back if i was obligated to.
The problem with most reviews is that it’s about some guy who tested it for about 20mins and wrote some review.
When i installed GNOME 2.6 i had the same reaction, didn’t like it. Then i started browsing info about it and educated myself to understand how this new desktop worked.
Those kind of reviews are the same as of when windows users come to linux and and it’s hard geeky. It’s simple, there is usually no “My Computer”, nor an icon which says “Internet Explorer”(tm). Well, i for one, find a correctly setup linux box more robust, easy to use and maintainable then a windows one.
Bottom line, you should not review an apple like it was an orange, first learn what an orange is.
The quote is not even remotely true. I get the impression that Petreley took a sensible comment out of context, and decided that’s “why we don’t support colour changing”. Very silly. The fact is that i’s a low-priority feature that we’d gratefully accept a patch for – and I said exactly that to Petreley when he asked about this in May 2002!
My experience isn’t the same as yours. Most time I spend in file managers is wandering up and down trees to navigate to the appropriate work area (e.g. downloads, current project, temporary workspace, group shared info).
Spatial browsing might save some of this, at the expense of screen area (might even be quite good with multiple workspaces).
But I think that tabbed file management, with my pre-selected set of tabs, would be even better. You can try tabbed file management today using Konqueror, at least for navigation. Problem is that it is not yet integrated with “Save as” application functions, neither (AFAIK) can you use it for drag-and-drop file moving since hovering over a tab doesn’t make that tab pop to the top.
Tabbed file browsing would also work for Internet file upload/download – again, you nearly get this with Konqueror today.
If you want to look at the metaphors, “tabbed folders” is a much closer metaphor of my desk-side filing cabinet, where I quickly move between folders for different activities.
(And it would innovatively break away from the Windows 95 tradition (:-)
“…users who are invariably too incompetent to pick their own colors but are smart enough to memorize shift-clicks and keystrokes or edit the registry to get Nautilus to work the way they like.”
I -kind- of like gnome desktop and have nothing against gnome, but this guy is just right.
David
The quote is not even remotely true. I get the impression that Petreley took a sensible comment out of context, and decided that’s “why we don’t support colour changing”. Very silly. The fact is that i’s a low-priority feature that we’d gratefully accept a patch for – and I said exactly that to Petreley when he asked about this in May 2002!
So for the most basic of functions, changing font and background colors, you “accept a patch”? And this ABSOLUTELY BASIC FUNCTION AVAILABLE IN ALL DESKTOP GUIs is not implemented SINCE MAY 2002?
Thank god for KDE.
There is a VERY good reason why a lot of “options” were removed.
In the uber-configurable days of gnome-1.4 heaps of bug-reports/request to gnome-lists came in because people had messed up their desktop and couldn’t work out how to fix it
BTW – I’m running FCT3 and the first thing I do is add a menu entry that gives spatial browsing (and add a menu-panel of course)
I’ve tried out Gnome 2.6 a few times, and sad to say, after enjoying 2.4 so much, I find this rather a step backwards. Kde 3.2 (and no I’m not a “kde person”) represents a real advancement of the desktop, finally incorporating useful features like better tabs in konqueror, better desktop scrolling with the wheel mouse, and ability to drag windows from one desktop to another. Gnome 2.6? I haven’t even figured out how to properly change the wallpaper yet. Sad really…
It might be “basic”, but it’s also fairly unimportant. Given that we’ve always had themes anyway, which provide a more coherent way of changing the look (and colours) of your widgets, this has never been very high on the priority list for most GNOME developers – they’re doing all sorts of more important things! 🙂
But yes, it has long been considered one of those things we’d put in if someone submitted a patch to do it well. If you think it’s basic, fire up your editor and kick some arse! 🙂
(Note that this has nothing to do with fonts; the feature Petreley refers to is customised colours independent of your theme.)