The recently announced GNOME 2.6 has finally brought many features long awaited by the Linux desktop fans. GNOME 2.6 is all about ease of use, performance and unification and while it’s unfortunately hard to say that the GNOME desktop feels fast, it certainly began to be really easy to use and it has consistent look and feel — and that consistency is what makes up for most of the quality of a graphical user environment. UPDATE: Scroll down the article to read some added commentary.
Among lots of reviews of the new GNOME that have appeared on the Web,
there is no single one that does not mention the spatial Nautilius
file browser. While most reviewers find it really faster than the
old one (which is true), they seem to hate the spatial mode and blame the GNOME
developers for not providing an option to switch it off. They say: “you would
not like the web browser to open each link in a new window, wouldn’t you?
so why do you make me open each folder in a new windows and do not provide
an easily accessible option to switch this mode off?”.
Well, that point of view is one-sided. The whole thing about spatiality
is to provide the user with a real-life-alike interface
that keeps objects’ state and does not alter the contents of any
physical object if not ordered to. Browser mode folder windows
violate these rules by replacing physical object (folder,
represented on screen by a window) contents
with new set of icons every time the user opens a new folder,
and not retaining folders’ state (view mode, sort order,
icon placement).
Think of your hard drive contents as of a desk full of drawers.
Every time you put something into a drawer, you may be sure
that the next time you open the same drawer it will be in
the same place (and the drawer itself will remain in the same
place). So, when you open a folder and try to locate a
particular icon, it should be where you put it before.
Simple?
Now I can hear all that “what about the web browser” croud again.
Please imagine, what’s the closest real-life representation of
a web page? Well, it might be a book. While reading a book,
you can see only two pages at once, and every time you turn
the page, the new set of two pages replaces the two seen
before. And that’s exactly how web browsers work: clicking
a link replaces what you are seeing with the new content,
unless the link points to another web site (in which case
it may open a new browser window for your convenience).
Reading the book, you may even put some bookmarks on different
pages and that’s exactly how tabbed web browsing works:
you may keep several sub-pages of the same web site temporarily
bookmarked, switch between them with one mouse click
and get rid of them (remove the bookmark) when they are
no longer needed.
So, people in fact love when the machine works in a way
resembling behaviour of real-life objects, but it seems that only when
the “spatial” application is a web browser: they accept
the book metaphor with web pages, but reject the drawer
metaphor with folders and files. Sometimes they even
abuse the physical metaphor of tabbed browsing by opening
multiple pages – not subpages of the same web site! – in
multiple tabs of a browser window. I even know few people
who never open more than one browser window, viewing all
pages in tabs; I hope they do not try to glue a daily
set of newspapers together before reading them…
What is the real cause of all these attacks on the spatial Nautilius?
In my opinion, it is just bad file organisation coupled with
a bunch of old bad habits. It’s really hard to use a spatial
file browser if someone keeps his or her files in a ten-folder-deep
structure. Browser-mode file browsers hide the lack of thought
and organisation in the filesystem structure; spatial ones do not.
Folder structure should be simple and as shallow as possible,
and the “master” folders (something like My Images or
My Music folders known from Windows) should have their own
shortcuts on a GNOME panel, so that playing your favourite
song would only require opening My Music from the panel,
opening the appriopriate album folder and double-clicking
a file icon, instead of browsing straight from the home
directory (or, worse, the root one) through several levels
of subfolders.
Keeping the filesystem structure clear will also reduce symptoms of the next
problem mentioned in many reviews: screen clutter. By the way, I cannot imagine
how spatial browsing must lead to screen clutter: opening folders
with double-middle-click or Shift-double-click closes the parent folder
window at once. And even if it is not enough, one can click one field
in the gconf configuration editor and turn Nautilitus into
“classical” non-spatial file browser. Don’t know how to
use gconf? Then you shouldn’t change the way Nautilitus works,
I presume.
What’s worst, attacks on the spatial browser try to stop the innovation.
While it is hard to call the GNOME’s spatial Nautilius “innovative”, as spatial
browsers have a long history, to mention only the famous Macintosh Finder,
it is certainly innovative to bring this idea back to life, after all these
years of browser-like file managers domination. Even Apple and Microsoft,
after years of commitment to spatial interfaces (though much half-hearted
in case of Microsoft), turned back and tried to ride the ‘web browser
alike interface’ hype, with not so brilliant results. And now, when the time
to ressurect the spatial ideas has finally come, people accustomed to the
bad interface design try to defend it only because for the past years
they have been using it! They seem to be againt re-learning the new interface,
even if it promises to be so much more straightforward and natural,
and keep using something that reminds Windows 1.0 MS-DOS Executive
or Windows 3.0 File Manager and not a modern file browser.
While spatial Nautilius is not perfect (why oh why does it need 2
minutes to list 3000 files stored in one folder while Windows NT 4.0
Explorer lists 10000 files in 15 seconds on the same machine…), it is able
to recreate the desktop metaphor that started the graphical desktop revolution
with Xerox Alto and Star so many years ago. Please, don’t stop all these
good ideas coming back again. And remember that the spatial applications do
not organise your work by themselves: you have to help them and keep your data
organised yourself and then you will see how much spatial interface may make
work easier and more effecient.
Radoslaw Sokol is a network administrator in Poland.
OSNews’ EIC’s opinion:
Personally, I am all for the spatial interface, but not on top of the current hierarchical file systems. When filesystems become fully DB-based and MIME-based with no folders (they would be sorted based on extended attributes criteria, not based on folders) *then* a spatial interface would make absolute sense because each view/window would represent a different “search” result based on attribute search: For example, “show me the files that belongs to XX package, were created before 2004, are JPEG or PNG and their EXIF information includes the word ‘Greece Holidays'”, a query created by an easy to use dialog, like in this example. Each query can be saved down if the user wishes to, and because each one is unique, it would need to be represented in a different result window, that’s where the spatiality should come in.
But as things are today, the spatial Nautilus is going live before its time. Explorer-like file managers are a better bet for the kind of filesystems we utilize today. Yes, spatiality is the future. Not just yet though because the filesystem part needs a grassroot “upgrade” too.
The above example comes from BeOS, where its file manager, Tracker, is also a spatial file manager (unfortunately also on top of a hierarchical FS with folders, so spatiality was also not well suited despite the fact BFS was an advanced fs for its time). When Tracker became open source in 2000, the FIRST thing users added to the codebase was the option to not open each folder on its own window. It was the most common problem users had with the fm, just like today with Nautilus. This says a lot and unfortunately the Gnome Project didn’t learn from history and they basically repeated the same mistake. — Eugenia
“That’s why it’d be great if I could hit a hotkey and the spatial window would transform to browser mode (like the functionality top-right button in OS X finder). Is this already there?”
Try doing a right-click–> browse folder.
“However, I do understand what one comment writer said–that this feature has been “force fed” to people.”
Well one can view any decision that “others” make as “force-fed” (especially if one has a liberal definition of force).
I’m reminded of when RH had a desktop distro, and all the “advance” decisions it would make (GCC, Bluecurve, etc), and all the complaints it got because of it. And eventually the worth, much after the fact would be proven. Someone has to take point, and get the arrows, so number two and three doesn’t have to. GNOME apparently is the arrow-taker, and maybe, just maybe we’ll get a desktop out of this, and the charges of “tail-light following” will be behind us.
All spatial file managers that I have seen have a problem whereby if you are trying to manage files nested a couple of directories deep the screen gets strewn with windows and managing the windows becomes more of a problem than managing the files at hand, also it becomes difficult to determine the parent folder once it has disappeared into the clutter of windows behind the one you just opened. It’s not an acceptable work-around to say “just don’t make deeply nested directories” on a UNIX system when your home directory is usually already nested at least two levels deep.
There are at least two ways to fix the problem with too many windows.
As I grew up with System 6 and 7, the spatial file manager I have the most experience with is Apple’s Finder. From System 7 on (released 1991) it had good keyboard navigation. You could hit Cmd-Down to descend in the hierarchy, and hit Cmd-Up to open the parent folder. If you held down Ctrl when you opened a file or directory (by keyboard or double-click) the original window would be closed. This way you could hold Ctrl and double-click your way down the hierarchy with each window disapperaing as soon as you were done with it.
The second way I know for not opening lots of windows when navigating deeply in the folder structure is to have a right-click menu which lets you navigate the file system. There was at least one extension for Finder that did just that (part of Norton Utilities was it?) This way you only need to open a window for the folder you actually want to do something with, regardless of how deep you must go to find it.
All the features mentioned here are also implemented in BeOS’ Tracker. Actually, with its default settings I find Tracker to be very similar to Finder as of System 7. It’s obvious that Finder inspired the BeOS team alot. They refined it by adding a single window mode, a menu for opening a folder x levels up and the nifty copy/link/move context menu mentioned in an early post.
I agree that clicking on a link is similar to turning the pages of a book. Both get you to a different page to view. What’s missing here is how the spatial part also applies to this. Given the same scenario imagine having a new book appear every time you turn a page. After say 20-30 pages there are 20-30 books one needs to close…And the drawer thing, c’mon. It’s more like I open a drawer only to find several more drawers to open. Then after opening one of those drawers there are several more to open, etc.
How anyone can say this is faster is certainly beyond me. If I go 5-6 directory levels deep I then have to close 5-6 windows when I’m done. How on earth does this make file brwosing faster when without spatial I only need to close one window when I’m finished? Keep in mind the deeper you go in the directory the more windows you need to close. Sorry, I think spatial sucks.
A really good File Browser should be like Google :-). Or like Gmail. You should only search at the content of the document, instead of where it is located on your filesystem.
Looking for it in the filesystem should be only an option.
I mean that seriously : I’m already doing it for the web. Instead of typing a homepage in the browser, I type for example : midelware + NMM to get on the homepage of the mutlimedia midleware “NMM” . It’s much easier as to write the full internet http adresse – that I also never can remeber. So, if I’m looking for a textfile “Paris.txt” on my filesystem which handles from my hollydays in paris, I should write “Holidas Paris”, and then wroooom, I got a list from the 10 best matches in 0.05 seconds . Like google works
.
“Look at all this time wasted on one issue that was solved 10 years ago by Windows and Mac. ”
Actually I think that Windows is part of the problem. How many of the above complaints are based on MS’s “implimentation” of a spatial browser?
“Spatial doesn’t work with deep hierarchies – which is what most users have today – at the office, every network drive is 5-6 folders deep, at least. A tree makes it easy to navigate and drag and drop files between folders. ”
Not if it’s a very deep tree. And it’s no fun when you have a gret breadth either.
“This is ridiculous. We worry about trivia and don’t fix the real problems of Linux: 2 incompatible desktop environments, so developers don’t have one API to shoot at (like Windows, like Mac).”
That’s two API’s.
“I remember The Kompany explaining how they had to build their apps to run on different distros, and what a mess! I think they finally got fed up. ”
And how long ago was this?
“You can talk all you want about choice, but developers don’t want choice of API’s on something as basic as a desktop environment, and neither do the users. ”
I think it’s only fair to point out that on those “other” platforms, MOST users haven’t ever been presented with the choice of different desktops. How can we say they don’t prefer something, they never had?
“The only hope for the Open Source desktop looks like Syllable, or OpenBeos. ”
Those two are choices. If choice is the noose that people think it is? Then lets have only ONE DE. No more Macs, or any other alternatives. One API to rule them all.
Confidentually I think a lot of people are simply afraid of choice, but choice isn’t something to be feared. In fact there would be no progress without choice (the old and the new, pick).
If you land at a page for middleware using the search term midelware, I think that is quite an accomplishment.
Besides that, you don’t need the 10 best matches, you need the match “Paris.txt”. And if you know the filename, (it seems you do) the Find File utility of Windows 3.11 is all you need!
BeOS did that, so the answer is obviously OpenBeOS
ok, now i try to imagine me saying to a customer on phone: “no, it is sooo inovative, you are just to stoopid to realize my genius!” … i bet that costumer simply will accept that i develope software the way i want. it is not like he could just turn away and use some other software or stop paying me …errr… or could he?
so to put it short: i don’t like it, i won’t use it, and YES, i use spatial filemanagers a lot when i have to… at work i often have to use solaris with cde and i was a big amiga fan back in the good olde days, so i won’t accept the explanation that i only have to get used to it. nautilus just started to get usable and less pain in the ass… it is okay as long as i can put it easyly back into “usefull mode”, but i fear now it will take twice as long for nautilus to get rid of it’s countles bugs.
Nice idea, but there’s some file types that just don’t play nice with searches unless you force the user to manually input some meta-data.
Eg.
I want to find the digital pictures from my Paris trip.
There’s no real way for the computer to know which pictures are from Paris and which are from the barbecue I had last week. Unless I differentiate between the two by manually adding information (Filename/meta-data) the search is not going to give me my pictures back.
Do we really need a set of information tags for each file, filled in by the user. IMO it would be a pain in the neck.
Gnome is not pro choice. They hid the option that turns the stpatial brosing off somewhere in the freaking gconf. Gconf is bad, and evil is completely corrupted my GNOME installation. Whenewer I start gnome i get this weird message that gconfd is messed up, and then the system stops responding. I cleared my HOME directory but it doesn’t help.
I’m back with KDE right now because GNOME doesn’t work anymore for no reason. Although they made a great improvement in terms of speed, KDE is still a lot faster, only if it wasnt so visually bloated (vide konqueror).
On Konqueror’s menu, click Settings, Configure toolbars and you can get rid of buttons you don’t want. KDE gives you that choice. This works for most KDE Applications.
I see what you mean, and it is kind of fascinating. The items in the task:
– A review on OSNews of OpenBSD on the Ultra 5
– Some eBay auctions for Sun Ultra workstations
– An OpenOffice spreadsheet for calculating the price/performance ratio of the eBay auctions
– Acrobat Reader showing the Just the Facts of some Sun Ultra workstation.
would under most modern OS’s have to be saved as documents or shortcuts to documents in a task folder. You could browse to the folder (file system acting as task manager) and “open all” or something similar. Then you would (sort of) have your task back.
A more elegant solution along the lines of what I was talking about could define a task as basically a single desktop, and when you saved the task the OS saved as much info as it needed to restore that desktop to its current state. It would save URL’s for webpages, your locations in web pages and PDF’s, the size of all windows, which had focus, pretty much everything. When you chose to restore the “Shopping for Sun hardware” task, a new desktop would pop up in your desktop-changer tool (whatever/wherever that was) and you could drop back into that task at any time.
A solution that uses an app as the task’s “container” rather than a desktop is pretty similar, the programming requirements just get transferred around a bit.
Practically speaking, this sounds really hard to do full-on. Mozilla and Excel and Acrobat would be easy – but what about an app like Photoshop that has internal window positions to keep track of? Apps would maybe have to be “task compatible” or something… able to save their state themselves so that an external app, like a task manager, could call on them to restore to “save point 293948” or some such. Sounds like kind of a mess, but the result would be great! I hadn’t really thought about it in the task terms before – I do have a lot of junk open when I go shopping for tech or am reasearching something in Google. And bookmarking a bunch of stuff hardly equals the ability to “restore task” at a later date.
“I’m back with KDE right now because GNOME doesn’t work anymore for no reason. Although they made a great improvement in terms of speed, KDE is still a lot faster, only if it wasnt so visually bloated (vide konqueror).”
This is just a troll, no more.
If you likde gnome, use gnome.
if you prefer kde, use kde.
They’re both very good DEs imho.
I prefer kde because of the layout used, QT and KDE dev libs are so great, and I have to learn more C++
I like the OO paradigm in kde.
eg : a file is a file, no matter of it is local, ssh (fish://) ftp and so on…
my 2 cents…
“Eg.
I want to find the digital pictures from my Paris trip.
There’s no real way for the computer to know which pictures are from Paris and which are from the barbecue I had last week. Unless I differentiate between the two by manually adding information (Filename/meta-data) the search is not going to give me my pictures back. ”
I’m not certain why this is the pain people think it is? Remember back in the “good old days” of film photography? People when they got their prints back, would write on the back what that picture was about (e.g. sister’s high school picture), or they would write on the envelope the subject e.g. Family picnic.
Personally I hope that Nautilus developers are reading those comments and what even more important – take some bits out of it for Gnome 2.8.
I didn’t read all of them, but even after reading a third part of it one could find there enough problems pointed out and enough suggestions for improvement offered…
when you put a name on your file adn cathegorize it in your picture folder, preferable under paris/holidays or whatever so you can find it by browsing later, why not instead add it to a real meta-data tag, and make a “folder” in your DE act like a result of the querie that brings up pics form paris?
meta-data on objects are good and I can’t see why not everyone is striving for such goal.
ever forgot where you put a file? remember it’s content?
well, if you had meta-data on it you could easily have found it. (spatial is good, makes us work as we act, but why nt go one step further. meta-data would help us use our in-built association system to find our data.
human mind has been (more or less) proved to work with associations rather than indexing…
I think that spatial nautilus is totally incoherent with the new gnome fileselector! In spatial nautilus you can’t set bookmarks on dirs, so i don’use it…
If you try Microsoft Longhorn you’ll see that there are a lot of stuff very similar to GNOME and OS X, I don’t care of it, but trying explorer file manager you see a very interesting way to access to the directories, it is simply the best for me: it’s similar to gnome fileselector (and CDE fm), but more powerfull because has combobox insted simply buttons.
You can see a screenshot here –> http://assente.altervista.org/?q=node/view/23
I REALLY HOPE THAT NAUTILUS WILL ADOPT A SIMILAR WAY!!!
You are right about the virtual desktops. KDE’s session manager, albeit technically “broken”, almost exactly matches your description.
I’ve drawed some very simple mockups of my idea. In the last window, imagine the last tab is a notepad window editing OSNews.txt 😉
http://dmac.webcindario.com/page.html
But now let’s take a look at KDE. Its applications are already session aware, so they can be ordered to create save points and restore from them.
Normally, the session manager saves all applications at logout, and restores them when you login again. Now the following changes would be necessary:
– Implement tabs in KWin, so that multiple windows can be grouped together as tabs within a single task window
– New “windows” are automatically created as tabs within the current task window.
– When you close a task window, KWin asks to save it somewhere. Also, KWin can load saved tasks. The functionality is about the same as that of the session manager.
So, that should not too difficult. Maybe someone can convince me to abandon Pascal and learn C(++) instead?
The problem with Metadata is:
1. Putting .jpg files in a folder with a name == putting text on the envelope of real photos;
2. Automatic folders based on metadata stored for each .jpg file == writing the subject on the back on each photo, put all photos you ever made on one big pile and have a machine sort it all out
The problem with 2. is clear: it is very, VERY time-consuming to label ALL photos ONE BY ONE. And if you apply the metadata changes to all of them at once, you could use folders just as well, couldn’t you?
I don’t agree with the article, but I like GNOME’s spatial mode. But please, give it a chance before dismissing it. Try it for a while. You’ll need to unlearn some Windows habits, but in the end, you might just like it. In my experience Spatial works very well for managing user documents, but horribly for system files and code (thats why a browser mode is still available). I use both. If AFTER trying it, you still don’t like it, use the GConf key to turn it off. From what I’ve read, the Nautilus developers have listened and are going to add an option to turn it off (like they should have done in the first place).
Still, I have a couple of gripes. The browser mode needs to be MORE separate from the spatial mode. The whole spatial metaphor doesn’t work well with browser mode, so I’d prefer if no options were saved “per folder” while in browser mode (and browser mode option changes should absolutely NOT affect spatial mode views). Also, along these lines, I think “show hidden and backup files” should be a folder option (and more easily accessible than the preferences page) in spatial mode, while there should be a single, separate option for browser mode. Finally, an option to open a spatial window from browser mode would be nice. With these changes, it would be damn near perfect for me.
Why do not unity the power of tabed browsing to the idea of spatial Nautilus?
I disagree with the views expressed in the article. Users do not care about any desktop metaphors, they just want to work efficiently and quickly with their computers, and it is not necessary that emulating reality achieves that. Quite the contrary: Computers give us the ability to overcome the limits of reality. Please reconsider your opinions.
Tabbed browsing and spatial mode are inherently incompatible. Remembering folder locations won’t work if multiple folders are within a single window. Maybe it could be applied to browser mode, but that sounds like overkill to me.
well, of course you could use directories as well.
and you don’t have to put a description on every photo.
I’m just saying that those who put a lot of effort into actually giving senseful names and storing in “proper” folders could just as well use meta-data and get the same job done, but with easier (and more flexible) access.
to add, grouping types of object (read, folders/directories) is a good thing, as it’s makes it easier for someone who seek out something, but don’t know what, just what it is relative too. (think this is very well possible with meta-data too, but may be more clumsy then to have things organized)
The problem is that we don’t all follow pseudo-scientific rules of behaviour. Our preferences are not always metaphorically correct.
Why have I disliked KDE from the moment I first saw it? Because it offends my idea of what a GUI should be like? Nope. I just don’t like it’s look and feel and will not use it even though many KDE apps are, IMO, superior to their Gnome equivalent. However, if Gnome started to exhibit some really irritating behaviour…..
“What is the real cause of all these attacks on the spatial Nautilius? In my opinion, it is just bad file organisation coupled with a bunch of old bad habits. It’s really hard to use a spatial file browser if someone keeps his or her files in a ten-folder-deep structure”
This must be the pinnacle of arrogance and it reflects perfectly what spatial nautilus was developed and why it is being pushed so hard for its developers. You see, they know better than you how you need to organize your folders, even though many of us are professional researchers who have given considerable thought to information retrieval and organization.
Thanks, but no thanks, you can keep your spatial nautilus.
You want real usability. Forget about trying to imitate the real world with a computer. It didn’t work for Microsoft’s Bob and it ain’t going to work for you.
People realize that they need to learn a new skill, so they do. You want real usability. Look at Konqueror’s split and tab windows and it’s profile management that allows you to save the state of a bunch of windows and, most importantly, their respective connections.
But you will brush this as the comments of a KDE user, only to learn that it was Gnome’s nautilus that eventually pushed me over to KDE and I am glad I did. I hadn’t used KDE since 2.2 and this is a very different beast.
Unless you’re watching zeros and ones, every interface element in every OS is a metaphor. Users are so accustomed to some of them that they forget that.
Icons floating on the screen are metaphors for objects on a desktop. They don’t look or behave anything like real objects on a real desktop, but people are accustomed to using icons.
Ditto for working without X or in a terminal window. (There’s another metaphor: window.) The words we humans use as labels triggering commands are textual metaphors.
But, adapting a metaphor some real-life object won’t work if the real-life object itself doesn’t work well, or if the metaphor is expressed poorly. (In my book, “poorly” is defined as “the user doesn’t know what he is supposed to do with it just by looking at it. He has to look it up someplace else.”) In the case of spatial navigation, a lot of folks thinks Gnome has missed the boat.
“And even if it is not enough, one can click one field in the gconf configuration editor and turn Nautilitus into “classical” non-spatial file browser. Don’t know how to use gconf? Then you shouldn’t change the way Nautilitus works, I presume.”
Are you kidding me? Are you saying new users shouldn’t be able to have the system the way they like it unless they can understand how to do it? And people are suprised so many people steer well clear of linux with attitudes like that! This, to me is the definitive issue with linux, because of its openness and the way it is developed it means things are developed by developers for developers, because they aren’t looking to make money from consumers etc… noone is listening to them! People may argue that Microsoft don’t listen to their customers but they listen a heck of a lot more than many linux developers at present.
Is garbage. End of story. Garbage. It sucked on MacOS<=9, it was garbage in Windows 95. It licks possum ass in Gnome.
“:”And even if it is not enough, one can click one field in the gconf configuration editor and turn Nautilitus into “classical” non-spatial file browser. Don’t know how to use gconf? Then you shouldn’t change the way Nautilitus works, I presume.”
:
buddy this is sarcasm. those who use it hammer down the old classic ” linux is only for developers” need a humour hammer
Do you use tabs in fluxbox? that’s what it means…
The problem with the KDE file manager it seems to me is that the developers took no decision at all. They loaded up the file manager with functions and setting without giving any thought to how it’s supposed to be used together. So the result is a application bloated, with little or no usability at all.
I posted a few observations about why I like spatial nautilus <a href=”http://pubcrawler.org/archives/000431.html“>here.
“Is garbage. End of story. Garbage. It sucked on MacOS<=9, it was garbage in Windows 95. It licks possum ass in Gnome.”
Agreed.
The problem with the spacial mode nautilus is that file management very quickly becomes a window management problem.
The spacial benifits only exist when you leave the windows open (or create a desktop link to each folder), otherwise you are browsing to them each time anyway.
The platform where the spatial view has been the most popular is MacOs Classic. I believe that this was the direct result of a feature which classic provided briliantly, and which I really haven’t seen anywhere else. That great and powerfull show/hide application menu on the top right of the screen (the finder menu?).
That menu allowed you to leave your finder windows open without them getting in the way of what you were working on. You could manage your files and then when you were done, just hide the finder windows. Everything was accessible and you could stay focused on what you were working on instead of managing the 40 windows you had opened. This also allowed applications to avoid problems having multiple documents openned.
Most current window managers will allow window grouping with which you can achieve a similar effect, but I haven’t really seen that used without the user setting everything up themselves. I know of at least one window manager which provides an option to group windows from the same application automatically, but I recall problems with it’s implementation.
So perhaps if the gnome folks included something like this in metacity, if would make people less frustrated with the spatial interface. I get around the problem by having a virtual desktop which I use just for file browsing. Not a perfect solution, but it does keep the window clutter from annoying me.
Unless you’re watching zeros and ones, every interface element in every OS is a metaphor. Users are so accustomed to some of them that they forget that.
I think you are confusing metaphor with representation. Not all representations are metaphors, and a metaphor is more than its representation.
Even 0s and 1s are simply a representation of the movement of electrons in copper. Explaining this to children as like the flow of water is using a metaphor.
(I think)
Hear, hear!
If Linux remains the plaything of developers, it will remain just that: a plaything.
Software made by developers for developers will be used only by developers. It is the height of unmerited snobbery for these developers to slam non-developers who can’t figure out the godawful messes they’ve foisted on people.
Pay attention to what people want and give it to them. Pay attention to what people do and make it easier to do. Stop pretending the problem with bad software is the people using it.
The comment about gconf “if you don’t know how to use gconf, what are you doing chaning the behaviour of Nautilus” is the usual GNOME Usability arrogance and disgrace (there just isn’t another word for it).
It comes from worshiping the Simplified UI, which the GNOME community caught.
Newsflash – a SIMPLE UI makes your life easy by showing the minimum of options, but allowing you to customize the behaviour. Example of a good implementation – Firefox. The UI is much simpler than Mozilla Browser, yet you can change almost all the options you could change in Mozilla. Evolution is also good – for example, LDAP settings are split into two tabs, one basic, and one contains all options. Most users will never see the second tab. The ones who do, will be grateful they don’t have to hunt through gconf keys.
GNOME is moving torwards the simplified UI – translation: We’ll hide 90% of the options in undocumented, unexplained gconf options (which in the lack of documentation are chillingly similar to Windows registry). Example – Galeon.
You don’t believe me? Go change the color of visited links in Galeon. What do you mean you can’t figure out which undocumented key to change? What do you mean you don’t know the Hex Value (!!) of the color you want?
Well, if you don’t know these two things, what are you doing changing the color of the visited link?
Just for giggles, change the color of the visited link in FireFox, Mozilla Browser (and probably Konqueror). See the difference between a simple UI and a simplified UI?
Hiding the ability to neutralize Spatial mode is a stupid move.
I hope GNOME moves away from the simplified UI to a simple UI. If not, at least make it part of the HIG to document ALL gconf keys in an easily accesible format (such as an appendix in the help).
When I heard about the spatial browser, I got myself mistaken. I didn’t know what it was at the time, but I was told it was like the navigation in anything below OSX in MacOS. It’s much more like Windows 95. Personally I like the old OS9 browser, using a similar idea, but instead of throwing windows everywhere it just went ahead and made I guess you could call a mask over the previous window. Once you closed that, the previous one would appear, and I really enjoyed this. Spatial isn’t really all that bad either, if you make good use of the local-bookmarks you can create, it actually makes it probably a bit nicer to operate with. And if it’s a real problem, there are commands and files which can be changed to restore the navigator back to browser-styles.
Interesting Point about the simple-UI, I never really thought about it that way. Especially if they really want to start to enforce a stronger desktop market in the world, it’s going to need to be easy and comfortable to use. As of now though, it’s primarly the users who are willing to learn and take time out to figure these things out who use Linux, so things like that shouldn’t come as a large surprise
Go change the color of visited links in Galeon…
Just for giggles, change the color of the visited link in FireFox, Mozilla Browser (and probably Konqueror). See the difference between a simple UI and a simplified UI?
You could go one further and remove these superfluous options altogether. I’ve really never had the urge to change the default visited link colour since most websites will choose thier own anyway. My point is, remove these silly options and you remove the extra code required to load and validate this option, therefore simplifying, speeding up and increasing robustness the software. I’m not saying hard-wire everything, I’m saying don’t invent options for the sake of inventing options.
I have always been a fan of the browser-style view, and at first was even disgusted by the announcement of the new, “spatial” way Nautilus should work. But I gave it a try.
And, guess what, I liked it. I still need some time to get fully used to it, but I really like it.
It’s not perfect yet: The only shortcut for “close all parents” shouldn’t be a combination of three keys – the current bingings for this and “open closing parents” (key functions in spatial-style) make both mouse-only and keyboard-only navigation impossible (I believe both should work, since depending on your current task it can make you much faster). So there are things, the GNOME team should try to optimize.
But even now it already feels like spatial Nautilus makes me MORE PRODUCTIVE. And that was just the beginning. The new way, my filebrowser (filespatializer?
) worked, made me reconsider my habits.
To all people now screaming “the software should adapt to the user, not vice versa” – well, that is half-right. Innovative software should not just let me solve a task in a way I’m used to, but it should also show me the possibility of solving the task in a new, possibly better way. I know people, who had their first experiences with Win95 (like myself btw) and since then strictly deny to change anything. They buy new hardware, install a new system (may it be WinXP, Debian or Gentoo) and tweak it down, so it looks and behaves exactly like that ugly and weak system many of us sat before 8 years ago.
Well, it’s everyone’s right to do so. But I don’t want new software to just mimic the same functionality again ang again, to be just a new-iconset-equipped bugfix of a bugfix of a bugfix of a bugfix of the same old stuff. I want software to softly push me in a new direction, to show me new ways. Like Nautilus-2.6 did.
Now I’m more productive not only when working with Nautilus. My whole desktop-interaction now follows another pattern. It makes much more use of the possibilities, my desktop environment (and even Linux itself) offers to me (I won’t go into detail, since it’s very subjective) and which I left mostly unused for a long time.
So, even if I’m not always happy with GNOME’s decisions and politics (I really doubt that “user friendly” means “no configuration options”), I’m really glad, that they had the courage to bring an innovation to us, their users. Thanks @ GNOME & keep up the good job.
Sometimes they even abuse the physical metaphor of tabbed browsing by opening multiple pages – not subpages of the same web site! – in multiple tabs of a browser window. I even know few people who never open more than one browser window, viewing all pages in tabs; I hope they do not try to glue a daily set of newspapers together before reading them…
What the…? It seems a lot simpler to me that I have _one_ web browser application open in my window manager and in that I have tabs for each web page I’m viewing.. the taskbar for me is for each seperate application- then they handle which documents they have open.
As for the gluing newspapers metaphor, it’s pretty weak. I’ll use my computer the way I want to thankyou.
To me, the most comfortable form of file management is the single-window filemanager and wonderful “copy/move by context menu” that Tracker in BeOS provides. I can double-click my volume on the desktop to open a new window … navigate to the folder I desire, and do all my file management from within that one window with minimal clicking and fuss.
I like that as well, it’s available as a plugin from the official KDE base. It should be installed by default imho! (some distros do, not all).
I wish they’d do that, I hate it when pages fall out.
“Don’t know how to use gconf? Then you shouldn’t change the way Nautilitus works”
Thanks, I find sentences like this to be a great help to know when to stop reading.
I’ve been using Gnome for a “long” time now (in OSS development cycles, that is – since 2.0), and I read an article about benefits and not-so-benefits of the spatial nautilus BEFORE I installed 2.6. The article stated that “it takes a short time to get used to it, but after that it’s great”.
And I made exactly that experience; at first, it was strange, but after a few minutes (30) it began to feel “right”. I’m using a three-head system here (17″19″17″) and it’s really great that folders open where they did the last time. Like this, nautilus and xmms never overlap while selecting music, and nautilus and Eclipse never overlap when looking for old source files and stuff.
Just give it a chance, you WILL like it. I can’t work with the Windows Explorer anymore, because it’s so annoying now. And I don’t think this is only because I’m used to spatial nautilus now – doesn’t make sense, I should be able to get used the the “old” technique in less than 30 minutes. I am
not.
Anyway, everyone can turn the feature off. I would not advise it, though
Have a nice time with /software!
Now I can hear all that “what about the web browser” croud again.
s/croud/crowd
Most of the reasons people give for liking spatial browsing is that it makes things “more real” or in this articles case “more life-alike”.
Well, the point of computers isn’t to make things more like real life, it’s to make things better than real life. Why do I need an interface that becomes easily cluttered like my real life desk? Here’s a hint… I don’t. My hatred for spatial browsing is because I’m lazy. I don’t want to be the janitor for my data. I don’t want to have to put folders where they should go. I especially don’t want clutter popping up over the screen. Also it is faster for me to simply type in the location of the folder I want in an address bar than to click my way through multiple levels of folders each popping a new folder up at a different part of the screen.
In other words spatial browsing is a usability nightmare, just like having real folders all over your desk would be.
“spatial” interface annoyed me really quickly. I don’t like to waste my time doing gconf hacks just to make it work like before.
i’m back to my old setup. Windows XP with vmware. what could be better?
You’re not going to get past the spatial argument on the notion that the browser interface breaks the notion of having everything the way the user organized it. This is backed up by the metaphor of opening a desk drawer and having everything left where it was.
This is a specious argument. For one thing, my desk does not have hundreds or thousands of drawers. If I had hundreds of drawers to wade through, I’d go nuts. The only thing that would make my life easier at that point is if I could push a button and have the drawer come to me. For another thing, a spatial mode does not require a new window to maintain organizational state. You could open the new folder and lay things out as the user had them the last time they accessed the folder. Finally, if I misfile something out of order in the folder, it is harder for me to find it than if the drawer auto-sorts itself. (But if you say spatial mode can do this, then you’re caught in a contradiction, because that would break the concept of leaving things the way the user left them…how could you provide this functionality and not allow easy selection of browse mode?).
Quit trying to use busted metaphors to justify a bad design decision. I have been an absolute fan of Gnome since the beginning, but I cannot forgive sanctimony. It is pretty Microsoft-like to assume that you know better than the user how to make the user productive.
then maybe the spatial thing would be overlooked or simply accepted.
But nautilus is slow (yes its fast-er than previous versions, but windows don’t exactly pop open immediately for me, even on a 2.6GHz Athlon), has numerous visual oddities (e.g. image collection view obscures image details), is not integrated with the rest of the desktop – why is there a GTK file selector for gnome apps, not a nautilus window?
Basically, the GNOME devs are spending their days adding pointless features like ‘integrated blogging’ instead of trying to deliver a world-class desktop UI.
And because of that theyre going to get flamed constantly by the people who choose to use their product.
Of course it’s their choice to do what they like with their time, but they shouldnt expect adulation from the users when theyre basically just f**king around shipping broken garbage instead of trying to provide a really good user experience – and if they are trying, theyre failing rather spectacularly at this point.
I really think that GNOME has made progress, and I use it on most of my machines myself, but i have stopped recommending GNOME to others who want a desktop, because I really think the Linux desktop is going backwards at the moment, with the amount of bloat added.
I don’t want (and nobody else I know wants) a desktop thats unusable on a P3-600, unusable on less than 1600×1200, unusable without scanning the mailing lists for the hidden key combos and gconf registry keys and thats what GNOME is becoming.
most of the people are happier with the previous browser mode, why not set the default tp that mode and left the spatial one for those who want to use it?
This is really very simple. We don’t like spatial mode for the same reason we don’t like popups. Why do you think that I should subscribe to your “drawer” metaphor, just because I happen to like the “page” metaphor for a browser? The two are not related. The GNOME people really stepped in it on this one as can be easily seen by reading the many reviews that slam the spatial mode. If there weren’t a lot of criticism of it I doubt that you would need to post this opinion piece.
“most of the people are happier with the previous browser mode, why not set the default tp that mode and left the spatial one for those who want to use it?”
you rather speak for yourself or atleast dont assume things
I don’t have any folders that display all their contents even on a full screen icon view. My home folder uses up a couple with listings of sub folders.
So to pop open a few small windows to work with is useless since I have to scroll excessively to find what I want.
I hate scrolling. It means finding a slider, or finding an arrow button, rather than finding what I’m looking for.
What I want is some way to easily represent the large hierarchy of files that I have.
OS/2 had this spatial view and it didn’t work then.
My Images contains a few hundred image files under various folders. Thumbnails or popup thumbnails are much more useful than a bunch of small windows with two or three thumbnails visible in them. My daughters music folder is around 15 gigs.
I see this idea for very shallow and sparse file storage only.
Another problem with it is lack of context. Where in context of your file system is /home/user/Images/Paris/bridges if only bridges are visible? For the purposes of perusing, the bridges folder is only useful in context of the hierarchy. A spatial view takes it out of context.
Derek
I haven’t read all comments, but I’m sure someone else will have said this before: Since when is a design superior when a user doesn’t want it? I’m a HCI pro myself and I’ve never seen the sense it this approach. You can yell all you want that something or the other is better because it’s more thought-through, but if the user doesn’t catch on, it’s just the same rubbish.
Building a suitable user interface is not designing something that’s clever, it’s designing something that helps the user best. Taking an approach saying you know better than Joe User is plain wrong, since it’s Joe User who will use your app. Experimenting with something is great, but forcing your o so clever ideas upon a userbase is simply wrong. It means you don’t respect the crowd your working for.
The desktop methaphore is too old, these days, people are used to the level of complexity a pc gives them, why go back to “those great ideas from the past”? Try to use the *new* methaphores to create a whole new different approach, one which your users will like. For me, it’s a reason to use KDE instead of Gnome (although I use both quite frequently), since at least KDE isn’t forcing an interface on me that’s “better” in the eyes of the developers. I’d like to decide that myself, thank you very much.
When I saw spatial Nautilus the first time I was delighted. I truly hate this everything-o-matic giant window which is too big to let you operate on two folders at a time and is too small and feature limited to really do everything without running external applications.
Then, fetched some experimental Debian stuff, installed it and cried. The spatial file browsing I got in GNOME 2.6 was only a small step towards truly spatial browsing. IT IS NOT ENOUGH to make folders open in seperate windows! The right-click folder browser is missing, which makes new Nautilus mode nearly useless.
Those who remember the BeOS (yes, it’s you, Eugenia) know why right-click file browser is so great. It makes possible to open ANY foler without opening EVEN SINGLE mid-way window. This is essential to spatial browsing and is important to those, who hate having tens of windows opened.
I recently mailed jdub (a GNOME developer) and asked about this feature to be included in next release but he didn’t answered.
Have you tried BeOS anyways? Get live cd from bebits.org, it’s free (zero price).
Give me a tree and I have a functional filesystem.
so, it’s not spatial nautilus at fault anymore, its the users fault for being disoraganized???????
are you out of your fucking mind?
who the fuck are you to tell me how to organize my files? who the fuck says that either a) i cannot or should not and b) deeply nested hierarchies are bad file management?
since when have gnome developers turned into mother fucking assholes? you know, i switched from microsoft products because of their stupendeous levels of arrogance, but i have NEVER, EVER heard microsoft tell ME how to organize my files?
your arrogance is stagerring – having surpassed microsoft at their own game (stupidity) i will most definately be looking at kde leaving you to wallow in your own stupidity.
It’s nice that Gnome is catching up with OS/2 Warp, but as someone who went from using OS/2 for years to using Linux, the spatial interface is one of the few things I’m glad I left behind. And actually, my process was the opposite of what some people are describing – I liked the spatial interface and thought the browser interface was stupid. Luckily, I eventually learned better.
So, you folks who are new to the idea can be as arrogant about the idea as you want. Take it from someone with experience in the matter – it’s nice to have a spatial interface as an option for those few who like it… for everyone else, it’s a step backwards.
Wake up, a Web Browser *IS* a real life object!
This is absurd, the power of Linux is the choices it offers a user. Gnome should offer people choices for what they want.. or well.. people just wont use Gnome.
I agree with EIC’s view… The article suggests that the problem is the way we organize our files, but the real problem is the file/directory way of accessing them. If they were more namespace based, we might organize them completely different.
I also think that an option as simple as “open in new window” should always be available when easy to implement. If so many users complain about the missing functionality, then that is the type of option NEEDED to make your application as usable by the public as possible. Besides, I believe the original concept Windows went with was that the visual folder was really a window into your filesystem — which is why the contents can change.
Personally, I find it difficult to organize my filecabinet IRL because the real file cabinet does not allow any kind of cross-linking. When something belongs in more than one file (say “Mortgage” and “Taxes” and “Bills”) a real file cabinet requires that we choose ONE of them, instead of making it easy to find from any of them (like with the query approach).
Besides, how many file cabinets would be required to hold all of the data currently on my computer?
Indeed. I think one thing that’s underestimated is that for a lot of experienced users, a browser is indeed more of a real-life object than a filing cabinet, and the general structure of the filesystem something they’re used to dealing with, probably from several angles.
For these people, any metaphor that comes between them and the filesystem is useful if it happens to provides more effective tools. Since “a good metaphor” and “an effective tool” are not always related, it’s not a given that it will.
(Disclaimer: Formally, I have no idea what I’m talking about.)
Ok, so I browse with 1 (yes one) opera windows open, and all tabs… Thats 25 (yes, twentyfive) tabs open at this moment.
25 is not THAT many for me, I sometimes get up to 50 at work, browsing for info etc. And you are saying this is bad practice ? That I should open MULTIPLE browser windows? Why? Because it’s more “real life” like? I don’t WANT it real life like. I want it clutter free. I have 6 (yes, thats six) desktops, and one of them is for browsing. I do NOT want to go searching for the right window.
Now on spacial file browsing… I don’t know. I don’t use file managers, I use a shell. And on windows (yeah, I game…) I open max 2 file browsers at a time, and I close them as SOON as I can… Darn clutter…
So, yes I COULD use ctrl-alt-shift-windowkey-w to close one of them windows… but WHY would I WANT to make that extra effort? I have a pretty DEEP dirtree… Ofcourse I do! domping everything in 1 or 2 folders is the strategy of a digitally impared person!
Sorry man, but you arguements do not hold here… Quite the opposite, you are preaching ineficianty…
“The problem with 2. is clear: it is very, VERY time-consuming to label ALL photos ONE BY ONE. And if you apply the metadata changes to all of them at once, you could use folders just as well, couldn’t you?”
No, not really. Imagine that you have some pictures your dog on your trip holliday trip to the beach. Should you put that picture in the folder “My dog”, the folder “My holidays” or the folder “On the beach” In a metadata oriented file system you mark your images with the three keywords dog, holiday and beach and put them in your pile of images. Then you create three folders, one that shows pictures labeled dog, one that shows pictures labeled holliday, and one showing beach pictures. That way your image will turn up in different contexts.
I don’t like to whinge, but I think in the case of project names it’s important to get the spelling right. It’s nautilus, not nautilius.
The whole thing about spatiality is to provide the user with a real-life-alike interface that keeps objects’ state and does not alter the contents of any physical object if not ordered to.
Configuring your fm to open new folders in the same window then clicking on a new folder is “ordering it” to behave that way, just that you don’t have to *keep* telling it (as if it is a 5 yr old child).
While reading a book, you can see only two pages at once, and every time you turn the page, the new set of two pages replaces the two seen before.
…
So, people in fact love when the machine works in a way resembling behaviour of real-life objects
But the two read pages GO AWAY when you turn the page. You turned the page when you were done with them, just as I am done with the “My Music” folder once I get to the album subfolder.
Sometimes they even abuse the physical metaphor of tabbed browsing by opening multiple pages – not subpages of the same web site! – in multiple tabs of a browser window.
I also do this.. I keep all of the web pages that I am using neatly tucked away in one browser window that I can easily minimize/maximize/close as I please. I Wish my physical desktop was like this and I could just as quickly manipulate all associated bits of paper or office supplies.
What is the real cause of all these attacks on the spatial Nautilius? In my opinion, it is just bad file organisation coupled with a bunch of old bad habits.
Or it could be the same brand of cranky that people get when you force them to loosen Torx screws with a Phillips screwdriver.
I am not saying I’m right, and I’m not saying you’re wrong. But I am saying that the Nautilus developers are building a tool that is used by a HUGE number of people and there will be many usage patterns (i.e. there is no One Right Way), so you will need to get over yourselves or spend more Zen time learning to become flame retardant
If the tabbed interface works so well for web browsers, why not use the same thing for the file manager?
This is the most moronic thing I’ve read in ages.
Since how does the way YOU read a book mean it’s the way everyone else reads them? I WOULD glue 20 newspapers together, if I could. What stupid arguements.
I gave up 1/2 way through this load of tripe.
If tab browsing was to be implimented then drag and drop would need to be functionable on the tabs. Also opening a new file browsing window could be as simple as that of dragging a tab of the window you want from your current browser window (with tabs) onto the desktop. This would then add some functionability to the tabbed browsing experience and stil allow for decent drag and drop experience.
As tab browsing currently stands in Web Browsers, no thanks, not for file management.
“No, not really. Imagine that you have some pictures your dog on your trip holliday trip to the beach. Should you put that picture in the folder “My dog”, the folder “My holidays” or the folder “On the beach” In a metadata oriented file system you mark your images with the three keywords dog, holiday and beach and put them in your pile of images. Then you create three folders, one that shows pictures labeled dog, one that shows pictures labeled holliday, and one showing beach pictures. That way your image will turn up in different contexts.”
Sounds to me like the “virtual folder”, like Evolution does. Combine that with a good search capability, backed by a light-weight DB, and we’re much further along (someone will complain I bet).
No, not really. Imagine that you have some pictures your dog on your trip holliday trip to the beach. Should you put that picture in the folder “My dog”, the folder “My holidays” or the folder “On the beach” In a metadata oriented file system you mark your images with the three keywords dog, holiday and beach and put them in your pile of images. Then you create three folders, one that shows pictures labeled dog, one that shows pictures labeled holliday, and one showing beach pictures. That way your image will turn up in different contexts.
So what if I actually want to find all the photos where I was on the beach, with Mary?
Automatic meta-data generation can work reasonably well when you’re dealing with text, but for most other things it just breaks down completely. For music we can mostly get around it with things like CDDB. However if your track doesn’t have an entry, or the entry is wrong then you’re stuck with entering ID tags manually.
Imagine having to input meta-data for every track on your hard drive. I only have 500 or so music files, but I know for a fact I wouldn’t have bothered labelling them individually, just sorted them into folders with autogenerated, track1.ogg, track2.ogg etc, names.
Now imagine having to do that for every file you make on your computer that isn’t text. That and trying to second guess what information you might need when searching in the future.
Computers are meant to reduce the amount of this tedius work, not increase it.
IMO a complete meta-data based system is a dead end unless people are expected to become data entry clerks in their free time.
***
Kinda left the spatial topic :>
I like it.
I like the small simple windows without anything but files.
I like the speed. I don’t know who said it was slow, but it feels to me that the Gnome 2.6 Nautilus opens the window before I even finish double-clicking.
I especialy like that each window remembers its location and size. That lets me position and size each window just the way I like it and it will stay there just as I left it.
I don’t like the window clutter, but I’ve become used to holding Shift while I double-click and I’ve created shortcuts to my favorite directories on my desktop. If I was going to change anything, I would add an option to always close the parent folder.
It could be that you are comparing apples and oranges.
Digital/virtual interfaces have affordances that physical ones do not — such as the ability to magically replace one folder/drawer with another one. That this can not physically be done with a real drawer is the reason we do not do it.
Here’s an interesting tidbit: I’ve never owned a real desk that had drawers. Nor have I owned a filing cabinet. I’ve grown up with the “Desktop Metaphor” being the only desktop I’ve ever known. It’s not a metaphor for me — it’s the real thing. The only thing. Having to open my drawers in separate windows would annoy the living hell out of me!
It would annoy me as much as “opening My Music from the panel, opening the appriopriate album folder and double-clicking a file icon” just to play a song. They’re called ID3 tags, and they organize your files for you so that you never have to clickety-click through all your nested folders.
Also, maybe it’s easy to keep your files organized if you have 1 work computer and 1 home computer, and you keep your data completely separated. I, on the other hand, work from home. I have a laptop, 2 desktops, and a server. I use them all for both work and fun. I am a part-time college teacher, a freelance web developer, sometimes a writer, a blogger, and I have a lot of research interests, not to mention 300 GB of media files. It’s difficult to organize all of this into “shallow structures” without having a GABILLION files in each folder.
Just my $0.50
I supposed the spatial concept would work if all you’re doing is file manipulation, but I usually have more than just the file manager window open. I can have a web browser, word processor, email program, spreadsheet program, and music program all open at the same time. Having one file manager window open with tabs keeps all my file manager windows organized in one place so they don’t get mixed up with all the other programs that are running. To me, it’s less confusing.
According to the article, “attacks on the spatial browser try to stop the innovation”.
I wonder what innovation the article talks about. Physical properties of real desktops and drawers?
Even if he is right, which only time will tell, it’s no excuse for being a condescending asshole. I suggest that the author be kept from writing any more articles until he shows he can write in a proper and courteous manner.
Excuse me Spatial head, I *like* my TABBED browser and my Windows desktop not opening multiple windows for each folder. If you don’t like it, TOUGH FUCKING SHIT!
Taking away choice and then telling people who object that their preferences are wrong is bad taste. And however well intentioned and well thought you it’s possible that the spatial approach isn’t best. And maybe there is no best. Except to allow people to choose (i.e. without have to go to a newsgroup for instructions).
I want a spreadsheet-like matrix of buttons.
Let’s say I open 100 windows. In the old days, they’d all have different entries on the taskbar — 100 buttons, all stripped of titles in order to cram them onto the bar, leaving nothing but a nigh-meaningless application icon. Actually the buttons lose their informational content — the window title — long before you open the 100th window, especially if you don’t use a vertically oriented taskbar.
The responses have been: tabs, window list menus and grouped-by-application taskbar buttons.
Tabs, of course, lose their titles all too quickly, and as yet we apparently can’t have vertical tabs (so much for that workaround). Some programmers have added scroll buttons, which is better than nothing; others have favored multiple rows of tabs that dance around en masse whenever you click on a different row, which is perhaps worse than nothing.
Window list menus and grouped buttons are better at keeping useful information available, but do unfortunately hide it away so you can’t see it immediately.
With a simple spreadsheed matrix of buttons — preferably resizable and with a choice of placement (left/right/top/bottom, docked/undocked) — this wouldn’t happen. More room for buttons, more room for information, clicking on one button would not cause any of the others to leap around. (Oh, and let’s have an option such that closing a window would cause its button become an empty space rather than necessarily moving all the other buttons to close up the gap.)
(Dare I mention Notebox Disorganizer? If real programmers wrote word processors to work like ND, I wouldn’t have to…)
I had been using a Spatial File system on my mac for years, ie Mac OS 6-9, but as soon as i upgraded to OSX i wondered why the hell didnt i do it sooner, browser type file systems are so much esier to use and a hell of a lot faster.
“Even if he is right, which only time will tell, it’s no excuse for being a condescending asshole. I suggest that the author be kept from writing any more articles until he shows he can write in a proper and courteous manner.”
You mean like people do here? :>
Personally, I don’t like web-like operating system browsing windows except on a BeOS-loaded computer. Oh well. My loss I guess. I like spacial browsing in Fedora in Gnome.
The point here is not that you should always or never be opening new windows, it is that *sometimes* you want to do it one way and *sometimes* the other (and maybe sometimes something else). As for the suggestion that I should flatten out by directory structure, just _get lost_. It’s *my* disk, not yours. And even if I did, there are all those java source packages that must be deeply nested.
I use Windows 2000, and I use Windows Explorer. One of the first things I do with a new Windows installation is to make sure to set Explorer up up to –
1) open new directories in the same window, and
2) use a 2-paned view.
3) Use the “classic” appearance.
I don’t want to open a new window each time I go to a new folder, because – just think a moment – I am usually *navigating* to some target, and I don’t care about the intermediate steps. In fact, I don’t want them around once I get where I’m going. Why should I have to close a lot of windows I didn’t need in the first place?
But sometimes I do want to see two folders at the same time, sometimes even in the same tree. Windows makes it easy – Right-click on the directory icon of interest and select “Explore”. This opens up a new Explorer window.
Yes, I do use many tabs in my browser (Firefox, BTW). When possible, I just use one browser window. Typically, I use another tab when I want to keep the original page available. For example, on a page of search results, I will probably want to explore several links, so I leave the results page open, and open each link in another tab – usually the same one, why get cluttered with lots of tabs if I don’t need to?
So here we have the author trying to
1) Tell me I should restructure my disk(s) to suit his ideas, although he knows nothing about how I work or think.
2) Tell me how to use my browser and its tabs.
3) Tell me how to use by file manager, without regard to my ways of working.
4) Ignore the real need, which is to have it work several ways depending on what I am doing.
5) Defend the use of obscurity to prevent a piece of software from being flexible and easy to adjust in the heat of action by a non-technical user (or even a technical one who is not familiar with configuration details of the system).
6) Trying to force me to use a metaphor that he likes nd in the way that he thinks is good.
This is the kind of thinking we have trying to get away from for decades. Spare me. And yes, I use a command line (AKA shell) too, and I have written my share of, e.g., AWK code. I’m not just some dumb stereotyped Windows user who doesn’t know any better.
The unix (linux) filesystem is hietarchal by nature. If used as intended (in the unix style) it is very neat and orderly. If a user understands the unix concepts then their home directories will be just as organized as the rest of the system, which could mean several layers of directories. Like one reader said, spatial browser makes sense with a DB type filesystem… not with the current unix fs layout.
when you’re done finding the file you want with a folder in a drawer it just takes two more actions to finish up (putting the file back in the folder and closing the drawer) but with gnome you have to hand close every single open window, which is incredibly annoying.
saying that deep hierarchies of folders is innefficient is just ignorance. lumping all of your *.filetype files into one folder is just dumb, and that seems like what you’re suggesting.
I don’t really understand. I guess I’d have to use it to understand the comments that a spatial interface would be better for a database. When the contents of windows are search based, then I would expect the contents to vary, and spatiality would not make as much sense. At least that’s how I think of a spatial interface, one with fixed locations for things. Windows which open in the same size and position, with contents arranged in a known manner. I don’t get how search results fit into that. I would expect to browse results I can’t be sure of.
Regardless, I’m quite satisfied with the OS X browser. I think everything can stand to see improvements, but I’m not upset with the move from spatial to browser like some are/were. I think what the Gnome developers were probably reacting to, was the huge outcry from the Mac community over the loss of thier spatial system, and a lot of public comments from former Mac interface designers complaining about what a step backwards the browser is.
Truth is, some never adapted and won’t move to OS X because of it. But over half of Mac users did change, and I for one feel the OS as a whole is markedly better.
There are other file managers.
There’s of course Gnome Commander.
And there’s Endeavour Mark II.
http://wolfpack.twu.net/Endeavour2/
Can do DnC from it to Nautilus.
One last comment. I do get the advantages that a database type filesystem is going to bring. I think the best example of what that future is going to look like is the iApps from Apple.
In both iTunes and iPhoto, the filesystem is basically hidden from the user. The primary reason other applications are confusing to non-computing types is they just can’t visualize the hierarchical file system. They lose files in there.
My Mom can’t really deal with Photoshop Elements, or some other third party application because it means exporting files, and finding them again from a new app. But she has no problem working with iTunes and iPhoto, because the computer knows where her music and pictures are; and she just works with them.
In both cases though, the applications are browsers. Their interfaces allow you to sort on data like name, date, artist, etc.
I’m not suggesting Mac has a database filesystem. Perhaps it will someday, and then this type of functionality could be extended across the system, and available to all applications.
I don’t use gnome, and the main reason why is the elitist
attitude presented by the main supporters. I do not believe
there is “one true way” to use your desktop, nor do I think
most Linux users do either. Choice is the most powerful
feature of Linux. As Perl puts it – there is more than one
way to do it.
I’m not expecting that gnome has to be all things to all
people, and for all I know the spatial metaphor is going
to be the most used metaphor for file browsing in the
future, but those of us who may *prefer* the browser
model to the spatial metaphor are not idiots, just
different.
Gnome developers/supporters/fans, please refer to the
spatial mode as “another way to do it that users might
enjoy”, not “the only way any non-schmuck would use
their desktop if they would just re-arrange their
file system accordingly, and if you can’t turn it
off in gconf, you’re too stupid to even consider”.
I’m sorry, but the latter is the message I’m getting
from the gnome people regarding the changes in 2.6, and
this article’s author is a case in point. This is not the
right foot to get onto if you want widespread acceptance
of gnome.
BTW, I use XFCE4, which uses gtk2, but without treating
me like an idiot.
I ALWAYS use the tabbed browsing feature to surf several webpages that are NOT subpages of one and the same site.
Why I do that? Because it’s just handy to have several reference pages open at once, or several newssites which I can go trough quickly, etc. I know tons of people who do just the same, but I guess we’re all wrong.
As goes for filebrowsing, you bet, I never use the spatial mode, because I don’t like screen clutter, AND I do quite nested file structures. But then, I use cd/ls most of the time as filebrowsers, so I guess I am wrongt too! I should clutter my screen with dozens of windows where I don’t see the information despite all the windows, and give up my nice and clean ls in favor of some good’ol chaos.
You bet!
You refuse to use it because it’s users are “elitist”? Well, I’m guessing that you’re never going to use a Mac either.
Have you ever thought that perhaps there is a reson that users act elitist? Maybe you should try something instead of denouncing the people who are trying to show you how good something is.
You can turn spatial off easily, and how many people that actually use Linux today are too stupid to figure out how to change a small setting in gconf? Last I recall, Google would still give you search results if you typed something in and hit enter.
This is Linux, if you’re admining an Linux box, you have to THINK before you do something. If you are logged in as the superuser and delete everything on your computer, it’s your fault for being an idiot, not the developers that allow you to do that.
Everything has to have defaults. What better way to showcase a new feature than to set it as the default?
The guy is as clueless as he is arrogant. I mean, besides all the cheap shots at people who disagree with his way of using computers, he equals “old ideas” with “innovation” and goes on to compare Nautillus’ performance with that of Windows NT 4, a product that is outdated by anybody’s standard and to suggest that Gnome’s RegEdit clone GConf is an acceptable way to manage one’s UI settings.
OSnews shouldn’t have accepted this “article”, really.
Slightly more lengthy “rebuttal”:
http://nils.jeppe.de/Geek/559/
Let me get this straight, you’re talking about one windows behavior beeing better then another? That means you in fact started a window-manager? Well then you’re not to be helped anyway.
Hm yes, how do you like that I am right and you’re wrong?
“Where did the other folder go?” That’s what I think whenever I try to use a Windows machine in it’s default configuration. When I use a file manager, it’s because I need to manage files, not just look at them. And managing files includes moving and copying them, which needs two folders. So, I’ll open the parent of both folders, doubleclick on one to open it, doubleclick on the other (hey, where did the parent folder go?), and then drag the file. So, as soon as this happens, I’ll change the settings to open folders in a separate window. I haven’t yet seen a useful filemanager that didn’t open folders in a separate window. There’s the Windows 3.1 file manager, with it’s horrible treeview (the filesystem may be a tree structure, but the vertical-only treeview is definitely not a usefull representation), and there’s the Windows 98 “We got slapped for bundling the browser, so now we need to integrate it” file manager wannabe webbrowser.
Always opening a new folder is not perfect either, because it tends to leave a lot of intermediate windows on the screen, windows which are only used for navigating to the target folder. Windows supports ctrl-click for “open folder in this window”, but this is too cumbersome to use, and also it keeps the parent folder, instead of opening the new folder, and closing the parent. So, if I go from a folder with two subfolders to a folder with 1000 files, I still have the small window with room for two files. Maybe the BeOS right-click menu that other people mentioned is the solution, but I haven’t tried that one. I guess I will soon, because the Gnome people tend to be trying a lot of good ideas, and not trying to work around court orders.
Go change the color of visited links in Galeon…
Just for giggles, change the color of the visited link in FireFox, Mozilla Browser (and probably Konqueror). See the difference between a simple UI and a simplified UI?
———
You could go one further and remove these superfluous options altogether. I’ve really never had the urge to change the default visited link colour since most websites will choose thier own anyway. My point is, remove these silly options and you remove the extra code required to load and validate this option, therefore simplifying, speeding up and increasing robustness the software. I’m not saying hard-wire everything, I’m saying don’t invent options for the sake of inventing options.
Hey, great idea! Screw all those color blind people who set the link colors so they can SEE them!
It’s all about choice; I don’t really care if the default behaviour is to switch on spatial FS browsing, but not to include a quick way to switch it off in one of the menus is just crappy and extremely arrogant design. It’s also utterly stupid.
I am one of those people who opens *shock horror* multiple pages from one website in a bunch of tabs, and I rarely if ever actually open a new Firefox window. This is the type of browsing I *prefer* because I read *lots* of pages at once, quickly switching between them. If I was able to do something similar with books then I would – unfortunately they are too primitive to manage this effectively and as such aren’t as good as webpages for this method of browsing. This only applies to technical books really; not fiction, but the analogy applies perfectly because I tend to read tech stuff online 99% of the time.
I use one window for one specific task and close it afterwards, this includes filesystem browsing. If I wanted to use pointless ‘features’ like remembering what order I put a load of icons in (instead of just putting them in order of type and alphabetically sub-ordered) then I’d switch it back on in windows, which incidentally is very easy. I DON’T, and I don’t give a crap what kind of stupid ideas the Gnome team has about the way in which I should browse.
I will continue to use Gnome, after switching off this ‘feature’, but I have to say that arrogant crap like this pushes the Gnome team closer to the whole reason I don’t use Windows.
Having multiple tabs might be like glueing newspapers together. To me it comes more down to having a binder with tabs in it. Multiple information in one binder seperated by tabs (I wonder if that is why they call it tabbed and not glued browsing).
If you look at the way filesystems are organized you can not really compare them to cabinets. If you do compare them, then you have to acknowledge the fact that on a FS we store folders inside of folders, a practice not often done in cabinets due to physical limitations of the folders. If you would store folders inside of folders you would actual leave the cabinet opened all the time and browse the folders with your fingers until you’ve found the right one (left pane directory structure browsing). Once you’ve found the right one you will take it out and open it. Now this might be a place to open a new window, but any normal organized person would want to avoid getting out all the folders and spreading them out on his desk.
And your argument about bad folder structure design: who are you to judge how I should organize my folders. If your tool doesn’t help me with my way of logic, your tool s***s for me. Although screws are better than nail, I still will not use a screwdriver for my nails.
woah, almost 200 posts..
anyways, I like the old way of nautilius and how it opened folders. But you can turn the spacial feature off just by getting gedit and editing the .conf file.
.