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New Nautilus Screenshots
max cohen writes "Eazel has posted some new screenshots of Nautilus (as of August 2nd) and they're much improved from eariler versions. I can't wait to get my hands on the Nautilus preview release and give it a test drive!" They've come a long way since the last batch of shots: especially interesting is the way it handles albums of MP3s, and its integration with mozilla.
Nautilus looks nice. Much better than it did before...although the non-antialiased fonts really do a number on it's look.
I have two questions...why is it, that with most of the *Nix community despising Microsoft, that every single new GUI that comes out ends up trying to be just like it?? Let's face it, that whole File View in Nautilus looks almost exactly like Win98/Win2k/IE4's 'Web View', which is a feature that is taken far too little advantage of. KDE has it too. The standard button alignment is also very close to that of Windows....what's the deal here people?? You've got a great product here, but you don't want to distinguish it for itself, or just running out of ideas?
My other question.....but I suppose this one contradicts the other above, is why is the menu bar always raised? This has always puzzled me about X-based GUIs. MacOS, Windows, and Be, all rely on a menubar that is flush with the rest of the window, and it looks nice. But even the most cutting edge of X-based GUIs have a raised menubar...what is the purpose of this? Its not like we don't see it...there may have been a purpose for it back years ago with monochrome displays or whatnot, but I think it's a practice whose time has come.
So on one hand, these guys seem to be doing everything they can to look like Windows(at least functionality wise), and then they have the one thing they cling to, and it's probably the one thing they shouldn't be clinging to.
-Julius X
-Julius X
remove "-whatkindofspamdoyoutakemefor-" from email to send
This by far not the first time I am well disappointed with the slashdot crowd. Perhaps someday I will quit posting here. That day is not today.
| each-other, we have real power in the OS. Now we can have a powerful yet easy application. Now we can have our cake and eat it too.
Nautilus is great! Maybe some of you can step back a moment to see what Nautilus really it...of course not! this is slashdot! The only one who is allowed to include web browsing functionality into the file manager is Microsoft, right? Wrong! It just makes sense! FTP, HTML, file directories...they all are dependent on each other...they all make *sense* to exist together. Has anyone ever browsed an FTP site in IE? Notice how it looked *exactly* like any other folder in Windows Explorer? That is the *point*! It is called usability, people. It is called ease of use, people. The best interface is when everything looks the same! It is also called power.
You see, soon novice users will have the power to do some of things you *can't* on the command-line. And that makes you mad. And makes you label Nautilus a Windows clone. Grow up.
But lets just say for a moment, that you can, theoretically, think out of the box. Then you will see that Nautilus is more than just fancy file manager with web functionality. Did you see the screenshot with the mp3 player? You can play mp3's directly in the file browser! And don't tell me about big Microsoftian applications (again, another stupid comparison with Microsoft) that are monoliths. Nautilus uses components. That means that the web browser is a separate component, the mp3 player is a separate component, and maybe the file browser is a separate component...I don't know! But it is the Unix way, right? Except for the "easy" part which, as we all know...is way to Microsoftian for our own good, right?
So instead of piping|our|outdated|legacy|flat-text|utilities|to
(Note: My hostility is towards several posters who have already posted. I clicked in this story to see if others have seen what I saw in the screenshots of Nautilus. Instead I see anti-Microsoft zealotry. I just think the folks at Eazel deserve a little more. They have actually gone quite a ways beyond Microsoft in both power and ease-of-use. There. I said something bad about Microsoft. You can like me now.)
While it hasn't recieved the press that other file managers have, and it doesn't have a browser built it, the Enlightenment File Manager is pretty remarkable.
It's very early in it's development, but it does the one thing that file managers never seem to do right. It acts as an interface to the system, less of a file manager, and more like a graphical shell.
Mandrake, one of the developers actually forced himself to avoid using the CLI for some time to figure out what EFM needed to do to replace it. And even now, it does reduce the amount of time I spend in the command-line drastically.
For example, you can still type using the typebuffer, so if you want to install an RPM, just type rpm in the dir to select the rpm and it'll open a term, show you the output, wait for you to type something and close. Honestly though, it also excels in the eye-candy realm, with full alpha-blended windows (true transparency, not the faux viewport stuff we're used to) and anti-aliased fonts. If you're looking for a file manager, I'd give it a look, over at enlightenment.org.
----------------- "I have a bone to pick, and a few to break." - Refused -------------------
This sounds like a weird thing, but the thing that can have the greatest negative or positive impact on the appearance of a user interface is the default system screen font.
MacOS and BeOs seem to be the GUIs with the nicest system screen fonts, IMHO. Chicago, the first Mac screen font was designed to be simple, readable and visually appealing.
The old Mac combo of Chicago (or even Charcoal) and Monaco was killer, and gave the Mac GUI a polished and visually clean look.
While I am aware you can probably change the font properties, I'm surprised that these former mac GUI gurus forgot to use a better default screen font.
http://dotslash.dynodns.net/00/ 08/05/1616256/i.html
If the eazel/nautilus guys or anyone wants it down, please mail me.
One thing about Linux GUIs that I like is their configurability.
Personally, I use the Gnome panel (and nothing else from Gnome!), one 48-pixel panel on the bottom and a 24-pixel one on top. Both contain task lists, the top one containing the normal windows and the bottom, larger, one having the minimized windows. I have a clock/mailcheck applet and a few system monitors on the right side of the top taskbar, and the GTK+ Licq applet, a quicklaunch applet with icons for Netscape, Licq, XEmacs, Slrn, etc. on the left. I'm happy with it, and generally run programs from xterms as well.
"I am in no way a microsoft fan but I'm afraid microsoft has it right with Explorer. You click on My Computer, it opens up instantly, no bloat. You want to use the web, type a web address, THEN it loads up web components."
The reason that My Computer opens instantly is not that there is "no bloat". it is because the bloat has already been pre-loaded when you started up Windows. It's been made sure that the Windows Explorer code is sitting in memory right where it can be accessed most efficiently. Similarly, when you want to use the web, a lot of the web components are already in memory, which is why IE starts up so much faster than any other web browser.
This approach would be possible under Linux, but users would immediately cry foul. "This bloatware uses up xx Meg of RAM before it even _DOES_ anything! I just want to use it for the foo function, I don't want everything else to load as well!"
As for the problems of having to look at every file, this is why we Need A Better Filesystem For Workstations. Windows hacks its way around the requirement for looking at files by trusting a three-letter extension. This can often have really annoying effects (Like trying to work out how to save something from notepad so it _doesn't_ end up named foo.xml.txt) File managers that try this stunt in the Unix world do a terrible job, because file-extensions are not the Unix way. The only files on a Unix system that generally have dot-extensions are graphics and sound files. Finding out what kind of file something is, is what the 'file' command is there for.
What we need, of course, is real filesystem metadata. Being able to stat a file and get (directly from the fs, and therefore efficiently) a file-type magic number, or a MIME Type for the file would make file managers a hell of a lot more efficient. The problem is, the FS writers are busy writing filesystems for _servers_, which don't want to be loaded down with this sort of feature.
Charles Miller
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The more I learn about the Internet, the more amazed I am that it works at all.
It'd be nice if the article header said what the Nautilus application was, for those readers not in the in crowd. I've heard of Eazel, who are trying to make Linux easier to use, though I haven't kept track of which thing Nautilus is. Once I waded through the slashdottedness of the site to look at the pictures, the couple I saw just looked like a file manager thing running in a browser. Slightly prettier than Netscape's default directory display, if you like that sort of GUI stuff, but if that's all it is, it's boring. What's does Nautilus DO?
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Since the site seems to be slow as ass, and I'm just dying to get my DSL link slashdotted today, I've got a mirror of the screenshots up at http://www.trumpie.net/nautilus.
Enjoy.
"Hmm, a file browser + web browser without the bloat of two separate products"
Since when has integration of a file browser and a web browser been a good thing?
Yes, it's nice to have a file browser which can do useful things with the various types of files, but I define "useful things" as launching the application that works with files of that MIME type -- NOT loading another component into place in the file browser window.
You present new users with an interface that keeps changing, and doesn't give a clear line between different applications. This is confusing to people still struggling with the "executable programs and content data" split, not to mention probably not what the people experienced with computers wanted. I prefer to work with the data I've selected in a separate program, as opposed to in plae, so I can arrange them on my virtual desktops and continue to use the file manager for its purpose -- managing files.
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
The screenshots look nice, I must say; one thing I would consider to be very important would be sensible navigation ability using the keyboard (tab key, ctrl-tab, arrow keys, ctrl-[cxv] etc...) between tree listings, directory listings, mp3 player (?) etc.. In linux I use almost exclusively the CLI to do file management, which for the most part works fine and is very powerful. However there are times where having the directory structure laid out in front of you is helpful. One thing I really like about Windows expolrer is that it is very easy to navigate and move files around using the keyboard. If I had to point and click constantly to use Nautilius, then it will just be a wrapper around gecko.
For the love of $DEITY, loose != not win!!!!!
The problem is that it's UGLY. An interface not only needs to be functional but RESPONSIVE. Even on my 300MHz computer, KFM still crawls compared to Win95's explorer. Sure KFM looks a little better, but it really doesn't matter. Writing bloated code and hoping proc's will get fast enough is something best left to Microsoft. If something can be good looking and functional without taking a huge amount of resources, then it should be programmed that way. Every program should be coded with a correct balance. The current mantra is (add features, speed be damned!) That's what lead to using CORBA in the DE and Gecko in the file manager. They are very feature powerful, but most of those features are really useless. Does anybody actually take advantage of the HTML customizablity of their folders? File previews are nice, but that is very simple to implement (WITHOUT a powerful XML rendering engine like Gecko!) In the end, you can replace Gecko with some nice bitmaps in the corner, and 99% of people won't be able to tell the difference. If you code for that other 1%, then you'll end up with a crappier product. Ever wonder WHY Windows is so bloated? Not so much sloppy coding, but feature bloat. OSS projects don't need feature bloat. They don't HAVE to make people upgrade to new versions because of new (usually unused) feature. GNOME these days is reeking of Microsoft. I mean only MS would go and put a rich, powerful, distrubted framework like CORBA into the DE. I mean how many people NEED their AbiWord component distributed over a world-wide network?
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Flame me all you want, but I always thought Windows Explorer was one of those very few really good products Redmond unleashed upon us. :)
But the more I look at what Eazel is giving us, the more I think we're witnessing one of the biggest developments in the history of computing.
People, this could be the second biggest thing to happen to computers (first being C language).
I hope my karma can survive what is surely to come
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I was hoping for something a little more interesting, maybe like Jakob Nielsen's Anti-Mac Interface . The so-called "next generation" Nautilus interface is just a hackjob of the Windows Explorer. Why is this company worth $11 million in VC funding?
:-)
They will never be a "better Windows than Windows". OS/2 tried and failed. Then again this might not be surprising, if you consider that these are the people who created the horrible General Magic PDA interface.
or maybe these screenshots are just a cover-up for the really cool stuff their developing...
cpeterso
Are you kidding? Konqueror is even slower? On NT Explorer (NOT IE, regular Explorer) pops right up. Same thing with Tracker (BeOS.) However, Konqueror takes just as long as IE to load. And when I simply want to move a file, it really isn't worth it. My point (which you seem to miss) is that feature bloat is BAD. There is no real reason to integrate web-browsing and file browsing. There is no reason to draw your interface with XML. If you took regular Windows Explorer, added back and forward buttons, and let the user specify a custom background picture, then 99% of people wouldn't notice that it wasn't IE. Same thing with Mozilla. If you rip out the XML renderer as UI thing and replaced it with a conventional themable UI, 99% of people wouldn't notice the difference except the fact that it was more responsive. The problem with GNOME is that it is subscribing to the same feature bloat as Microsoft is. The difference is that GNOME doesn't have to. MS needs to sell it's software. It needs to put in features to make it so you have to upgrade very two years. GNOME doesn't have to do that. All it has to do is make the best DE possible. Sure it sounds cool on paper that GNOME is so feature rich, you can run objects on remote UNIX servers via CORBA, that the file manager is based on a powerful XML renderer which is also a CORBA component, etc. However, what does that gain you? How many of you have access to high performance remote CORBA servers? How many people are going to write custom XUL files for Mozilla? How many people will notice (or care) that XUL is so much more powerful than a conventional themable UI. All people will notice is that CORBA takes more memory than COM, and that Mozilla's UI is very unresponsive. Rich, powerful components have no place in a core system like GNOME. The simple stuff should be clean, fast, and modular. Take COM/DCOM for example. The standard COM can't handle remote connections. However, install DCOM (and put up with the resulting increase in memory use) and you've got something that come close ot CORBA in power. (People|Companies|Projects|Groups) in GNOME's position really shouldn't program for that 1% of the population that needs the extra features. They should program their app simple and fast for the 99% and make it modular so the other 1% can extend it if they need to. GNOME is currently running in the tens of megs. For a desktop environment that is simply too much. I can see why they do it, of course. Writing simple software isn't sexy. The allure of supporting every possible feature is probably just to great. But is DOES result in less than perfect software.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
In response to the first comment, I think I got off on a tangent talking about GNOME. My point was that a good interface should be responsive. Engineering all this "neato" features may be more sexy, but in the end, 99% of people won't use these features, but WILL notice that their interface is slower.
As for Microsoft, don't get me wrong. I am a big Microsoft fan, and I think it would be wise for Linux projects to emulate some of their practices. However, the fact remains that Windows by and large is heavily deteriorated by feature bloat. All this "whiz-bang" features that really aren't necessary hurt the environement. However, that is forgivable in Microsoft's case, they have upgrades to sell. However, projects like GNOME don't have that agenda.
As for COM, it is a gift from god. COM and DirectX are two technologies sorely missing from Linux. However, CORBA and COM are two entirely different beasts. Wheras COM is a (relativly) simple API, CORBA is quite a beast. Look at the two APIs. You can actually write something COM-like in a week or two. Most of the stuff is simply a standard and the C++ compiler handles most of it. However, implementing CORBA in a week or two is impossible. It is simply too complex. And in that complexity lies the problem. COM (not DCOM, the distributed version) is simple enough to allow you to use it for something like an API, or even reusable objects like stacks, etc. No way in hell you'd use CORBA for an API (oh wait, isn't that what they're doing in Berlin-land? Another stupid feature-bloat idea.) A CORBA-based stack object? I'd like to see that! In GNOME, CORBA is going to be much less usefull then another system would have been. It takes to many resources, and I predict that it will never gain the acceptance that COM has.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
You mention that Konquerer already does all these things. Yes, it does. The problem is performance and reliability. I think others have commented on their concerns about poor performance with Gnome in dealing with very large files, lists of items such as files in directories being displayed, etc., even without Nautilus.
Have you really used Konqueror for much? I have.
Performance of gmc is much better than Konqueror. That's because gmc is much simpler and is currently only in maintenance while the "design wizards" (shudder) apply their techinique to Nautilus. I fear that Nautilus may blindly follow in the footsteps of Konqueror in designing in overcompexity using a component model that mimics Microsoft's COM without but the entire OS built around that system that MS has to enhance its performance at the expense of everything else.
When dealing with very large directories or very large lists of anything to be displayed using this component architecture where every item is an object at least (often several embedded objects) performance drags to a crawl even with a very fast computer. This is apparent when loading large web pages with thousands of tags (even with no frames and no tables) because the page is treated as thousands of html "objects". Ditto very large files in OOP word processors (KWord). All these great "component based" apps become unusable.
The architecture sucks because all these list and tree structures are fully loaded with data in their components which are created when data is read, instead of having their objects created and destroyed as needed for display and manipulation by the user. Moving these huge lists of objects around with every mouse click is insane. A solution to this problem has already been pointed out by a very competent observer on the kde mailing lists, "talin". No, that's not me. However, that solution was ignored.
This seems like nitpicking but the magnitude of the problem becomes apparent when using the Kde 2 betas and alredy is somewhat true of stable Gnome (1.12). Has the Eazel team thought about ways to deal with such design problems? Not just the above described problem, but the inherent instability and impracticality of a rigid adherence to object oriented methodology in general? Ways to bypass CORBA entirely, for example, if so desired? I hope so.
Currently Kde is fatally flawed because of over-reliance on parts and objects for everything, and every operation is also io-bound to the max. The degree of complexity and circluar dependencies in loading and unloading objects becomes unmanageable, and crashes become seemingly random and unpredictable. It is very obvious why things take so long to start - the loading and unloading of parts for every little thing, and the registering of so much io in the background.
This is a shame because otherwise Kde 2 is so promising. If these kinds of problems are not addressed and some of the object oriented "theory" taught in CS departments coupled with mimicry of MS COM is not acknowledged to be the problem rather than the solution, it will only get worse.
By that I mean a colossal, embarrassing failure.
Kde team wake up! Gnomers, learn your lessons from the mistakes Kde is making (as well as the things they are doing right)! I do want these new desktop systems to be usable. We need you!
The thing is, with Slashdot hitting the site so hard, you're probably getting a real-time simulation of how the pretty GUI will load on your system.
Cheers.
I thought the Nautalis was still buried deep under the ocean who-knows-where after that affair with the hurricane and the giant squid. I mean, I know they have all those new submersibles and the Jason and things like that, but I didn't know they knew where the nautalis was located, let alone go down there and take pictures of it.
Will the wonders of science never cease?
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Friends don't let friends misuse the subjunctive.
I'd love to see how Nautilus could render some other directories, such as /proc, /var, /etc... The possibilities could be pretty interesting. inetd.conf component, a /proc process browser..
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2B1ASK1
The good news is that from this screenshot it looks like they're using gecko embedded through bonobo, skipping the mozilla framework itself. This is a good thing (not a Good Thing(tm)). Mozilla tries to be a platform, not just a browser; this conflicts with Nautilis also aiming to be a platform, not just a file browser. The end result would be a huge bloaty product. However, by just using Gecko, you get your file browser to be the platform (better than the web browser) while still having a speedy web browser for web pages.
Hmm, a file browser + web browser without the bloat of two separate products. Sounds kind of like Internet Explorer minus the bugs and security holes.
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Friends don't let friends misuse the subjunctive.
While a file manager is useful to a newbie, I always find that I can get work done faster using a cli to a good shell like bash.
Then I would highly recommend you continue to use a CLI.
A file manager is to a cli as a first grade primer is to a novel.
Why be so offensive? Are you simply trolling? File Managers are not signficantly less powerful than CLIs. They are good at different types of operation, and they suit some people better than others. Many people are more visually-oriented than verbally-oriented. The former tend to prefer GUIs, the later CLIs. The fact that GUIs are considerably more popular than CLIs is some evidence that more people are visually-oriented than verbally.
One can be lot more expressive with text that with pictures. Sure, a picture is equal to a thousand words but the only problem is 'which one?!'
I disagree. Two scenarios:
1. I want to move all the files that end in .txt from directory A to directory B
2. I want to move all the files whose contents relate to my web site from directory A to directory B
Obviously a CLI like bash is going to be more efficient at expressing the commands for 1. But assuming that the files related to my web site are not organized according to a regular pattern, then doing operation 2 is going to be much easier using a GUI (I just click on the set of files I want and drag them).
Even when there is a regular pattern of files you want to work with, a GUI can often be easier (if less efficient) because I can just select the files I want directly, and I don't have to go through the cognitive process of forming the right pattern-matching command. If I want to pick 3 files out of 50, it often feels quicker to just click on them in a GUI view, than figure out the particular command that would select just those files. And in UI what feels quicker is often "better" (i.e. prefered by users) than the actually optimal strategy.
GUIs and CLIs are different tools that are optimized for different purposes. Both have strengths and weaknesses. I personally like to have both running and feel free to switch between them.
Sailing over the event horizon
"What a waste it is to lose one's mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is"
Vidi, Vici, Veni
Help?
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In a real emergency, we would have all fled in terror, and you would not have been notified.
ok, i've got 128megs of ram, a 3gig drive, and a peppy celeron. if i need more storage i have big servers at home and work. but...
i have an 800x600 screen.
can't really change that. but gnome apps seem to want/expect 1024x768. open the control panel. look at the gnome gpg tool.
please, please, PLEASE remember us laptop users. please.
US Citizen living abroad? Register to vote!
And then, after you get all that tasty Karma you can...you can...well...you can do whatever it is that pisses off all those "Karma Whore!" shrieking Anonymous Cowards!
**>>BELCH
I've mirrored some of the images. (They are quite impressive; Note that as you zoom in on a text file, you can actually read the text within the file..!)
Consider it an experiment in Slashdotting.
The short answer is that Nautilus is Eazel's open source replacement for the current Gnome file manager, gmc. As the Gnome hackers discovered once they were deep into the project, Midnight Commander wasn't the greatest of file managers to use as a starting point for a Gnome file manager. Also, as The Gnome Project has matured, we have new technologies to work with, such as Bonobo. Nautilus will use these new advances in the Gnome framework to provide a next generation file manager for the Gnome Project. Nautilus will not only allow you to manage your files, but also to view documents using embedded viewers. The next generation Gnome help system will use nautilus, for example. Once nautilus is released as part of the Gnome desktop, users will notice an incredible difference as it will play a very integral part, and should appeal to newbies and Unix experts alike.
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Celebrate the finer things in life
I think many window managers really miss the boat on usability. Many of them are designed to look cool with utility taking the back seat.
A window manager is a program designed to help you make better use of other programs. As such it should not interfere with the function of other programs. It should stay out of your way.
A window manager should provide a simple method for starting new programs and an easy way to switch between running programs. The fewer steps necessary to do both the better.
If you look at windows, particularly win98 with its desktop enhancements, it does a very good job of this.
Running tasks are all shown in a bar along the bottom, allowing you to quickly switch to any task. When windows are maximized they do not cover this bar. The menus under the start button allow you to start up any application which is on the system. Links to frequently used programs can be inserted in an area next to the start menu so that they are always immediately accessible.
With other window managers more effort it needed to keep the desktop in a usable state. Maximize a window and it covers up things you don't want covered. Or it might only maximize vertically instead of truly maximizing. The users has to spend time and effort managing the windows when that is what a window manager is supposed to do.
It seems that people who create window managers spend a lot of time and effort making it look fancy and themable and all that instead of concentrating on making it useful. Also they may intentionally make it different from windows out of some misplaced zealousness against anything microsoft.
KDE for the most part gets it right, at least in the 1.x version. The default config for it isn't as good as it could be, but it is easy to fix.
2.x on the other hand has been broken. I'm going to have to find another window manager because I can't stand the one in KDE2. The only thing I use KDE for is its window manager anyway, so moving to something else is no big loss.
But unfortuneately it looks as if I'm going to have to write my own window manager. All the ones I've seen are broken in some way or another.
At one time we were all stuck with FVWM or MWM, or OLWM. Those days really sucked. We made do with those because there wasn't anything better. But then things like Afterstep started showing up and life got better. But now it seems that things are going backwards again, back towards cumbersome complex desktops that fight you rather than help you.
I won't have it. I'll write my own WM rather than be forced to play games with one that doesn't work right.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
I am in no way a microsoft fan but I'm afraid microsoft has it right with Explorer. You click on My Computer, it opens up instantly, no bloat. You want to use the web, type a web address, THEN it loads up web components. Same thing with BeOS. The tracker is very efficient and small, and gets the job done. I'm beginning to feel like it isn't worth it to open up the file manager in KDE/Gnome to copy a few files since its 10x easier in a shell.
-- We should kill all the intolerant people in the world.