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The Captains of Nautilus
GonzoJohn writes "The official GNOME filemanager Nautilus was originally developed by Eazel as part of their plan to bring usability and beauty to the Unix desktop. Today Nautilus is maintained by veteran GNOME hackers Alexander Larsson and Dave Camp. Being such a core application in the GNOME desktop it is the topic of many discussions in and around GNOME. In a recent survey on gnomedesktop.org an interview about Nautilus was at the top of the wishlist. So to let everyone get the inside scope on what is happening with Nautilus currently I got hold of Alexander and Dave for a small interview.""
Ever since the release of GNOME2 threads of rebellion have surfaced in the community over the increased emphasis on corporate users over experienced GNOME users. Havoc, 'The point about corporate users is that they don't install the OS, or install their own hardware, or have to configure NFS mounts, etc. There's an admin to sort that stuff out.' This emphasis has lead to the removal of much of the flexibility inherant in GNOME2's predecessor. The fruits of this change have begun to surface, here, and here, and here.
Apparently, according to top GNOME developer Havoc Pennington, linux users are not Real Users^TM. Havoc, 'The only way to collect input from real users instead of Linux enthusiasts is to do user testing. We can't do user testing for every decision.'
Although I understand the need for the newbie user, I've never understood why Nautilus is so important to the initiated GNOME user. I very rarely have a need to use a graphical file manager, and when I do, I'd prefer one that wasn't buggy as snot and slower than tar. No matter what version I've tried, its always had problems. I don't believe I've ever been actively using it for more than a few minutes where it hasn't crashed (don't even bother on Solaris...) Its new and large, so I understand it will take a while, but I don't know that it is ready to have a central role in GNOME.
Yes, its nice eye candy, but how much is it actually used, aside from showing new users that you can drag and drop and preview just like Explorer?
I find Konqueror more usable, but it still seems like an afterthought. On both KDE and GNOME, the whole Desktop Icons and Folders scheme seems so out of place -- like a bad impulse no one should have acted on. I'm not anti-Nautilus, I just don't know that the whole GUI file manager application is as important as people make it out to be.
I'm not flaming, just wondering if anyone else doesn't feel the same.
Don't blame me, I get all my opinions from my Ouija board.
Well, I've never met the opportunity to use Finder... as well as MacOS in general.
As a developper, I find the enthusiasm of your reply quite interesting. Can you provide examples/urls about the features of Finder you find superior to Nautilus' ? I mean, features not also found on win platforms ?
No flame intended, I'm just interested in the UI concepts of as many platforms as I can handle.
Cheers
Karma cannot be described by words alone.
I can think of several specific examples, and a few "iffy" ones off the top of my head. But citing examples wouldn't explain it well.
I think you would gain the apple Human Interface Guide. It's a free download at developer.apple.com (that might be wrong url, I use bookmarks). It's about a 2 hour read (assuming you know basic desktop usage already.. as you do) and it helps explain alot about how an interface should be designed.
I think the biggest thing to be learned from apple is the following.
Never impliment a new metaphor unless there is no way to fit the new technology into the old one. If you have to impliment a new meatphore, then make it build on the basics of the old metaphor, but make it clearly diffrent so as to avoid confusion.
A great example is how they handled CD burners, as they aern't a random access file the old meatphor didn't work as well. They built on the old metaphor to build temporary "virtual disks" then you burn them using the old metaphor.
I live in a giant bucket.
Yuk. IMO, Finder wasn't perfected in OS X, it was butchered into that awful NeXT fil manager.
You, my friend, don't put trust info the adaptation ability of the human species, at least once they start to use something that make their life easier.
I may be mistaken, but remember, not too long ago using a _washing machine_ was a little more difficult than uing a computer nowadays. But many women were happily using them at that time (I've never messed with an antique washing machine's operating device, but I heard it was quite complicated and nasty).
People have been educated by the powers at hand in the last few years to consider that computers _must_ be as usable as your common toasters. The whole Apple concept is based on that feature, and that's why I try to learn about the Apple UI as much as I can.
That said, I nethertheless think that the whole idea is wrong. Computers are _not_ easy to use. Period. They were not meant to be. Trying to make them as usable as possible for as much people as possible is always putting features away from the user, and you can't do a thing about that how much hard you try (trust me).
You can make computers easy to use, but they would would become emasculated, tied-to-a-task, a pale shadow of what they were designed for. Though you will find many, many people nowadays that think this is the way to go for computers. Some of them even make laws in the US. Go figure.
In addition, I do think IMHO the average joe user is far more adaptable than you think, given that you provide him with the best product around. People are not too stupid to use a different OS, they have to discover again what computers are capable of.
Give them remote X displays. Give them remote SSH sessions. Give them Coda folders. Explain to them they can turn off their machine for _anywhere_. Explain to them they're in control. Explain it's complicated, but it's worth it. They'll learn.
Karma cannot be described by words alone.
http://rox.sourceforge.net
Yes, I think Explorer can do something similar. It's not quite the same, but as I'm not a heavy Finder user I'll have to take your word for it....
The Finder doesn't take up memory with caching all the directory structures, just the most recent. So the rendering is slow due to the Finder reading the icons + positions + the directory listing and all the other info from the disk.
Hmm? Neither does Rox, but it's still very fast. I don't know how Tom Leonard does it, but I recall seeing a brief explanation. It's got some pretty clever internals to make it extremely fast - which is why people associate rox with fast. "Buy a faster disk" isn't really a good solution compared to "make the finder faster".
Ahh, now we're getting somewhere. This has been a problem since OS X, because type and creator codes are no longer required, and thus files dont' always have them. The most common types such as .png, .jpg, etc. are supposed to be noticed by the finder and passed to QuickTime for this same sort of detection, all behind the scenes. [snip]
Hmm, sounds like it was good, albiet very complex. 10/10 for flexibility. Wouldn't running apps themselves have quite a bit of overhead though if you wanted to compile say a view with metadata in it? file is very fast as it just uses a combination of lookup tables with binary regexs iirc.
A simple RTFM solves this. Use the technique I described above, type the name until the highlight matches, and Apple-O, or any other keyboard shortcut you'd like, depending of course, on what you want to do with the file. You can actually move quite fast once you get the hang of it, it comes as natural as typing and using the shift key.
What happens if I have two files called "Business Plan" and "Business Diary" (let's pretend). Can I type "bu - tab - d - enter"? Or do I have to type "Business D - enter"? This isn't trying to trip you up or anything, I'm just curious.
Ahh, yes this feature coudl stand out a little more but the Finder is no Web Browser and therefore we keep this tucked away under the Go menu. Choose "Connect To Server..." or, for speed-shortcutting, use Apple-K (Konnect, C interferes with Copy)
OK, cool. Is that a VFS type system? ie in Konqueror I can go to audiocd:/ and copy my audio tracks named from a CDDB server as Oggs to my hard disk, and the files will be ripped and compressed transparently. There's nothing magic about that, what's neat is that it looks just like another FS to me. You could argue this is bloat, but I see no reason why it should be slow technically....
You clearly haven't used the Finder much, IamTheRealMike, but then you also seem to not care because it is Apple. This is a theme that came across in your post. Dont' assume you need to tell someone off because they defended their view - if I was to bad mouth the Linux kernel I'd be killed on this website, by all the slashdotters doing the same. Give it another try, look around carefully, Apple does things differently for a reason. You won't be a power user in a day. That's why Apple's interface is great, it does things logically but not the way other interfaces too. There is too much similarity with other file borwsers that limits them in some respects.
Well, good points. I wrote that last paragraph mainly because toupsie is a well known Mac troll, pretty much every post I see from him/her that gets modded up is estolling the Mac and trashing everything else. I'm not a heavy Finder user, I tend to use it on other peoples Macs, and I don't actually hate the Finder or anything, but I was trying to counterbalance toupsie who seemed to think that the Finder was perfection (it isn't) and that Explorer/the CLI/Nautilus/whatever is automatically awful, because it isn't Apple (they aren't)
Well, thanks for the informative reply. I wish all replies to my posts were like that......
I think you've confused "easy to use" with "dumbed down". Contrary to popular belief, the two are not the same thing. Your washing machine example proves it. By your own admission, older less functional washing machines were difficult to use and had complex interfaces. Modern washing machines do more, but they're easier to use. Would you prefer a thirty year old washing machine because it had a more complex interface?
Another great example is VCRs. I used to have an old Panasonic with complex push-button controls for setting scheduled recordings. Heck, even setting the clock was a chore. Nowadays, a Tivo does everything that my old Panasonic did (and more!) but it does it with an easy-to-use OSD. Is the old VCR more powerful because it was harder to use? I think not.
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