GTK 2.3, And The Emerging File Selector

Anon. writes "GTK 2.3 was released today, and initial (not finalized) screenshots of the new file selector are available here(1), here(2) and here(3). But do remember that the new file chooser is very much a work-in-progress, and the UI is not yet final."

Comments

Why is this so hard?

[Crayon Kid]

I hope they get it right, already. I bet it's gonna be some bloated kitchen sink that resembles Nautilus in complexity, complete with all kinds of previews and bells and whistles, and that it still won't be able to remember the last used directory.

I'd also put my 2 cents on them trying to catch up with KDE's file selector. No matter what people say, that's not my ideal one. I'm much more fond of the one Mozilla [Firebird] has -- that one is the embodiment of the KISS principle to such extent I'd venture to call it perfect. That's if you agree on the definition of perfect as being "not nothing to add, but nothing left to take away".

Well....

[samjam]

We've come a long way since the original stinky X file selector dialogs, but thats about the best I can say about it.

No doubt a lot of honest graft has gone into the design but it stinks, really.

Give me the latest windows shell open dialogs with shortcuts in the left hand side, pop-down directory list and big file selector with alternative views.

The only fault with that windows dialog is the small default size.

But these new GTK dialogs are just true-type anti-aliased windows 3.1 dialogs trying to show the directory tree and file list through two tiny peepholes.

Ugh

Sam

Re:Well....

[Alethes]

Giving them credit for something that is not finalized, I still have to say that I'm disappointed with the direction this is headed. It seems that the file selector and Nautilus both have gone the complete opposite direction as the rest of the GNOME and GTK projects in that they're not simplifying and making the desktop more intuitive and usable. Even if everything else is perfect, the usablity of GNOME will suffer greatly as long as the foundational elements of the file selection and file management are not done properly. Even copying the UI of the KDE and Windows file selectors would be a dramatic improvement over the existing product.

Yea, good start.

[Inoshiro]

Getting closer to QT/KDE's fileselector. Once they add home; back; forward; logical parent; new dir; bookmarks (web kind), configure, a direct type path with memory; character encoding; proper MIME filtering; and (my favourite feature) an easy to configure with custom-icons left-hand directory bookmark, which just happens to be configurable per-app that calls the file selector dialog or globally, we'll have seen progress.

Hopefully the Gnome people can build on this.

Maybe next round...

[kwerle]

Sigh. You can see the problems with it just by looking at it on any system with a good dialogue (OSX, for example).

No favorite folders (buttons/popup). No home folder (button). Image3 shows PERFECTLY that you can't tell the full path in the window without scrolling up and memorizing the directories you're in, instead of left->right and seeing them all highlighted (treeview blows). Look at it - am I in my image directory, or bobs?

There are good file dialogue boxes out there - have been for years. STEAL THEM.

yeah, maybe this is flamebait, but mostly I'm tired of bad non-osx file dialogues.

Re:Maybe next round...

[kwerle]

initial (not finalized)" don't you understand? The design work on this just started less than a month ago. Give them a chance.

To me, this looks like just about every other unix file dialogue. Bad.

They're posting mock-ups. There's no reason a mock-up should look this bad.

Again, this is all IMNSHO.

Re:hooray for usability

[squiggleslash]

Most OSes I've seen generally give the coder some ability to add custom elements to standard selectors. An app might want to add a "Open Read Only" check box. A text editor might want to allow a user to select an HTML document and check an "Edit as plain text" box to ensure the editor doesn't load it as a rich-text document.

It can be a useful thing to do. Whether it'll end up being used properly is ultimately the choice of the programmer.

FLTK gets it right

[sunya]

FLTK's file chooser uses the best of all worlds... GTK should probably just adopt it and be done with it.

Not bad looking but

[LWATCDR]

I did not see anyway to change the view I tend to like to use the details view in windows. It would also be useful to beabile to sort by date or name and to have the option of setting the view for the applications or for the entire desktop.
just a sugestion.