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The State Of The GTK+ File Selector
Anonymous BillyGoat writes "The next stable release of GTK+ (from the 2.4x series) will have a new file selector, and of recent, a lot of activity has been going on around that. One of the GNOME artmasters, Tigert, has released a mockup of the new file selector and the GTK developers are busy working towards that. Meanwhile the people from OSNews have some other ideas, while an OSNews reader has made even better mockups."
Left-side shortcuts on common file open/save dialog boxes can be easily configurable by using
a) group policy editor
b) tweakui from microsoft.
(both of these assume you are running Windows2000/XP/2003)
In either cases, you have a choice of setting the shortcut to a namespace clsid (my computer, my docs, etc) or to a full pathname to anywhere you want.
For example, my file/open dialog on my windows machine has desktop,mycomputer,2 direct links to company file shares, and a path link to a temp directory on my machine.
But, of course, you couldn't be bothered to know this, since its easier to just complain.
what does sending him/her love have to do with saving my files?
Well, in the case of her if you don't know, then you and your parents missed a very important conversation.
In the case of him it probably doesn't have a whole lot to do with it, even if evidence presented in Jurassic Park is to the contrary.
In all seriousness, I believe it is referring to the maintaner of OSNews. I believe it is a she, and they post quite a few UI mockups on their site, and some constructive discussion usually follows.
-- Fighting mediocrity one bad post at a time.
> But a buddy was showing me some of his favorite GTK themes on his Gnome desktop, and I have to admit that I was impressed. Unfortunately, when I checked to see how many packages I'd have to install for Gnome, there were over 30 -- Mozilla was one of the dependencies!
> So, can any
The eyecandy comes from different places. Applications that use the GTK+ widgets will render with your choice of GTK+ theme, regardles of what window manager you use. The window manager eyecandy will only effect the "decorations" around the windows, though some of them will allow nice customizations for that. The panel and panel applets are provided by GNOME itself.
I use GNOME, but mostly for the panel these days; most of my favorite applications have been cast aside by current GNOME management. However, by using GARNOME I can comment out the builds for crap that I don't want, and almost trivially add back in a cast-aside GTK+ application that I do want.
I use the Sawfish window manager (another cast-aside), customized to look like the old ShinyFusion theme I used to use under Enlightenment, with many virtual desktops to organize my work (I typically stay logged in for six months at a time), and with lots of nifty buttons in the "decorations" to allow things like maximize-vertically, maximize-horizontally, maximize-both, etc.
BTW, you can window shop for eyecandy at themes.org. It is organized according to what component supports a theme (window manager, toolkit, etc.).
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I've said it before, and I'll say it again, the KDE v3 file selector is the best one I've ever used simply because the shortcuts on the left hand side are easy to use and customize (just give 'em a context click, and you can change the name, location, icon, etc).
And then you add in cool features like the kio_slave support (so that the location can be a WebDav dir for DnD file publishing, etc), and the fact that the custom locations can be made app specific (wow, my digital camera knows about my image dir, but I won't worry about that cluttering my kwrite dialogs!), and you see why KDE is a great DE to use.
The KDE folks got the file dialog right a while back -- it's time more people noticed their great work.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
- GTK's poor resize performance compared to Qt.
- GTK's poor expose handling compared to Qt.
- For practical purposes, lack of component technology. Bonobo is there, but almost no apps use it. Meanwhile, tons of KDE apps use KParts.
- For practical purposes, lack of a network-transparent filesystem. gnome-vfs is there, but not many apps use it, and its not supported through the standard file dialog. Meanwhile, every KDE app uses KIO.
- Nothing comparable to DCOP (until D-BUS comes out).
- Lower-level UI framework, compared to KDE's higher-level framework. GNOME's button Ok/Cancel button order is dictated by the HIG, while in KDE, its dictated by the framework, and would take a single line of code in kdelibs to change for all KDE apps.
- Lack of UI integration at the technology level. KDE apps use XML-GUI to define their layout. GUI layout can be change without touching a single line of code. KDE apps support customizable toolbars at the framework level, so all apps get it for free. The HIG is great, and GNOME's UI is very polished compared to KDE, but it would be nice if GNOME did like KDE and enforced a lot of those things in the code framework level.
Let's look at some of the upcoming GTK+ 2.4's features that Qt/KDE already has.
File selector (#29087)
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KDE has it.
Combo widget (#50554)
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Qt has it.
New action-based menu API (#55393)
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KDE has it.
Toolbar improvements (#55393)
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If you click on the feature request number and look at the proposed features, you'll see that Qt/KDE has a lot of these already, like customizable toolbars.
Autocompletion and history for GtkEntry (#69613)
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KDE already has this.
XCursor support for GDK. (#69436)
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Yep, this too. And they even mention Qt right in the first post of the feature-request thread, how nice!
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Hey, its just the GTK+ people that are living in the stone age!
Seriously, though, the file dialog is hardly representative. It was just an oddity in GTK+ that just got put off way longer than it should have. Other parts of the desktop are not like that, and in a lot of respects, they are ahead of Mac/Windows. For example, I can access remote servers transparently, right from the file dialog in KDE. Very handy when you live in a networked environment like a university.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Nothing says "KISS" like a XML file to configure the **** out'a the file selector.
If you want to see real KISS, check out ROX-Desktop. A DnD item with a filename under it, save by dragging it to your filer. Open by draggin the file from the filer to the app. A file manager manages the files, so you don't have a dialog trying to cram all it's functionality into it.
The point of the new GTK+ file selector is not so much how it looks than the fact that it is based around a new, extensible API. The old implementation was so tied to the API that its appearance couldn't really be altered (on a system-wide level), the new file selector can.
dare to compare this screenshot of the panther selector to the gtk+ one.
very similar - with the exception that the mac seperates devices and directories with a horizontal line. probably a good idea.
2 1337 4 u!
The love-sending widget will not be present in the final release of the new file selector, and is included in mockups to demonstrate how developers can add in special-purpose widgets into the window. For example, The GIMP may insert a quality slider in that place for saving JPEG images.
Early mockups used the phrase " Frobnicate the file ," which was changed to " Lart whoever asks about this button " after countless questions as to the use of frobnicating files.
These screenshots are linked from Federico Mena-Quintero's Activity Log, which is really rather fun to read. You may also be interested in Planet Gnome, which aggregates the weblogs of many interesting Gnome and Open Source personalities.