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The State Of The GTK+ File Selector

Posted by timothy on from the niggly-details dept.

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."

7 of 701 comments (clear)

  1. One possible feature I'd like to see by Limburgher · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Will the shortcuts on the left side (home, etc) be configurable? That would be one way to beat the crap out of Windows once again. On my one Windows box, I never put anything in My Documents, I keep it all elsewhere, ona FAT32 partition for dual-booting use. I'd LOVE configurable shortcuts.

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    You are not the customer.

  2. too complex by POds · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The problem with those mockups is that they seem specificaly tailord to GNOME. Ie it uses icons for HOME, Desktop, Most recent files etc but all of these are classic things that are integrated within gnome and no use to someone that uses blackbox or other light window managers as they're primary window manager.

    Why cant we just get rid of the icons and by doing so cut down the size of the selector and simplly have a listbox of pre-defined locations to save files?

    Also it would be good if that list could be changed by editing a configuration file, maybe an XML file?

    KISS

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  3. all I want by XO · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Is a damn file selector box, where if I enter a DIRECTORY NAME into the box, and then press ENTER, it will SWITCH to that DIRECTORY, rather than giving me an error, or showing me an empty selector box that isn't pointed to anything.

    That's what irks me the most. I don't care how PRETTY the damn thing is.
    I can't even make out what the hell half the controls on those mockups ARE...

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  4. Re:I know these folks are working hard... by Dion · · Score: 3, Interesting

    "desktop paradigm"?

    That should earn you a score of:
    -1 Astroturfing PR-nitwit.

    About the "windows bad" vs. "reusing windows ideas good" issue; no there is no problem here, windows does suck major ass, but there are some good ideas in there that are worth reusing.

    The biggest problem with windows is not that it's badly designed nor that it's badby implemented (it's both), but that it's non-free, reimplementing features in free software thus fixes the biggest problem with windows.

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    -- To dream a dream is grand, but to live it is divine. -- Leto ][
  5. Fileselectors are obsolete! by Florian · · Score: 5, Interesting
    File selector boxes are a legacy of the early MacOS until version 6.x, which was single-tasking and didn't allow to switch between several applications running parallel. In fact, a file selector box is nothing but a miniature replica of a graphical file manager (like the MacOS finder, the Windows Explorer, konqueror, nautilus, rox etc.). The more "functional" file selectors got, the more bloated and redundant vis-a-vis the file manager they became.

    It would make more sense IMHO to abolish file selectors altogether and instead throw users into their preferred file manager for opening files. All it would need is a freedesktop.org standard protocol for file manager/application interaction and perhaps a $FILEMANAGER environment variable. (Theoretically, $FILEMANAGER could then also be a shell in a terminal.)

    -F

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    1. Re:Fileselectors are obsolete! by master_p · · Score: 4, Interesting

      What you are saying is quite an interesting idea. Another version of it is to use a window of the selected $FILEMANAGER as the dialog for opening a file. For example, when I open a file in KWord, a Kongueror file window comes up in modal form, allows me to select one or more files, and then is closed. In this way, the look & feel (as well as other extras that the current environment puts into my filemanager) will be easily replicated.

      Another idea is to use the simplest possible list (a simple dialog with a file list box and a text box with the path) and have a big red button which says "file manager". By pressing this button, a file manager window will come up in the current directory of the file dialog box, and let the user continue do file management from there.

  6. You could say... by Gordonjcp · · Score: 4, Interesting

    ... that *no* industry is about innovation, but playing catch-up. GM/Vauxhall/Opel are touting headlights that swivel as you turn corners as a great new thing, but that's just playing catch-up to Citroen who had those on the DS nearly 40 years ago. Likewise varipower steering - ancient French technology. Or what about BMW, with paddle-change gearboxes where you select the gear with the paddles, then press a button to engage it? That's just playing catch-up to the Wilson Preselector gearbox, found in 1930s Wolsley and Frazer-Nash cars.