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Why Users Blame Spatial Nautilus
An anonymous reader writes "OSNews has a commentary on spatial Gnome and why you KDE/Windows people hate them so much (hint: because almost all of you use Windows and/or a Windows 'interface clone'). Steve Jobs, however, denounced spatial interfaces because they make the users janitors. Hmmm!"
GNOME 2.6 is all about ease of use, performance and unification
...
Don't know how to use gconf? Then you shouldn't change the way Nautilitus works, I presume.
Am I missing something?
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Remove the Kiddie Gloves!
In other news, god uses three-space tabs.
From the Wikipedia article...
/apps/nautilus/preferences/always_use_browser
If you do not like Spatial Nautilus, turn it off by setting the following key to true using gconf-editor.
found here
There shouldn't be such an outcry over this. People are accustomed to things such as double-clicking (OOPS, VIOLATED A PATENT) and other parts of Windows. To ease the transfer from Windows to Linux, the GNOME team should at least create an option to disable it.
got sig?
Whether a spatial interface is useful or not depends on how many levels of nested directories you have. In linux you can go pretty deep, and a spatial interface quickly becomes unwieldy. On old Mac OS, you hardly ever went deeper than Macintosh HD:Documents, so a spatial interface was very efficient and intuitive. OS X could easily be spatial: all the unix stuff doesn't show up in the GUI anyway.
The perfect sig is a lot like silence, only louder
I really can't understand arguments like the one OSNews makes. If people hate the interface then they hate the interface. Saying, "No! You can't hate the interface becasue it's right! You're all worng! You really like it!" just seems, well, silly. What's next, "Why Users Find Spinach Disgusting" telling us why we should really all find spinach to be tasty?
Laugh at stupidity: mod idiots +1 Funny.
As some of the osnews comments pointed out, there's nothing new about the spacial interface. the first version of macos had it, and windows has had it since win95. In fact, you can still switch to it easily in winxp. However, xp does provide an easy way to turn it off, which nautilus apparently doesn't.
Overall, I think that the spacial metaphor is good for novice users, but once users get used to organizing files and folders themselves, they begin to find that it clutters their interface more than a browser-based interface does.
Some people aren't interested in the Gnome developers personal interperation of the desktop metaphor. Some people think that making poor decisions based on pushing on a metaphor to the breaking point is stupid.
Some people think that using a tool to apply struture to files is an excellent use of a computer, rather than yelling at users that they're too messy and they need to conform to thier tools rather than the other way around.
Jesus. What egocentric crap! There's nothing wrong with a "spatial metaphor" if thats what works for you, but your underwear twisted in a knot when other people don't willingly submit to your attempt to push it on them is just egocentric and irritating.
I've not read such a bunch of poorly written flaptrap rhetoric in quite a long time.
There is not a single case of anything there but first-hand anecdotal nonsense. Not only that, but it ignores the fact that spatial browsing (as they call it) was tried with Windows - and dumped, because it largely sucked.
Some people might like GNOME, but most do not. I do not like it because it is not configureable. Even Windows is more configurable than GNOME is in some respects.
The author tried to say that hard disks should be browsed like a file cabinet's folder. That's fine - but I like to browse by task (if I'm browsing at all). It would drive me nuts if i had a seperate bash instance or state for every directory I navigated to - as I've evidently moved from those directories, and no longer need them.
That said, this guy's writeup is borderline incomprehendable. How'd this make it to the front page, again? My left testicle could make a more sound argument for castration than this guy's half-assed attempts at arguing for spatial file browsing.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
I for one am kinda tired of people flaming me and saying things like "you kde/windows people" just because I don't care for spatial nautilus.
I'm not trying to flame anyone here, but it is a valid opinion shared by me and lots of other users.
bash: rtfm: command not found
To be honest I don't use GNOME or KDE, my most common activity is browsing the web (firefox), mail (thunderbird) and most other things I do are through a terminal window. Sometimes I use other apps (openoffice, media players, etc) but that's insignificant compared to normal usage.
The Gnome interface guidelines are different to what people are used to under Windows (e.g OK and Cancel buttons in a different order) which makes it annoying when using Firefox which conforms to these guidelines, because I'm swapping between platforms all the time.
Thiw isn't a firefox problem as they designed it to fit in with the Gnome UI guidelines, but it's not going to be successful unless they get guidelines that all main Linux apps use (Gnome, KDE, and other apps that don't fit into either like OpenOffice) otherwise it's just an inconsistant mess.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"Well, that point of view is one-sided. The whole thing about spatiality is to provide the user with a real-life-alike interface that keeps objects' state and does not alter the contents of any physical object if not ordered to. Browser mode folder windows violate these rules by replacing physical object (folder, represented on screen by a window) contents with new set of icons every time the user opens a new folder, and not retaining folders' state (view mode, sort order, icon placement)." Whoever thinks a computer should emulate a file cabinet should trade their compiler for a carpentry set. Poor interface design requires bullshit defenses like this. Good interface design becomes obvious upon using it.
The guy is basically saying that this way of browsing your desktop is better for you, so shut up and get used to it.
Thats just insane.
Users have their way of using their desktop, and software should adapt to that. Yes - software should push new ideas. However, when users flat out reject them it is not the place of the developers to say "quit your bitching, we know what is best for you."
As for the guy that wrote the article, attacking users that complain and don't know how to use gconf? What, only power users are allowed to choose how their desktop feels?.. [ as a side not, perhaps if gconf wasn't so crap... ]
stuff
I've decided to post this instead of mod.
I've thought about this, and seen the way a lot of different people use their computers, and i've come to this conclusion why spatial mode is a really dumb thing to do. Spatial mode only helps you move or copy documents from one directory to another.
Users are basically divided into two groups: people who can find their files, and people who can't.
People who can find their files hate spatial nautilus because it just clutters up the screen without providing any real functionality. Sure it makes it easier to drag and drop files the few times you need to do it, but it makes navigation of the file system a complete bitch. These people don't want the hassel of working with twelve different windows.
People who can't find their files typically put every single one of their files regaurdless of content or file type into a single directory, "My Documents" or its equivilant. Since these people pretty much always save their files in this same place, they never benefiit from spatial nautlilus because they never have multiple places for their files. The only benefit of spatial mode is easier copying or moving of files from one directory to another, and since these people only use one directory, spatial mode means nothing to them.
Slackware, what else when it must be secure, stable, and easy?
I'm sorry but the newspaper analogy sucked donkey balls. I mean, my web browser doesn't turn my hands black either.
GNOME devs - Lay off the Kool-Aid and switch back to something with caffeine!
This article is what is wrong with the OSS community. Simply because one disagrees with the author, that person is wrong wrong wrong.
I *hated* the folder diarrhea that began with Mac OS. Some people love it. The option to turn it off and on should be an easily configured checkbox in the app, not something "hidden" in the gconf setup.
Yes please, can I have some more?
Yes, I'm sure it would be perfect if all files were only 2 directories deep, but achieving that would require you to really really want it (for philosophical reasons?), and waste your time on it. It's not real-world though.
In the article (I read it) it says that the spatial nautilius mimicks the way physical objects behave, ie by staying in the same place unless you put it somewhere else etc (not replacing the directory you had open). This works fine in the physical world, but computer systems are often more complex (or more simple but act in a different way, depends on how you see it), and therefore we have developed suitable abstractions and interfaces to be able to interact with them. The "browser" mode is one of these. It prevents clutter, and it's easy to get at both folders a level above and below where you are in the directory structure.
BTW, congratulations on getting an extreme flamebait submission accepted.
And say that of all the file browsers I've ever used, the default OS X system (and its simplified iPod cousin) with multiple columns scrolling left and right is probably the most useful. It simultaneously tells me what files are in my current folder and leaves a breadcrumbs trail back to the root directory, with the added bonus of giving me detailed info on whatever file I've selected.
It's not perfect -- it's stuck on alphabetical order and always takes me to the top of a folder's contents instead of scrolling to wherever I last was -- but it gives me a lot of information in one window, which is just the sort of thing an info-geek like me loves.
Advice for shallow folders seems stuck in ages of DOS when you had 100s of files on a drive max. In age with 100's of thousands of files, shallow hierarchy is a murder both in terms of organization and performance.
Similarly, author's disgust at some people using tabs to display separate pages seems ridiculous - we're not supposed to use interface in the most convenient way possible, just to avoid crossing some imagines real-life metaphor none of us knew existed?
I guess I just cannot get myself into the mind of the reviers, or the way that he apparently uses his computer... all I can say is, he better realize that other people don't all use the computer in the same way, before he presumes to write UI articles with any authority...
- To err is human; but to really screw up, you need a computer
Ok, I am one of these people, I like to have one browser window open with all of the pages I need in tabs along the top. Why? Because I find it much more efficent functionality wise, if I had multiple windows on the bottom menu bar, it would get far too cluttered.
I am getting the feeling the author is attacking people like myself who use their browsers like this based on his view that people like their software interfaces to act like objects we encounter in real life. But why should I be limited to how objects work by the laws of physics, when there are better options available to me that aren't confined by these laws?
I don't understand the attack here, if I find it more functional to use my browser this way, who the hell is he to suggest otherwise? No I don't glue pages of a newspaper side by side, because that would be plain stupidity, but this is not the same. It would take ages to glue newspaper pages together in a different arrangement, whereas on a browser interface such as mozilla, it takes a simple: Right click > Open link in new tab.
Worst analogy ever.
She's built like a steak house, but she handles like a bistro....
I like spatial mode. But the GNOME developers should be careful about ignoring complaints about the lack of options. Linux users aren't fond of being told what's best for them and it wouldn't be a huge development effort to make an options page for the top 5-10 things that GNOME users complain about not having an easy way to change (i.e. not tracking down a gconf key, please let's not head down the path of the undocumented/obscure reg-hacks again)
Insert pithy comment here.
It's like the metric system
As in it's not like the metric system? The metric system is mathematically elegant, but the spatial nautilius is just oversimplified. An oversimplified approach to a rather complex task. It's an abstraction level below the browser nautilius, and one step to low. Clutter.
we don't want it now because we're not used to it, but everyone knows it's better than the English system.
As in clearly not everybody knows it's better than the browser nautilius?
Troll? Yes, probably.
I'm an avid user of Gnome, though a less avid user of nautilus (I tend to prefer the good ole terminal window, myself). I have nothing against the "spatial" nautilus or its detractors/competitors.
However, reading this article is like a HOWTO on the philosophy of poor user-interface design. Software engineers in general make bad user-interface designers because of the philosophy of those like Radoslaw. That philosophy is that you can engineer a perfect design and ram it down the throats of users who don't like it, because it is based on "sound" engineering. A desktop "metaphor" is only as good as it does its job- which is to aid the user in doing what he or she wants to do (in whichever context you're in).
"Spatial" nautilus (and to be honest, I'm not entirely sure how it differs from the Windows 95 file manager, but as I said, I don't use Nautilus very much) may be great, but it won't be because it rests soundly on some abstract file drawer metaphor. Hell, if I want to something that matches the usability of a file drawer 100%, I'll buy a file drawer, thank you very much. Nautilus, and any other piece of desktop software will be great if and only if it helps its users get their jobs done. If users are clamoring for an option to turn it off, then that's probably an indication that they are not buying the new UI, or at least not ready for it. Provide them the option (apparently there is one, buried somewhere in gconf no doubt) and move on. Stop trying to deliver a "revolution" to the unwilling, and stop developing user interfaces in a vacuum.
"Every man is a mob, a chain gang of idiots." - Jonathan Nolan, Memento Mori
I don't use Nautilus but I decided to read this article just cause it's a slow day. I was amazed at what an absolute buffoon the writer is. Check out some of these choice quotes. Speaking of tabbed browsing:
Sometimes they even abuse the physical metaphor of tabbed browsing by opening multiple pages - not subpages of the same web site! ... I hope they do not try to glue a daily set of newspapers together before reading them..."
What an opinionated moron. I browse the web all in one window, using nothing but tabs. But *apparently* I'm abusing my user interface! Here I thought I just preferred it that way, who knew I was offending a purist! And further for people who don't find spatial Nautilus conducive to browsing:
Folder structure should be simple and as shallow as possible, and the "master" folders (something like My Images or My Music folders known from Windows) should have their own shortcuts on a GNOME panel
Ahhh, now it's how we're all storing our files the wrong way. Silly us! I appreciate the basic gyst of his argument. "If you change your way of working to conform to your user interface, then you'll find it's completely intuitive. Sorry, no offense to the folks who use and love Nautilus, but you need to keep this buffoon from engaging in any more advocacy.
I hate it when people applies real world constraints to the computer. Yes, each folder is a seperate entity, but that doesn't mean that you have to treat it as such whenever you handle it. Instead of thinking that each folder has its own window, you can treat the window as a view inside your file system. Opening a new folder is just like switching channels on the tv. As someone else mentioned, each window does not have to represent the folder itself, but rather the current task.
I'm also one of those "few" people browsing the web using just one window (opera). Web browsing is usually one task, thus one window. It's also quite practical if I want to move the browser to the other monitor. Instead of moving 10 windows I can now move one. If I want to use both monitors, I just detach one of the document windows (or create a new window) and move that window.
why the gnome devs require end users to dig through hidden settings with gconf-editor is beyond me.
if such a fundamental ui thing as spatial browsing can be disabled, present it to the user in an easily accessible manner. don't hide it away.
i mean, what's next, hiding away the logoff button in some hidden menu because users might accidentally use it?
There is a reason that every single desktop environment (barring GNOME 2.6) has dropped the "spatial desktop". There is a reason that people now write code languages that are not Smalltalk, no matter how much you try and make them so. There is a reason that people get cable modems/dsls, instead of dialing up an ISP on their phone. Let the old technologies die. They served their purpose, and trying to ressurect them is not only painful to those around you, but to the poor, severely beaten corpses of these once proud horses.
"Give away the stone, let the oceans take and transmutate this cold and faded anchor." - Maynard James Keenan
I don't know why this keeps being debated. Spatial interfaces work for when you have few files and shallow directories, just like in the real world on your desk. Browser interfaces work for when you have lots of files and deep directory trees. The only way to get a spatial browser to "feel" like it's powerful when you have a lot of files is to have the computer manage the files in "meta" categories. That way, you're managing groups of things that are smartly organized, not a myriad of individual files. Perhaps when we get some really smart database file systems there will be some automation to bring spatiality back but until then it's browser all the way.
They explicitly argue that the spacial metaphor is somehow intuitively more appropriate:
Think of your hard drive contents as of a desk full of drawers. Every time you put something into a drawer, you may be sure that the next time you open the same drawer it will be in the same place (and the drawer itself will remain in the same place). So, when you open a folder and try to locate a particular icon, it should be where you put it before. Simple?
But so what!? There are other viewing metaphors (such as the browser) that are just as coherent to the user, but don't have such negative usability impacts (such as hundreds of open windows, new windows opening in seemingly random locations, and seemingly random changes in view).
Arguments for usability need to be based on usability testing or proven heuristics - not on "this metaphor is the most conceptually pure, but who cares about its usability impact". The only real advantage of a strong UI metaphor is to increase peoples speed at learning the interface due to their familiarity with the metaphorical concept, but the choice of metaphor needs to be carefully weighed up against how usable that product will be once it is learnt.
I find it a confusing and jarring experience when OS X finder switches view mode based on the previous way I was viewing some folder, because I don't remember how I last viewed a folder, I'm thinking in a browser/viewer type framework (but I realise my experience may not be typical of the average user). How usable is this for the average person?
The commentator claims in part that spatial browsing is better because it encourages a shallow directory structure, which is clearly preferred over deep directory hierarchies for organizing information. He gives as a metaphor the contents of a drawer, which is easily visible to anyone who opens it. But he fails to consider the problems for people who have large numbers of files and documents that need organizing. Imposing shallow directory trees implies that there will either be large numbers of files in each directory, or that there will be a large number of subdirectories under each root and branch node. The appropriate metaphor then is not a few drawers in a desk to keep track of, but a garage with walls that are packed with the contents of shelves, boxes, jars, drawers, cabinets, and other containers. After a while, people forget where things are stored and resort to brute force searching to find things they know are there, but can't recall exactly where.
The solution isn't to impose a particular form of organization for storing and browsing files, but rather to provide superior tools for indexing and cataloging all entries so that they are easy to recall. What we need are browsers that allow us to browse by content attributes, rather than simply by file name or directory path.
If you have to get used to it: It's not intuitive. Please understand this. If it has a learning curve that means people need to get used to it, it's not bloody intuitive! Apple Zealots seem to fall for this sooo much.
Now, not being intuitive doesn't mean it's a bad interface. Some programs have non-intuitive interfaces that require (sometimes steep) learning curves: Grapics editors (photoshop, gimp...) 3d Editors (Blender comes to mind for the praise people who have mastered that learning curve heap on it, and the scorn those who haven't: suggesting it's a good design, but not intuitive.), CAD programs, and other complicated ones.
GNOME is going for the philosopy that good= intuitive= simple= striped-down-to- lowest-common-denominator. It's a choice they made. User options are regarded as bad things. The user shouldn't have to think. Which is fine for some users who only do very basic things or just happen to work/think the way the GNOME devs do, but it tends to highly annoy most other people. Honestly, why does almost every servey of Linux users come out with KDE being lots more popular, even in the US? I think it comes down to: KDE offers the user choice. Can anyone name a GUI interface that everyone likes with default settings? I don't like OS X, nor BeOS, nor Windows, nor GNOME, nor (shudder) CDE, nor even KDE's Keramic. I can use all of them, but they annoy me. If you like one of those, use it, but don't claim that it is the one true best one.
Oh, and apparently intuitive's spelling isn't intuitive, nor is it's definition.
Spatial and meta-categories can mix if you expand the vocabulary of the spatial environment. The obvious example that comes to mind is "piles." Apple has been rumored to be working on this for a long time now. If the computer can organise your documents, say based on date created, format, job, or content, then it can put it into piles, much like you would do for a stack of papers of a particular category on your desk. Automating these kinds of groupings is difficult but I don't think impossible. Perhaps like speech-to-text it will be possible to train the OS based your work patterns. I know that I am pretty consistent in how I manage everything. I have a few types of projects I work on which always have the same patterns of creation.
Windows does not have a spatial interface, never has, and likely never will. Spatial doesn't mean "opens files in new windows" which is the extend of the Windows behaviour people label "spatial."
;-)
Spatial works, and only works, because it's *spatial*. Which means that you can visualize locations and objects based on their relationships to other objects.
The classic spatial example is driving. There are probably tons of places you go on a daily basis on which you have no idea what the road names are. Or, if you do, you at least don't think about them while driving. Many people give directions that don't say things like "turn left on Elm" but instead things like "drive into town, turn left at the corner with the brown building, drive a couple hundred feet, etc."
Another example is a filing cabinent. (Closer to the computer folder/file metaphor.) I can tell someone where the records for my company's taxes are. The name of the drawer, the name of the folder. When I look for that folder though, I don't scan the cabinent for the drawer name, I don't filter through the folders one by one. I go straight to the third drawer, go straight to three fourths of the way back, look for the clump of red folders, and pull out the first one. I know the location of the proper draw in relation to the cabinet itself and the other drawers, and the know the location of the folder in relation to the folders around it. That's spatial.
And the great thing about the spatial Nautilus mode is that it works both spatially *and* navigationally! You can open a folder, scan through the list of folders and files in it, and make a choice based on a known path or set of directions. On the other hand, if you are already familiar with the file, you can navigate to it without so much as reading a single label/name, because all the items are in the same places, each folder opens in the same spot on your desktop, etc. You can remember where to click based on the location of the window and icons therein in relation to each other.
And just as the article states, your clutter argument is crack. Middle click or shift-click will close the parent window while opening the new, so there is absolutely no reason for your desktop to be cluttered other than you being unaware of the feature. Now that you are, that argument is invalid.
I use gnome 2.6.
The spatial nautilus took me all of 30 seconds to get used to and I still use it today...though I use aterm more in day to day stuff.
But hey folks, it's not rocket science here. It's very easy to use, and it's very easy to get used to. But some people just "I don't want to get used to it! I hate it! HATE IT! I'll never use it!".
I seem to remember that OSX had a new interface also that people had to spend a little time getting used to it. And I recall in the pre-press shop I worked at people saying "I don't want to get used to it! I hate it! HATE IT!" with that too. But after a few days they couldn't live without it.
People hate change. But hey, if you don't want to use it, don't use it. Use kde or fluxbox or _______(insert window manager here).
Ahh...the sweet smell of choice!
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
Why would one artificially limit their use of tabs to only pages served from the same website? The author likens tabs in a browser to marks in a book. However, he almost suggests that use of such a tool should be limited in use to one specific style of usage. To me, it might make sense to use tabs within the same window to group pages related by task (recipies for tonight's dinner, for instance) rather than source.
And this is intuitive how? The author seems to think that UI elements should map directly to real-world objects. I am left wondering which real-world object would lead the user to stumble across the idea of holding the shift button while double-clicking.
Why double-clicking? Why must a modifier key be used? My remote control never requires a double-click. Nor do the climate controls on my car. The author seems to like the book analogy -- I've definitely never had to turn a page twice while holding a random button to get the desired response from a novel.
The author also suggests that if one cannot figure out how to change the application's default behavior then they should constrain themselves to the developer's idea of what the proper settings should be. In other words, if a user finds a UI to be confusing and unfriendly, it's their own fault and they aren't qualified to determine what environment they prefer.
Is this really the type of thing one should be saying of an application with a well-designed UI?
Somebody get that guy an ambulance!
The reason people hate Spatial Nautilus is simple: they use KDE or (more likely) Windows most of the time and are used to that. They boot into Gnome and try out the new Nautilus that they've already seen flamed to death on slashdot and osnews. The first thing they do is click the fuck out of it and explore their entire hard drive, opening up dozens and dozens of windows on the screen. They fail to try to explore the interface or read any documentation and don't realize there is a "File->Close Parent Windows" or Ctrl-W available to them, nor do they even notice that folders retain their characteristics like position and size over time.
They then decide that it sucks because they never bothed to give it an honest look in the first place and were either resistant to any sort of change or were simply confirming the pre-existing bias they already had.
Here's who *likes* spatial nautilus: people that use it to manage files instead of browse their filesystem. People that use Gnome as a tool and not a toy, people who and organize their personal files logically. If you actually *use* it, you'll probably end up loving spatial nautilus, despite the areas that still need improvement in it. But those are not the people that tend to review new distributions or new versions of desktop environments which is why there are so few positive spatial Nautilus reviews out there.
501 Not Implemented
And if there's an option that only those familiar with computing is likely to want to change or modify, gconf is a fine place.
You already can browse your files the old way either by choosing "browse the filesystem" (not sure of exact name, using an non-english locale) from the file menu, or right clicking a directory icon and choose the corresponding option.
The only reason to go into gconf is to completely disable the spatial nautilus features. Only people likely to want that, are the non-newbies longing for the "good old days" of "exploring" the filesystem.
Nautilus, as it is, already has five tabs of options in a rather cluttered options dialogue. I'm glad that this rather annoying option isn't in that.
A lot of old Gnome and Windows users hate the new spatial Nautilus. Understandable. It's very different.
On the other hand, I always hated the old Nautilus - with the spatial one it's the first time I've begun using an actual file manager (as opposed to just the gnu file utils from the shell) in bloody ages. Many of my friends feel the same way. (And some, like you, hate it.)
Well, doesn't that make everyone happy?
Sometimes they even abuse the physical metaphor of tabbed browsing by opening multiple pages - not subpages of the same web site! - in multiple tabs of a browser window. I even know few people who never open more than one browser window, viewing all pages in tabs; I hope they do not try to glue a daily set of newspapers together before reading them...
Yeah, that would be me, but I don't deal in printed works, so no I don't go gluing stuff together.
This more that anything inspires me to never use Gnome ever,
Not only do I find his entire diatribe insulting, but rather narrow minded and overall devoid of substance.
Why do I use only one browser window and load everything into tabs? Maybe I will always have at least 10 different apps open and don't like navigating through a sea of windows to find the 'one' I need at that instance. It's bad enough that BBedit on the mac doesn't support tabbing, so I often have 20 BBedit windows open because I am scripting, modeling, writing DB schemas, writing html and CSS all in different documents, so when I need to access a commandline, I don't want to figure out which terminal it's in, I just use "Screen" and tab to the most appropriate prompt -- and when testing/prototyping/debugging, I don't want to hunt down the one browser window out of a swarm, I want to just select Mozilla and have the one and only window pop up and grab my tab.
What is so wrong with this? The author did nothing to illuminate me on why my methodology is wrong nor convince me I'd be better off mucking about in a swarm of windows which he provclaims is "the one true way".
And who is this "author" anyway?
Some network admin from poland -- where I can only assume the network admins you.
It's easy to start on an OSS program to 'scratch an itch' - I started that way myself. 6 months down the line I found I had *real users* who actually (gasp) wanted the program to work for them too.
5 years down the line I probably spend half my development time thinking about how each change impacts the users (yes, even the really annoying ones). I have a rule.. if more than 10 people complain about something I have a design issue that needs fixing (since there's probably another 1000 who didn't get as far as the mailing list to complain).
Too many programmers treat their projects as an excercise in masturbation and forget that there are real, flesh and blood people out there who are relying on you to get it right - some of them have invested money because they believe you can do it.
People don't read documentation, or FAQs, or even google. They want their software to do what *they* want it to do and it is our job as programmers to at least attempt to give them that. Bleating that all the users *must* be wrong because this wizzy new feature is so revolutionary it'll change the world is just wrong on so many levels I can't even begin to express it.
Innovation is good, but you do it slowly - first offer the option, make it a bit more obvious over time (once the teething troubles are out), and see how people pick it up and use it. If they all hate it, then dump it. Forget the ego... you'll just piss everyone off and kill the project.
First thing I tried was KDE on RedHat 9. What an abysmal failure that was. I upgraded the machines to 3.2.1 using the kde-redhat rpms available here
The problem we had with that setup was the file browser. It's way too complex for non-knowledgeable linux users. 800 tabs on the left side of the screen to get to different parts of the file system just simply doesn't work. Nobody could get to anything.
So I switched them to a custom compiled version of gnome 2.6 on redhat 9 (again, vendors restrict us to it). It's actually gone quite well. However, the change I've had to make across the board is getting rid of the spatial windows (a pretty easy option to change, and now part of our default user config). We use a very large file structure to get around our assets and shots, and navigating it with a spatial browser would have taken a ton of windows and the user would have spent way too much time closing windows. So, their browser window has actually been quite sucessful.
In short, the gnome browser view is a winner, but spatial navigation just doesn't work for very large directory structures.
This just occured to me. If the file system is to be seen as a file cabinet full of files - then how can there be subdirectories at all? If root is the filing cabinet, then the directories in root are the drawers. Inside the drawers, there are files. How can there be subdirectories inside the drawers? Drawers inside drawers? Entire filing cabinets inside drawers? No matter how you look at it, the metaphor doesn't hold. So the argument of making it "just like real life" is just plain wrong.
For many years, OS/2 Warp was my preferred desktop. Had it not been for IBM's virtual abandonment of the product, I'd be using it today. There are many things I still miss from OS/2's gui (the Workplace Shell). One thing I remember with nostalgic fondness was the spatial interface. It really worked well on a system that views drives the same way DOS/Windows does (C:, D:, E:, etc.). This kept my directory tree much shallower. When I finally gave up on OS/2, I moved to Windows. I couldn't and can't stand the interface, but the one thing I really began to rely on was the browser-based interface. What really grabbed me at first is that I could very comfortably begin doing file manager operations entirely with the keyboard. For example, to move a file to its parent directory, you can "Ctrl-X" the file, "Alt-Left" to the previous directory and "Ctrl-V" to finish the move. Trying the same operation with the spatial interface would never have been as quick or simple. Being a keyboard-oriented user by preference to this very day, I can really appreciate this. When I finally moved to Linux, I loved the fact that my command prompt became so important again, but in the gui category, I was back to near-total mouse usage. When I found KDE (and especially when KDE introduced Konqueror - which outstrips IE in almost every way as far as I'm concerned), I was happy to get a return to the browser interface.
There are still some things I'd like to see resurrected from OS/2's WPS, but for the spatial interface, I'm okay with nostalgia.
I decided to go sig-less and am so excited, I had to tell you about it!
-
By the way, I cannot imagine how spatial browsing must lead to screen clutter: opening folders with double-middle-click or Shift-double-click closes the parent folder window at once. And even if it is not enough, one can click one field in the gconf configuration editor and turn Nautilitus into "classical" non-spatial file browser. Don't know how to use gconf? Then you shouldn't change the way Nautilitus works, I presume.
Or, "I am so l33t that I know how to use double-middle-click and the "gconf configuration editor". And people wonder why Linux has trouble getting traction on the desktop.Keyboard "shortcuts" are shortcuts. You should never have to use them, and all of them should be visible in menus. Go read "Tog on Interface", or "The Inmates are Running the Asylum". The user should never need to know a secret code to do something.
In the name of all that exists, please stop trying shoving metaphors onto the abstract beauty of computers.
The following things are stupid:
- disabling the backspace key because you couldn't easily erase things with typewriters
- eliminating Undo, Redo, and Repeat because time travel is physically impossible
- having www.airplanetickets.biz take two hours to load because it takes two hours to go to the physical ticket booth
- making directory trees behave like physical drawers
Metaphors do not make things easier to use. If Jane-Six-Pack tosses an empty vodka can out of her armoured utility vehicle, she expects it to disappear. She does not expect it to stay where it landed until it decays in twenty million years.
If computer interfaces were just as tedious as real life, no one would bother with them.
Is this a sigs-optional kind of place? 'Cause I am totally down with that if you know what I mean.
First off, in my using piles as an example of the melding of spatial interface and meta organization, i didn't want to suggest that piles are a particularly great innovation, just that they were an example of a way to do it. I think if Apple put some finesse into it like they did with their excellent Exposé technology, it could be a very welcome addition to an already great Mac OS X. In any case, here's a flash demo of the concept: http://homepage.mac.com/rdas7/piles.html
Right-click on a folder and select "browse folder" (it's the second option in the context menu).
Me, I like the new mode a lot. It has a Windows 98 feel, very lean, no-frills.
One of the first things I always did in Windows 95 explorer (once I found the option for it) was turn OFF "open folder in new window", because its a pain in the arse.
As to the whole "but a web browser is like a book!" argument... well.... my PC is like a filing cabinet. I don't want to pull files out of the filing cabinet (open in new window) until I find what I'm looking for. I'd rather sift through the open drawer (tree list at side of browser window for example), until i find what I want.
"BAD" interface design is when the implementor makes decisions on behalf of the end-user that increase work-load for *no good reason*.
"Because its bad interface design" is NOT a self-justifying reason. If it makes my work more efficient, it is not bad.
I'll bet the supporters of this crock are akin to those who think that storing every file they create under the root directory is a good idea as well, because sorting through 10,000 files in the same folder is good interface design.
smash.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
I don't care if your mother might happen to like it. I also don't care how many so called "Useability studies" tell me they might like it.
_I_ use computers, and I want _my_ needs catered for, not some mythical mother, or aunt, or grandmother, or whatever the current model "Average User" is.
I am a real user, I use computers now, I use them for fun, and I use them for getting work done.
I want an interface that caters to my needs - in other words, it doesn't force someone else's interpretation of my needs on me, and lets me configure and set things up how I like it without having to hunt around in configuration files.
I'm no stranger to a text editor, or the command line, but I also don't feel that editing config files by hand somehow makes you 1337 (god I hate that term).
A desktop environment that makes you leave the desktop environment (ie, go to a terminal session and fire up vi) to change it's settings, because having an option in the GUI to change it _might_ confuse one of these mythical users, is just a pain in the neck for us real users.
I recognise that there are benefits to be made by making things easy for new users. But too many people make the mistake of concentrating only on new users, and forgetting that existing users - even the advanced ones are users too.
Advanced users are users too!
I had no idea that I was abusing the privilege of tabbed browsing by using it to keep as few browser windows open as possible. I need to rethink my entire browsing paradigm. This guy makes too many good points, I've been browsing all wrong all these years, what could I have been thinking? Thank you Random Polish Guy, thank you for explaining why one shouldn't abuse tabs by having two separate sites open at the same time.
I like music
The forced spatial mode is bearable.
What I dislike is the "mime-magic" feature, where it attempts to read every file in the current folder to determine the file types, for 3 reasons:
1) You can't turn it off without downloading the source and rebuilding.
2) It makes the file browser run unbearably slow.
3) Nautilus will ignore your file type settings almost entirely, except to refuse to open a file when it disagreees with you on the type of a particular file. There's no way to tell it "screw you, I'm right and you're wrong, so stop bugging me and let me open the file with a double click"
This is not all entirely bad. Gnome has become an experimental desktop, with cool bleeding edge ideas mixed in with some bad or underdeveloped bleeding edge ideas, the better of which will survive in the long run. If we don't have at least one desktop environment on the bleeding edge, developing new ideas before anyone else, Microsoft, Apple, or some other company is going to patent those ideas and all open source desktops, not just gnome, will be held back by stagnation and threats of patent litigation.
So on the whole, we shouldn't be criticizing gnome, but helping to make it better.
I've been listening to this stupid Nautilus flaming ever since it first came out. Unfortunately, it seems that today's computer using community is largely divisible into two groups. One group likes the Windows way, and one group likes the MacOS way. Then there's the minority who prefer the CLI, Amiga, Atari, VMS, or the C64.
I just want to know why anyone even cares what the default on Nautilus is. I mean, seriously. Who here on Slashdot uses the default for anything. Aren't you geeks? Don't you edit your damn .zshrc to your liking, or the equivalent for whatever shell you use? I've seen this gconf-editor (I don't use GNOME, or KDE, or any other fruity desktop environment, for that matter) and it's not that big a deal. It's not like you couldn't figure out how to do it.
Personally, GUIs annoy me. I probably would prefer the browser paradigm to the spacial paradigm, but I'm not such a fucking pansy that I can't be bothered to change a little, well documented configuration option, and I certainly wouldn't be here whining on Slashdot about it.
For those of you that like the browser system: use it. For those of you that like the spacial system: use that. The GNOME devs are guessing that the majority of new users (ie, the grandma you dorks are always going on about) are going to prefer the spacial system, and you know what, they're probably right. My Grandma could use early MacOS. Not so with the new versions, no matter how pretty they may be. I'm sure (though I don't pretend to be a UI expert, unlike every geek on Slashdot) that the spacial paradigm had something to do with that.
God, you guys are the worst. I've been saying all along: if you want Joe User on Linux, you're going to end up with a shitty default UI -- keep it hobbiest, so we can do what we like -- but NOOOooo. Gotta make "desktop penetration" a goal. Gotta "bring down MS". Couldn't let a good thing be. So now you have all these "user-friendly" efforts going on that are exactly what Joe User would benefit from, and GUESS WHAT? They suck for power users. Thats how it works. As they say, if you sleep with dogs...
The logic behind this paradigm is that you use your computer to access data and that the program you are using should be irrelevant. Therefore if you have, say slashdot.org open, it is open in its own window becuase it is its own document. The same would be true of the resume you are editing, the MP3 you are listening to and and game of Solitaire you have open- each item is in its own window. If you have two web pages open, or god forbid two solitaire games open, they should be in separate windows becuase they are separate things: You don't have two web-browsers open, you have two web-PAGES open. It could be my years of windows usage or the fact that no OS has a perfectly consistant GUI that prevents this paradigm from working for me. I generally open a program and then open the file I want from within that program. I don't think of my computer as a box that I use to interact with documents. The Gnome (and I believe Apple) paradigm ultimatly rests on this belief and it just isn't the way I think. Perhaps when there is a truly universal object broker/display/editor/presenter we can approach the UI in such strictly metaphorical terms. Until then, I believe that the majority of users will be prepared to handle some abstraction for the sake of simplicity. With that said, I recognize the fact that Gnome devs don't owe me squat and I appreciate their (misguided) efforts.
I'm a little behind in my GNOME versions... so I had to dig up this short article with pictures of this spatial mumbo-jumbo. Here I was imagining the weird virtual reality type file navigation in Jurassic Park, but no, it's just another file browser - albeit one that is somewhat more like Explorer in recent versions of Windows.
I really don't see the fuss, it's not like anyone's forcing GNOME 2.6 on anyone. No button to turn off the feature? If it is that big of a deal, then someone will create said button... it ain't rocket science.
It could be that this guy is comparing apples and oranges.
Digital/virtual interfaces have affordances that physical ones do not -- such as the ability to magically replace one folder/drawer with another one. That this can not physically be done with a real drawer is the reason we do not do it.
Here's an interesting tidbit: I've never owned a real desk that had drawers. Nor have I owned a filing cabinet. I've grown up with the "Desktop Metaphor" being the only desktop I've ever known. It's not a metaphor for me -- it's the real thing. The only thing. Having to open my drawers in separate windows would annoy the living hell out of me!
It would annoy me as much as "opening My Music from the panel, opening the appriopriate album folder and double-clicking a file icon" just to play a song. They're called ID3 tags, and they organize your files for you so that you never have to clickety-click through all your nested folders.
Also, maybe it's easy to keep your files organized if you have 1 work computer and 1 home computer, and you keep your data completely separated. I, on the other hand, work from home. I have a laptop, 2 desktops, and a server. I use them all for both work and fun. I am a part-time college teacher, a freelance web developer, sometimes a writer, a blogger, and I have a lot of research interests, not to mention 300 GB of media files. It's difficult to organize all of this into "shallow structures" without having a GABILLION files in each folder.
Just my $0.50
geeks are cats who dig a certain kind of cool
Sometimes they even abuse the physical metaphor of tabbed browsing by opening multiple pages - not subpages of the same web site! - in multiple tabs of a browser window.
What's his problem with this? I tab pages by theme, not "not subpages of the same web site". For example, I keep a weather window open. I prefer one website's forecast page, two overlapping doppler radar pages on other sites, and a local temperature page from another site.
People will choose to use or abuse his precious metaphors and he should get over it.
No electrons were harmed creating this post, though some may have been subjected to electrical and/or magnetic fields.
if i wanted a "real life metaphor" in my computer i'd rather be using Microsoft Bob than gnome...
serious, my "desktop" is 120x60cm, which is 0.7m^2 waaaaay larger than my 17" CRT, how can you possible put in such a small screen all that i put in a "real" desktop ? answer: you can't.
another thing is how people work with papers. well, i can't say how others do, but when _i_ work with papers i tend to _stack_ them, then shuffle through the papers, and when i need to compare papers i put one besides the other and _no more that two_ at the same time.
see how _my_ metaphor is closer to the tabbed file manager in KDE ?
but this all theoretical. fact is: COMPUTERS ARE NOT DESKTOPS, and people know it. people react diferently to the glowing and the size and the colors and the everything of the computer screens than they react to a phisical desktop. puting icons that resemble folders or sheets of paper does nothing to change this. i know of a lot of people who are excedingly good dealing with and organizing paper that are lousy doing the same on the computer, and is not lack of inteligence or trainig, is just that computers are diferent. period.
just to make sure i'm clear on the diferences:
size: a desktop is much bigger, paper is much bigger and readable than windows in a screen
feel: grabing, shufling and sorting the real thing (paper) whith bare hands is faster and more intuitive than doing the same with the mouse
space: the computer screen is a flat 2D surface, while the desktop allows for stacking, which makes for a visible volume. there's no way for a person to tell if under there is or there isn't other windows under another (unless you use tabs like in KDE). this reason is enough by itself to make the spatial idea bad in the computer. computer screens are _not_ spatial devices. they lack the 3rd dimension, which the desktop has.
in other words: drop the spatial mode as a default and bring the tree view with tabs. Konqueror nailed this right on the spot. i'm pretty happy using konqueros with a tree view on the left and a bunch of tabs, one for each folder moving and copying stuff from one to another. much better and productive than several overlaping windows.
What ? Me, worry ?
Ok, apparently no one knows how to properly use spatial nautlius. If you've got deep heirarchy, as I do too, spatial still helps immensely. Spatial is about using people's innate knowledge of space in order to help them navigate, and this spatial knowledge does not disappear as you drill down a heirarhcy. Indeed, it becomes more and more important because a deep heirarchy adds complexity, and using your subconscious spatial awareness instead of scanning every directory name as you go down speeds things up (or at least creates a placebo effect towards it).
/usr/share/pixmaps/other has a slew of them if you're interested) in conjunction with spatial. You can actually drag a an icon pixmap directly on to the icon in the properties window to quickly apply it to a folder in Nautilus. What Nautlius badly needs is an "align to grid" function to clean up slightly misplaced icons. Overall though, you have to double-click on every folder you want to open up anyway, and holding down shift or using the middle mouse button to close previous windows is absolutely not an issue once you start doing it. If you give it a fair try for a little while, you may be surprised.
The benefits of having deep heirarchies over shallow broad ones applies to spatial metaphors as well. You don't have to remember where a thousand pieces of the puzzle are placed individually in a single directory, but instead have to remember a few discreet pieces of information per group, which is easier for most people to handle. This article is amazingly flawed in ignoring this, and totally ignores the benefits of organizational division.
Spatial isn't perfect by any means. I've found that adding custom icons to folders helps quite a bit as well (on Debian
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
The "real world" system is intuitive, but it's too damn inefficient. I mean, why can't I have the pub, toilet and a selection of restaurants right next to my bed? Why do I even have to get out of bed? Why can't I just have a list of places I like to go and click one and go straight there?
At least on my computer I can use the equivalent of a teleporter, even if doing so upsets some wannabe hack on OSNews.
Intellectual Property
Intellectual: of the mind
Property: that over which one has control
Okay, the writer's an ass. Get over it. The guy writing the article is an ass for trying to impose his world view on you (particularly the preposterous claims of reducing folder depth - I find spatiality works *better* with increased depth). His points are poorly chosen and made. But that doesn't mean that spatiality is bad - far from it - it just means this guy is an ass.
The main point of a spatial interface that he fails to emphasize (but mentions briefly in passing) is that every time you open a window everything is exactly as you left it. The icons are in the same spots, the view options are set as they were, the window looks the *same*. Each folder is unique.
I can glance at my screen for a split second and tell you exactly what folders are open, just based on their position and view options - all of the "major" folders have distinctive views set. As I click through windows, I'm already moving the mouse to the next icon because I know exactly where it will be. Although he beat his metaphors to death, it *is* just like a desk. I always keep these files here, I can look at my filer and tell how much I have left to do, etc.
Many of you are using spatiality in your web browsers and not even realizing it. When you open a lot of tabs at once, I'll bet you know instinctively where each site is (Megatokyo, Real Life, then PVP, etc) and don't necessarily have to read the titles - you just know that "that's the one I want". That's spatiality.
The reason spatial interfaces on Windows and most Linuxes have failed is *not* because spatial = bad, but because their implementations have generally sucked. The whole point of a spatial interface is that everything maintains its state - it's where you left it and predictable. Linux and Windows (especially Windows) fail in this regard because thye only seem to keep state for a while, or not in all circumstances. Every so often on Windows all the folders lose their state information. That makes a spatial interface impossible to use effectively.
Recently the Mac (where all of this really got started 20 years ago) has screwed it up with its brushed metal windows that interfere with state maintenance in particularly brain-dead ways. Nautilus is the first really good implementation of a spatial file browser in a long time.
To all of the people touting the explorer view, consider this. How often do you need to copy files and end up scrolling the tree pane up and down, clicking through directory trees, or even try opening two explorer windows at once and resize all over to copy? It happens a lot because you're trying to show the entire directory structure in a window at once, and *that* doesn't scale well. However, having one window for one folder does scale. In a spatial model, I open each folder (maybe by clicking through other folders to it, maybe by using a menu or shortcut) and then drag.
Honestly *try* it for a while. Don't like it? Switch it off. Done.
I don't know what kind of crack I was on, but I suspect it was decaf.
Two. One to install a single HUGE lightbulb in the center, and another to tell the management that it would be a lot brighter if they had a more "shallow" structure of rooms.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
Make me aerodynamic in the evening air
I should, of course, take my cues from the article rather than personal opinion! Take this one for example:
"Sometimes they even abuse the physical metaphor of tabbed browsing by opening multiple pages - not subpages of the same web site! - in multiple tabs of a browser window. I even know few people who never open more than one browser window, viewing all pages in tabs; I hope they do not try to glue a daily set of newspapers together before reading them..."
Most everyone I know who uses tabbed browsing uses it to minimise the number of windows used rather than some shoddy 'temporary bookmark' system, but the way the author puts across his opinion is that this way of using a browser is OBVIOUSLY wrong - because he can't see PAST the real world metaphor and see that computers really aren't constrained to emulating 'real' objects.
How about this:
"Don't know how to use gconf? Then you shouldn't change the way Nautilitus works, I presume."
Yes, I can see how not wanting a new window for every mouse click is EXACTLY like navigating a Windows Registry style set of configuration data - just like it in fact. Except not at all.
It appears that this is worse than most opinion pieces on the subject as it assumes the one thing that opinion pieces should not - that the author's opinion is the 'correct' opinion and all else should listen up and realise their mistake.
... I'd recommend you spend some time using it to actually _manage_ files.
As one of the gnome devs points out, when people test a file manager, they often go and browse around their files. If they do this using spatial, they'll come to the conclusion that it sucks. But that's because spatial _does_ suck for browsing files - if you want to look for something, use the file browser (it's right there on the main menu).
But spatial is incredibly good for day-to-day file management. I finally got round to reorganising my home directory yesterday, and it's incredible how easy spatial made it (after all, file reorganisation is a task which you _want_ loads of windows open for).
So, before you attack spatial nautilus, try reorganising a few directories with it, because that's the sort of task it really shines for.
Apparently, Radoslaw thinks everyone who doesn't like the new uber-spatial FS browsing is just too dumb and unorganized for it. When did "technology should adapt to its users" get abolished? And puh-leeeeze what's that about the drawer metaphor? The last time I saw a drawer with over 40,000 socks and subdrawers in it was, like, never!
Fight hunger. Filet a politician and send him to a 3rd world country of your choice.
According to Webster "a metaphor is the transference of the relation between one set of objects to another set for the purpose of brief explanation; a compressed simile; e. g., the ship plows the sea. --Abbott & Seeley. 'All the world's a stage.' --Shak."
The purpose of a metaphor thus, is not necessarily to think of the relation in question as the metaphorical relation, but to clarify a relation by referring to a metaphorical relation.
To force a metaphorical relation in favor of an actual relation is just plain sillyness.
I never liked the folder metaphor, because I think it severely distorts the semantics of a directory. Whereas the concept of a computer directory very closely maps to the concept of other well-known directories, like, for instance, a business directory, the concept of a filesystem folder resambles a real folder in nothing:
Have you ever organized a big amount of personal (or an even greater amount of company) files without the aid of relational databases or the good ol' directory concept?
Clearly you have never sensed the advantages of a hierarchical directory structure, or you'd realize that having 10000 files in one folder does not only decrease your performance because it complicates finding your files, but that this also decreases the computer's performance because it has to actually scan an do something intelligible with all these thousands of files. Who were you accusing of "bad file organisation coupled with a bunch of old bad habits" again?
A directory does not require a metaphor, because, as long as directories will be around, they'll be easy enough to explain through the concept of ... a directory.
Now that I have explained why the folder metaphor is one of the most worthless modern desktop metaphors (Don't get me started on the 'desktop' metaphor.), it's time to explain why spatial file management is a bad idea as well, if each folder is supposed to represent a drawer:
I don't like real-world drawers, because
Real-life drawers seem to be most usable when they're subdivided using smaller containers like those used for separating forks from knives and the likes.
I adjust my user interface to the task at hand:
Morality is usually taught by the immoral.