The Death of Folders?

saintlupus writes "There's an interesting article on Wired about the interface changes in Tiger being a precursor to the demise of the classic folder-browsing Finder." From the article: "Users type search queries more or less as they did pre-Tiger, but 'the quality, scope and presentation of the results are significantly better, so users get good benefits without having to change their behavior.'"

Comments

What's taking so long?

[AKAImBatman]

There's an interesting article on Wired about the interface changes in Tiger being a precursor to the demise of the classic folder-browsing Finder.

Call me when Folders become saved queries, and then we'll talk about the semi-demise of Finder. Actually, Finder wouldn't leave us at all. In a properly designed database file system, folders/directories should be replaced with standard queries. An example of this is the Labelling system in GMail. You can add a meta-data label to any email, which will then cause that email to appear in a virtual folder of the same name as the label. But if you pay attention to the search bar, you find that the folder is nothing more than a stored search on a key piece of meta-data.

This concept has massive implications for File System Usability. Under the folders-as-search concept, the same files can be organized under multiple folder groupings. This labelling data not only assists users in doing future searches for their information (i.e. A real reason to fill out meta-data other than "It might be useful."), but it also provides the user with a way of organizing ALL data for a given project under one folder without forcing the user to make a copy. It may not seem all that revolutionary, but I think you'll find that a lot of GMail users have already grasped the real power of the concept.

That being said, WHAT'S TAKING SO DAMN LONG?! This stuff was figured out 10+ years ago, and pieces of it were even included in BeOS. NTFS has had many of the necessary features since its inception (just turned off for some bloody reason), and ReiserFS is bringing the same design to Linux. So what is everyone waiting for? The next guy to scoop you on it?

*sigh* Dear Mr. Jobs: Will you please demonstrate to everyone how you do this properly with a file system? Thanks. Kudos to your NeXT development team who's made this possible.

Re:What's taking so long?

[doublem]

Will you please demonstrate to everyone how you do this properly with a file system?

Great. Grand.

Now, let's take this into the work place, where you have 300 users and a central server. How do the users know they're working off the "official" version of the file from the server? How do they know they're not reading a version they accidentally saved on their own machine? You can legitimately ask how they know this now, and I'll respond that when dealing with stupid users, but a valid file path is very useful.

What happens when a user makes a typo when entering meta data for associating files with a project? Suddenly you have all but one of the files you need come up in your search, when you could have just saved all of them to the same folder.

This idea hasn't caught on because it would screw over corporate IT data management with no real gain. It would be confusing and far too complex for the average user. Forcing the "Directory" premise on users is a far better solution. While it does require users to * gasp * LEARN something, you have to have at least a baseline to accomplish anything.

This is just more of Apple introducing ideas that will make actual work more difficult in the interest of letting increasingly stupid users write letters, pirate MP3s and surf for porn.

Apple is doing to computing what Ford would be doing to the roads if they convinced the government to abolish the legal requirement for a Drivers' License, while making cars controlled by a single joystick.

Re:What's taking so long?

[AKAImBatman]

It's easier than you think, actually. When it comes down to it, the primary difference a user will see between a Folder and a Label is that Folders can only hold a file once, while Labels can hold the same file multiple times. i.e. The concept just pushes existing abstractions just a bit farther.

File links have always been a sort of "hack" to get around that fact that files can only be in one folder at any given time. With a database file system, you can keep the one folder per file metaphor, or you can grow into the folders as metadata concept. Your choice.

The greatest danger in Desktop metaphors has always been that the metaphor will be taken to its fully restrictive extreme, and that the powers added by the computer will be ignored. That's exactly what's happened in this case, and it's not a good thing.

Maybe I should blog something more complete about this...

Re:What's taking so long?

[Paradox]

The folder structure is very specific with a folder for the job, a subfolder for ad graphics, another subfolder for the layout and another subfolder for the maps. The jobs can be anywhere between 10 megs and a gig depending on the job. Dozens to hundreds of pictures (bmp, eps, tiff, etc), Indesign or Pagemaker layouts, Illustrator maps, etc. It would be chaos if an advertiser logo was out of place because that would crash the entire job when it went to be plated.

But, that's because you work around folders. It's not because folders are inherently superior or necessary to do this kind of work.

Imagine if every project had a tag, like, "USPS Job". Then, some files would have type tags like, "com.adobe.illustrator". You wouldn't visualize it as a flat space, of course. It might still look like the finder, sorta.

But it's tough to imagine, because spotlight doesn't yet have enough muscle and backup to pull it off. We're still few years out on that. Apple is positioning themselves for that, it seems, but they know they're not ready. Right now, Spotlight just lets you make new views of your data, in an ad hoc and semi-permanent fashion.

Re:What's taking so long?

[Lagged2Death]

for home users, it'll take a LOT longer to explain "directories" than just a file/folder comparison and a file cabinet. Easy simple stuff you take for granted will often confuse the begeezis out of regular people.

That's absolutely true.

I think maybe a database filesystem - with the right interface - could be easier for these people. Yet it might also be more confusing for someone (like me) who's been using directories to organize everything for 20+ years.

Re:What's taking so long?

[AKAImBatman]

I can't imagine a reasonable way to use Gmail style labels in an office environment. I'd hat to have to sort through 600 possible labels to select the right one from a drop down list.

Here's a thought: Don't use a dropdown list. Are dropdowns used to select folders today? No, a directory list is. Make it a label list, and you're gold.

And where are these labels stored anyway? On the server?

Where are folders stored anyway?

What happens when a user upgrades machines? Has to use another computer? Has to tell another employee how to find the group of files she carefully constructed?

What happens to your file system when you upgrade a machine? When you have to use another computer? Has to tell another employee how to find the group of files under labels she carefully constructed?

How does one do a reasonable data only backup in such a mess?

How does one do a reasonable backup of the mess we call hard drives?

I'm sorry, but this notion is destructive in a business environment. It's designed to make users lazy and sloppy about where they keep their data.

I'm sorry, but the only thing lazy and sloppy is your attention. What is a folder? An INode with files linked to it. What is a Label? A unique file system identity with files linked to it. What's the difference? A label can be linked to documents that other labels are linked to. Did you even catch the part about Links == Psuedo-Label functionality to cover the missing holes?

I don't understand why you're so hostile here. There's nothing new except a bit more functionality that makes things work better. Files without labels are nothing more than files stored in a root folder. (Also analogous to Google's All Email.) And separate storage devices are separate storage devices, are separate storage devices. You don't complain that mapped drives "make a huge mess that is impossible to manage" do you? So don't act like a dope about this.

Re:What's taking so long?

[AKAImBatman]

This can be troublesome if you work with files that are highly related. "Did I file that bill from the University under 'Finance' or under 'School'?

Under a stored query system (i.e. Labels), you could place the bill under *both* University and Finance. That's why labelling makes more sense than folders. :-)

Re:What's taking so long?

[Jasin Natael]

Actually, that's mostly true. If you'd been using Apple's Folder concept (where windows remember where they are on screen, icons stay where you put them, and each folder opens in a new window), it would have been intuitive from the beginning.

Navigating an OS through a CLI or Windows/Linux's file browsers is a huge mental burden compared to using your brain's eye-hand coordination features to browse a filesystem. Without the afrementioned principles being completely and consistently applied, the physical metaphor breaks down and it's no easier than navigating through a CLI (save that you don't have to type ls...). People who used the Apple system for years had a major break when OSX started implementing "progressive" features, esp. the 3-pane view, and couldn't figure out where their productivity went. They were getting distracted during the file-browsing process because of the mental effort that had to be expended to find the files! Hardcore *NIX and Windows geeks have built-up the mental muscle to navigate filesystems with ease, but remember that, for most, this is a very difficult skill to learn. Most Joe Users couldn't tell you what folders their most important files are in, and just put shortcuts to everything on their desktop or in a menu. God forbid they need a file that's not on their shortcut menu or desktop.

That's why home users have had such a difficult time grasping the files/folders concept all along -- on Windows, they never really behaved like real folders and files. Now, with "smart" folders, we're finally getting the computer to do something oranizationally that couldn't have been done in the real world. And this time it looks like it's worth breaking the desktop metaphor. All preliminary reports are that Tiger's Spotlight has made people more productive...

Jasin Natael

Bull

[thesupermikey]

What a load of Bullshit

Spotlight is really good, but that hasnt stoped me from being anal about setting up files so i can find things.

What really pisses me off is out iTunes reognized all my music when it was inported into the libary. I spent years putting together music in such a way that i can find it. Now i have the seach for it b/c itunes had to mess things up.

Re:Bull

[kisielk]

...Because it's really hard to select all the songs, with all variants of the names.. go in to properties, and change them all to a common name.

Give me a break, fixing minor problems like this take s seconds in iTunes. Not to mention iTunes autocompletes fields for you in the properties to prevent exactly these kinds of mis-labeling problems.

Re:Bull

[BorgCopyeditor]

I also find the behavior where it copies mp3s that you play to the music folder automatically strange. But I guess some people would get confused that deleting a file from their desktop makes it not playable in itunes anymore.

This suggests that people are thinking of iTunes as a place "where" music files exist.

Re:Bull

[kfg]

Computers are good at organizing data.

And here lies the root of problem. People think this is true, and it's arrant nonsense. Computers are absolutely worthless at organizing data. All they can do it process instructions for organization.

The organization itself derives from, and can only derive from a human mind. Thinking "the computer organizes the data" is the main reason why virtually all databases are giant Mongolian cluster fucks.

When you run a program that "organizes the data for you" what you are really doing is imposing someone else's idea of how your data should be organized on your data.

When people ask me how they should organize their data I like to answer honestly:

"How the hell should I know?"

Until know about their data, what it is, what it "means" and how it is expected to used I can reorganize it a billion different ways without in any way organizing it in any useful fashion.

Organization is a state of mind and for a database to be useful you must transfer the state of your mind to the "business model" of database managment system.

Just like you do when you arrange your folders in a heirarchy.

KFG

Re:Bull

[jayloden]

But I guess some people would get confused that deleting a file from their desktop makes it not playable in itunes anymore.

God, I wish you were wrong, I really do.

It all goes back to my constant raving that people need to be taught from the beginning how to use a computer, not how to use application X. To use a computer properly, you need to know what a file is, what a folder is, understand file sizes and disk storage, and how to use menus. These simple things are NOT that hard to understand if they are taught, but no one ever bothers to sit down and teach people these simple things. Instead, they teach them how to use Microsoft Word - and you get classes full of people who can only do things ONE way in ONE application. Move that menu item, and they have a brain malfunction.

Anyone who has worked end-user tech support knows what I mean. People think memory means how much space is on their hard drive, they have no concept how much storage is on a CD or a floppy - witness the person trying to copy a 17mb powerpoint with a floppy disk. I've lost count how many times I've seen someone save a file and not know where they saved it because they don't understand the save file dialog in IE.

-Jay

Only faster if you don't know...

[toupsie]

If you have your work organized in a defined folder structure, your memory will be faster than any Spotlight search -- especially given Spotlight's annoying habit of searching before you complete the search term.

This on it's face looks pretty good.

[cmefford]

But the very concept of having millions of files just scattered about in a completely flat heirarchy, well, doesn't seem like a really good way to handle your company's data.

Re:This on it's face looks pretty good.

[calibanDNS]

It could also result in nightmares when trying to refer co-workers to documents that exist in a shared location. By forcing everyone in a work group to conform to a well-defined structure on file servers you can help to ensure that everyone knows the appropriate way to share documents with team members (by using previously specified directories).

I think that Smart Folders already provide a lot of functionality, have great potential, and are a good way to organize your personal collection of files. However, I don't think that the concept is advanced enough yet to be applied to shared file repositories like a corporate or division file server.

Re:This on it's face looks pretty good.

[Tackhead]

> > But the very concept of having millions of files just scattered about in a completely flat heirarchy, well, doesn't seem like a really good way to handle your company's data.
>
>Why not? With Smart Folders it allows EVERYONE with access to that location to sort that data in their own personal way, rather than one person forcing their filing method on everyone else.

Because you are not a unique and beautiful snowflake.

And because, contrary to what they teach in public schools these days, the filesystem on your employer's fileserver was not installed for the purposes of protecting your self esteem.

Not quite yet

[turg]

From the article: "The way Searchlight transforms the computing experience is akin to Google's effect on the web"

And Google has made bookmarks obsolete, right? So Searchlight will make folders obsolete.

Better search is always very cool. But proper organization and categorization is better yet. The problem is not that the latter is a bad system but that people don't do it very well. I think a system that helps people organize their stuff will be even better than a better search. The "labels" which are used instead of folders in gmail seem like a step in that direction.

Folders good for backups

[rice0067]

While I love the idea of a decent search system, the time honored forlder hierarchy works because thats how people think. For instance, pictures. For these meta based search systems each picture needs to have a comment attatched (if not searching by date).. and who really does that? I tried adding notes to my pics in iphoto but after a while it gets tiresome.

And backups.. in a workflow.. every project has its own file and subfolders, makes it easy for backup and finding files.

Anywho... folder hierarchy works great and is here to stay for most people. (except for those people who just save everything to the desktop.)

Folders may die, but what about directories?

[Jay Maynard]

The idea of a folder as a visual reference for a directory may well be on the way out. There's still plenty of need for directories and hierarchical organization, though, for managing the contents of a system from the standpoint of software. OS X's Unix base is pretty heavily dependent on the basic Unix filesystem structure, and lots of software is built with a deeply ingrained assumption that it's there and the way files are organized.

Spotlight is great for users, but there will be a need for something like the Finder indefinitely.

Re:Folders may die, but what about directories?

[calibanDNS]

Just because the software needs to store and look at the files in a hierarchical way doesn't mean the the user has to see it in the same way. Computers are very good at transforming data from one view to another. The challenge, of course, is finding a view that is easy for the average user to grasp.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Hierarchical Folders Are Still Useful

[henrywood]

It's all very well to talk about the death of folders because of intelligent indexing and searching of file systems, but this is in the context of retrieving data. Where a hierarchical structure is so useful is when you are saving information in the first place. It's important to remember that a hierarchy divides the file system into a number of logical namespaces.

A completely flat filesystem sounds all very well in principle, but how do you find names for all of those files? I have loads of files on my computers with the same names but in different namespaces. Or are we going to throw away filenames as well?

Death to folders/directories death to discovery.

[jellomizer]

While searching has it benefits over folder there is the time that you don't know what your are looking for, but you will know once you find it. How many of you when you were fairly new to Linux

cd /usr/bin
ls

and tried to run all the files to see what they did?

Or on MacOS take a look at all the pfiles and see what they can control and what they can't.

Or say you want to find a way to make the dock transperent and you search for Dock Transperance. While the real term that the search will find is Dock Clearness. Or that file you saved way back when you don't know the date you did it or what it is about but once you see it you know that is the one you need.

Sure I like spotlight but there are some cases where it just fails me mostly because I am absent minded.

No

[Anonymous Coward]

No.

This is going to suck. How will the system account for spelling errors? Poorly, I'll bet. Also, what do you want to bet that this will lead to a completely guided view of the contents of your hard drive, in which OEMs now decide what we can search for and what we can't. It will be like that "These are the system files! Don't f*ck with these!" warning page on windows only much, much angrier.

I say, screw these guys. If you want to get that restrictive with my machine, I shouldn't have to pay for it. I guess it will be "Linux, here I come" time.

Re:Figures.

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree, 100%. Search tools are great and all, although I don't have any third party programs like that installed. Instead, I have a pretty decent filing system spread out over three HDDs that I couldn't imagine replacing. I know exactly where everything is.

Wouldn't an effective searching program (one that will kill folder structuring) require metadata? What are they proposing? That your average computer user who needs his/her system for Email/IMs/Browsing all of a sudden put in the extra effort of adding in all this data, manually or with an autotagging system?

I seriously doubt they'll utilize such a system. Most don't even know what metadata is. Try explaining it to them. "Its data about data... huh?"

A decent filing system will be very hard to replace by some random "all-in-one" searching program.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Sometimes I know what's best for me

[Just Some Guy]

Whenever I create a project-specific folder and put a bunch of files in it, I know that those files are directly related to each other. I don't want to search for "files you think might be related to Project Foo" - I want "files I've explicitly said are related to Project Foo".

There are times when searches are ideal for grouping disjoint sets of information. There are many, many more times when a best guess is completely insufficient. Searches to augment folders? Sure. Searches to replace them? No way.

Re:Not broken

[Anonymous Coward]

What's broken is the users. They can't understand folders. Its soo hard to make a folder called c:\My Pictures\2005\vacation. I say make the OS's GUI force people to use folder better!

I'm with the rest of the guys here:

[wild_berry]

Folders won't die, they're one meaningful way to deal with stored information.

Like the CLI and GUI are two interface paradigms, the Nautilus Spatial and Filesystem Browsers are two ways to navigate through folders of data, having a user decide where information is stored won't change.

The whole UI paradigm has picked up a lot from everyday office concepts: documents filed in folders in filing cabinets. That's not going to change any time soon, even with search software making it convenient to find things, because we will still need to put things in storage. Storage folders may become shortcuts-to-frequent-searches but this won't remove their existence from the interfaces we use, and will still feature hierarchical search capabilities so we can refine the bounds of what we're looking for.

Re:Not broken

[smithmc]

What I'm wondering is what is broken with the whole directory/folder design?

What's broken about it is that a single hierarchical classification scheme may not always be appropriate for a given body of data. Suppose I have a whole bunch of documents. They're all about different products - ProductA, ProductB, etc. Meanwhile, some of them are proposals, some are degisn docs, some are marketing literature, etc. I want to be able to sift through these documents in various ways. What's the best hierarchy to use? Product type first, then document type (proposal/design/etc)? Or the other way around? What happens when I want "all proposals on ProductA or ProductC for North American markets"? Where in the hierarchy do I look? Meanwhile, if each file were in a database, with search keywords, I could find anything I wanted just as easily as anything else - there's no predetermined hierarchy that makes it easier to find some things than others.

What Is The Hubub?

[theManInTheYellowHat]

You surely could use this meta-data to make folders?
It is simply a feature that you can or may not want to use.

It would almost certanly have work that way for backward compatabilty. Consider haveing a webserver on a Mac with this file system. The URL is going to have to conform to the current spec.

Re:What's more...

[apoc.famine]

Not using apple at the moment, I'm entirely unqualified to respond, but I'll never let such a trivial problem stop me.

As long as enough metadata is tagged to a file, you'll be able to track it down. I.E., the program it was created with, the user who created it, and the date. If you've lost a spreadsheet you were working on last week, open a "spreadsheets from last week" folder, and there it is.

If you need a document from last year, open a "documents from last year, not having x,y,z tags, created by me, etc, etc" folder. Enough metadata is added that you shouldn't be able to lose documents.

In contrast, in windows, if you don't save to the right folder, and you don't remember the name, it's far harder to find your file. I don't believe there is a "created by" field to search on, and you have to rely upon extension rather than program which created it. And it can be anywhere in a tangled directory structure. Spotlight means (I think) that the worse case scenario is you pull up all items created using X program by user Y, during time period Z. And that's better than windows can do.

Re:Not broken

[rsborg]

What I'm wondering is what is broken with the whole directory/folder design?

Simple: the same problems with hierarchical/network databases back in the 70s. When relational concepts came into play, they significantly increased the accessibility of the information. And the beauty of the relational approach is that the old hierarchical structure can be emulated (with some enhancements).

I wasn't aware that there was a problem. And what's the alternative... every file is stored on the hard drive in some arbitrary location, and a query is needed for each and every file access? That seems like a *ton* of overhead to fix a problem that just doesn't exist.

Guess what? You already do this.. do you think the data on the drive is organized into a folder hierarchy?
Hint: it's not.
You have a set of flat surfaces on which you are mapping a tree structure. It's possible to put a layer on top of this that emulates (and maintains) the tree structure.

Likewise, when you open a smart folder, you are opening a set of files with a predefined query (like "all files relating to project X") then selecting the files that appear. THis would be just like if you created a "project X" folder and maintained the hierarchy yourself.

I think what most people don't like is giving up the control of maintaining the hierarchy. They LIKE creating folders and moving files about.... the very tedium that "smart folders/labels" are designed to eliminate.

Re:On folder hierarchies and social bookmarks

[Sebastopol]

On the contrary, I have over 1300 documents in "My Documents", and I'd be fukked without my folder hieararchy. How could a flat list with search capability help me?

I haven't used this OS, but the screenshot on Wired looked stupid: Why sort on HTML and PDF documents? Was that just one configuration? I can't imagine how I'd get through my documents without hierarchies. Once I've sorted down to a folder with ~100 files in it, then this search stuff would help,otherwise, seems like a hassle. I use Google desktop for Outlook, and it sucks compared to a disciplined hierarchy of folders.

Re:positional memory

[3770]

You also remember this:

5 or 6 days ago I downloaded a plugin for some blog package or other, written in php or perl I think ... it had a name like Exercise or Expendable

But you had no practical way of using that to find the package.

Re:Microsoft has planned this for quite awhile.

[hackstraw]

Maybe I'm just old fashioned, but I don't see how or why folders or directories should disappear.

An improved search mechanism is welcomed, but how do I associate a bunch of related files together without labeling as being together? How do I move or copy something that is now relevant together with the other files?

Lets say I'm working with research on penguins. I'll have jpeg images, url's, word documents, etc. And I'll put them in "My penguins" folder (exclude the My if your on longhorn:).

I can archive "My Penguins", I can throw the whole thing in the trash if I'm sick of penguins.

What I guess I'm getting at, is that folders or directories are convenient for organizational purposes. Another thing, is with no folders, how do you share a folder? Do I have to add metadata to each file saying who, when and why I want that document shared over the network?

Even since searching has become so good with google, the web is still put into "folders" by different websites. If I'm looking to buy something and I do a search, by seeing that the domain ends in .uk, I will not go there since its not worth paying to convert to pounds and pay for shipping across the Atlantic for a $20 item.

If I'm looking into "folder elimination research" on google, I can see that Microsoft's website may have an entry, or slashdot may have an entry, and I'm already starting to form opinions about the content based on who is hosting it.

So, are libraries doing it all wrong too? Those bozo's put all the related books together in one building. With a small rfid tag I could search on the computer and be able to find any book even if its not on the shelf where it is supposed to be. I dunno, I've found great books about something I was interested in because they were all grouped together. I've found "open directories" of good stuff because they were all put together.

Seems more logical and "real life" to me.

I agree with the article

[Joshua53077]

I'm pretty much a fairly sophisticated user but my main tasks are email, web surfing, etc. When I installed Tiger, I wasn't that impressed with most of the new features. Dashboard is cool but not revolutionary and I considered spotlight to be a replacement for the Find command, which I rarely use. Then the other day I wanted to open Photoshop, which is on a firewire drive and nested under a couple of folders. I decided to try to use Spotlight to pull it up. After I typed "P-H-O-T-O-S" I could see photoshop selected as my "top hit." It reduced my interaction with the computer and allowed me to quickly get to work. Personally, I think this should be the goal of all software developers...to reduce interaction with the computer and to allow the user to work. After figuring out this neat trick a few days ago, I really haven't used the finder since, I just start typing the name of a document or application and it pops right up. I described it to someone as the document comes to me....I no longer have to go to the document. I think there's something truly revolutionary about that.

Searches

[Anonymous Coward]

Searches make you lazy. Folders are perfect in that they make you remember. :)