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?

[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?

[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. :-)

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

[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

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.

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.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

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.

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.