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Gnome Switches Nautilus Back To Browser Mode
An anonymous reader writes "In one of the do-the-developers-actually-use-their-own-software decisions in the Linux Desktop World, back in 2004 Gnome switched to the 'Spatial' view by default with their Nautilus file manager opening a new window with each new folder viewed. Many derided the decision as poor design or as being different for the sake of being different. Well, after five long years the Gnome powers that be have decided to switch back to browser mode."
It does appear that Nautilus' people are taking many many lessons from (let's not say ripping off) KDE's Dolphin. I mean, if you compare Nautilus' demo screenshot and you use KDE's Dolphin (please ignore the command line at the bottom and info dock widget at the right) on a daily basis you will be hard pressed to find any differences.
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
Didn't even notice. Haven't used a distro that didn't have "browsermode" set as default.
Best Regards Søren
I don't know any modern distribution that is using spatial mode for Nautilus windows. Ubuntu tried that and it was only 1 or 2 releases they kept this default setting. Can you help me out with listing distributions that this change will affect somehow?
I only saw the weird "open a new window" mode once, I think it was on Solaris 10. Ubuntu, Opensolaris, etc all seam to have configured gnome to use the normal "browser" mode. If the distros set the gnome configuration, does it really matter what the default is?
------ Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government.
Should be forced to use a browser that opens a new window every time a hyperlink is clicked
Nautilus and most other file browsers also default to Icon view, which is fine if you have only about 5 files on your computer, which was probably true for Windows for Workgroups 3.1, but these days List view should be the default.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
obviously what one likes, the other may not like.
perhaps there should be some "universal" preference file format...
for example, a file ".preferences" in your home directory, that every distribution and window manager can read, so that you only have to copy that file after you've installed a new distro. basically the file contains things such as: "when i click a link, a new window should open". or: "i like to have 4 virtual desktops", etc.
saves a lot of tweedling with the settings...
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
Should be forced to use a browser that opens a new window every time a hyperlink is clicked
I'm pretty sure you misunderstand **spatial** mode. I don't want a spatial idea of all the pages on the internet, my head is not quite big enough for that, but I do like my spatial nautilus.
It's much better than browser mode. Almost no buttons and clutter, very simple navigation. All you have to learn is to open all windows with the middle button (open new folder in same window).
Browser mode is clunky as hell. Way to much cruft in the window. If you want KDE clutter use KDE
Look 5 years ago indeed , in a gnome devel mailing list , we were a bunch to comment on that .. like the dual mode in other file browsers at the time where we have two panes to .. lo and behold . a devel asked me why one would use a dual pane file manager. .. if it takes 5 years to change a bad default .. by 2020 we should perhaps have :) Im cynical yes. But i loved gnome till 1.4 at 2.0 they hosed everything
and a few others
work with. Well
I gave up on it at that point. I suspect the corporates running the Gnome Foundation have a lot to do
with most the bad design decisions and the stubbornness at making Gnome bad in general.
As far as im concerned
a delete command by default too
that was truly good about it and made it into the lesser desktop. A shame.
Richard
I'm glad that gnome developers are no longer living in the museum of contemporary art and are making the default functionality logical for rational humanoids.
I switched to Linux 4 months ago, and what I still miss is a file manager as good as Total Commander. Krusader seems to be the closest and most feature rich, but it just isn't as complete and as polished as Total Commander. And it crashes about once every few days. So sometimes, I have to start a WinXP VM, just to have the power and reliability of Total Commander.
In other words, I don't care so much for little details in Nautilus. It doesn't seem any worse than Windows Explorer, and seems better than the Mac Finder (which is the file manager that Nautilus resembles most). I just wish there would be more resources to improve Krusader.
(Midnight Commander is excellent in a console, and should be part of the base install of every distro)
a Christmas Miracle!
When I installed Linux I have changed default setting to spatial. And put on the panel an icon that will start nautilus in browser mode. Both modes have their advantages and this way I have the best of both worlds. I can't understand why people hate spatial mode. It is more flexible in laying out content than browser mode. If it is used properly it can make a lot of things easier. I wonder how many other ex-Amigans like spatial mode as well.
I have to say I'm disappointed by this. I much prefer the simple interface of the spatial view.
Where was that file I was looking at earlier? Open folder, there is is exactly where it was the last time I was in this folder.
Oh well another simple interface lost to the bells and whistles brigade.
Actually, that's how I have my FireFox set up... opens each hyperlink in a new tab (not window). I do this so I can keep reading then go on to check out the links. Also, many times I want to view more than one link from a page and this lets me keep the page open to find the other links.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
They should use Amaya.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Will we get another Slashdot newsflash when they fix the copy/cut situation?
Please see http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=47948 for this age old 'unimportant' bug.
Even the basics take ages for them.
Most of the time when I want to browse through my file system or copy files I'll use konsole.
IMHO it's not 'corporates', it's developer group-think coupled with wilfully ignoring what damn near *everybody* is telling them.
When this was rolled out, the forums were *filled* with people complaining, people explaining exactly why it was a poor design choice, etc. But this was simply ignored because someone had a nice academic theory about why "spacial was more intuitive". Never mind that it wasn't, and that everyone hated it, and that it wasn't how people were used to computers working. They had a theory! All the users must be wrong!
I'm still hoping for a GUI version of FList from my VM/CMS days. *sigh*
How the hell do I change the default window size?! As it is, unless I provide a "--geometry" command line option, any time I open up a nautilus window, it is too small to view whatever I am looking at and needs to be expanded. Does anyone know how to change the default window size or how to tell it to remember the size or something?
Love my Mac, will never switch back.
Was the first thing I changed when I log in a new machine.
here ends what some neis
Choke it down.
I hate people who don't share my preferences and I want to punish them.
Fixt
Not sure why this is moderated as interesting. The point of a spacial file browser is to use your spacial memory (which is big, and is the reason why you can find things all around the house or on a messy desk easily) to manage your files. Every time you open a folder, it opens in the same place on your screen. This lets you mentally associate screen locations with files.
The problem with spacial browsers is that they don't scale beyond a certain point. They were great on older machines where you'd only have a few hundred files, but managing a thousand files with a spacial UI will just confuse the user. A good compromise would be to use spacial mode for documents and an explorer for everything else.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
That is something FreeDesktop could fix. Though please please please use a path like
~/.etc/desktop/preferences
I suggest you write to their mailing list about it and see what you get. If you don't, please reply to this post and I will.
I use the middle button (wheel) for that, but it's no my default setting. Navigating through a site with that would be exasperating.
Dilbert RSS feed
I didn't like the switch to spatial at first, but after using it it became clear that the reasoning for it was sound - it's much better to use than browser mode. Annoyed it's going away, hope they retain the option to have nautilus use spatial mode.
I use Friend/Foe + mod-point modifiers as a karma/reputation system.
is that you cmdrdildo?
Back in the 80s there was some point in HIGs, and Apple back then was generally felt to lead the way. The reason was that there were, among your users, a very high proportion of new users. So we conflated ease of use with ease of learning, and it was not completely stupid, for much of the market using and learning were the same thing.
Now however HIGs have become part of the problem rather than part of the solution, because they make the implicit assumption that everyone works in the same way, and has the same basic skills. We just do not. And anyone who experiments a bit with end users will find this out in a flash. I have had people who loved spatial browsing because it might be cluttered, but they always knew where they were. Then there are people who love Gnome and the desktop and love to put all their files all over it where they can see them. And then you have the odd case of some totally non-technical person, who you try out with Fluxbox, and you get the reaction that this is great, this is how I always thought Linux was supposed to be, no clutter and very minimalist and above all fast. It turns out that hand edited menus and the explicit startup of the file manager are actually something some non-technical people welcome and find refreshing. Others of course will run a mile. One size does not fit all.
The Gnome ideal, that there is such a thing as the right way to set up a desktop, an application, is the problem. There simply is not, and when you take that approach, the penalty is that you inconvenience and impair working for at least one third of the people using it. Far beter to have a few broad choices, and then let people refine within it, and offer some guidelines. If you are not very computer familiar, start out with this, then see if, a while later, you want to move to this, and here is a very minimalist alternative.
HIGs are a snare and a delusion, very apt that they are sometimes rudely referred to as 'interface fascism'.
I've been using Linux at home for 10 years. Ubuntu is the first distro to get the choice of defaults right, something close to what is useful and what end users actually want.
Its amazing how people agonise over minute features of software that hardly anyone actually uses in the real world. Linux has 4% or less of the desktop market and around half of that are gnome users. Its not a whole lot of people compared to Windows. This is not entirely due to Gnome or KDE but it has a lot to do with it. These systems are in general difficult to use and have not undergone the same useability testing that something like Windows has. Lets face it, windows just works while Linux is usually a pain in the ass to configure. This is due to the arrogance and elitism of its developers, especially its kernel developers. The fact that Linux has horrendously documented hardware APIs and that it has no stable driver binary interfaces and that getting anything to work is a huge mess of kernel header errors, compiler errors, etc. Do you really think grandma is going to be able to debug source code and figure out why some crazy driver doesnt install, when on Windows you just put in the disk, click install and it works? I have always said that the deployment of open source software would increase by 100X if we allowed there to be a stable binary driver ABI on linux and we made it easy for hardware developers to write drivers for it. It would make Linux far more practical and useable. Hardware developers put drivers through extensive QA testing to make sure it works well so it would be more reliable than open source drivers. But the binary drivers could speed up development of open source ones since the binary drivers could be back engineered by watching communication with them. Though, The fact is, people dont want to wait years for someone to back engineer some piece of hardware and the idea that hardware companies will provide the specs is unrealistic idealism, even with specs it can be months after Windows users have been able to use the hardware.
The UI developers have somehow created a UI system that somehow blows dozens of MB but actually provides less customisability and ease of use than Windows. Often important features that allow people to customise it are removed or don't exist because some developer decided they didn't use the feature and just didn't care that there might be someone else who used it. The key to developing is in offering many features and flexibility, but in laying it out so that most used features are up front. useability is all about layout not in few features. The system can be expert and average user friendly by simply allowing everything to be done with CLI or GUI and building software in a layered modular fashion with a user friendly layer on top of nitty gritty layers that the experts can directly work with.
Every time you open a folder, it opens in the same place on your screen.
The 1024x600px screen built into my laptop, or the 1360x768px screen I use when I take it home?
The plot thickens ... it always starts like that.
I've always knew these little Gnomes were going to take over the world. First they'll start 20,000 miles under the sea by putting the Nautilus back to browser mode.
bottom line: Don't trust Gnomes ... Don't trust Dwarves either, since Santa isn't a real Elf anyways!
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
The Gnome ideal, that there is such a thing as the right way to set up a desktop, an application, is the problem.
If you ever want to let guests use your machine without the UI utterly confusing them, or if you yourself are a guest (e.g. on a computer at a public library), there has to be a "right way" so that the guests have a frame of reference.
Well for web browsers, when I click Browse, you have to click all the way to the file you want. Has
there been an add-on for FF that lets you paste/click-paste the path to a file directly? Otherwise it's
like dig, dig, dig towards the destination folder, or do you guys use these file managers (Nautilus.
Dolphin et al) to surf the web as well because of this feature?
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
I'm not defending Gnome in any way. Personally I've always found their defaults and UI design non-intuitive. However, one of the things I've always believed is that "ease of use" is more subjective than we imagine. People new to the Linux desktop may find it counter-intuitive compared to the Windows desktop they've used for years.
But imagine if we were blank slates with no pre-conceived notions of how a desktop should behave?
For example, when I sort things in a desk drawer, I don't put my pens near my printer because they both start with the same letter or they both put images on paper. I put labels on my DVDs and MiniDV tapes and I label the items themselves, not the box where I put them in. In short, I mix all types of media. The current desktop metaphor completely breaks this free-form approach that many of use have. I don't think it's a technical barrier; just that people are used to doing things a certain way.
So, though I don't agree with Gnome decisions I do give them credit for trying to do new things (as difficult and bizarre as those decisions can be).
GOODBYE, pop-up hell!
Literally the first thing I do after installing a gnome based distro is change nautilus to browser mode.
Best christmas present ever!
"a devel asked me why one would use a dual pane file manager."
Then...
"I suspect the corporates running the Gnome Foundation"
Not only do you suspect "corporates" make bad decisions, but they also either hire bad devs OR they brainwash them into forgetting reasons for functionality AT LEAST. If a dev questioned dual pane, I think you have your answer right there.
you know you can just hold control and click the link with the left mouse button?
Evolution still has no support for Exchange 2007. And don't say Brutus, Brutus requires an intermediate Windows box shim and if I'm going to go to that length then I might as will use native Outlook.
I happened to like and prefer Spatial Mode (for most things). It is easy enough to switch to browswer mode when/if needed. As long as they make this an option (that is properly tested) then I don't mind, but, I'm starting to get disconcerted with changes for changes sake.
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
I don't believe your argument holds any water whatsoever?
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
In spatial mode it automatically remembers the position, size, and viewing options for every folder when you open them. That's what makes it great. I can use different viewing options for various folders depending on the content and what viewing option and size is best for the contents, and I can position it on screen in the most appropriate place for said content. Then, I can close it. Next time I open that same folder, it will be in the same position, same size, with the same viewing options as I left it. This is the way it should be. I like it. DON'T TAKE AWAY MY SPATIAL MODE!
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
Nautilus? What's Nautilus? Doesn't it have something to do with my Ubuntu desktop? I never noticed it, and wouldn't know how to change it to "bowser mode" on a dare. Poking around, here... Desktop file viewer? Why should I care? Won't Canonical make it user-friendly before turning it loose on us oozers?
``Tension, apprehension & dissension have begun!'' - Duffy Wyg&, in Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_
Do people drag things between browser windows? Yes, that is targeted at all the morons who have no idea what drag and drop is...granted nautilus's spacial implementation never impressed me. It would be lovely if the people who hate spacial could learn how to use more than one hand at a time and learn to use metaphor to their advantage. There is so much more you can when using two hands that it is ridiculous.
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
back in 2004 Gnome switched to the 'Spatial' view by default
Of course. They always copy the worst of all ideas Microsoft, and on top of it, do it way too late too. To make sure that really everybody already knows and hates that from MS, and disables it as the first action of installing a Gnome... uuum I mean Windows desktop. ;)
Don’t mod me troll here, as I am a big friend of Linux. I’ve just got a huge problem with the fact, that pretty much all “mainstream“ Linux desktop environments are always imitating, and never innovating. Always with the (invalid) excuse of wanting to make it easier to switch.
Exceptions prove the rule: The only glimpse of innovation came from KDE with their “semantic desktop” idea. But it came in one atomic package with a huge load of other “improvements” for the worse.
The thing is, that that point of view is not ever going to get them anywhere. They are their own worst enemies. It’s simple psychology: If you wanna lead, you gotta lead. Simple as that.
Only when both Gnome and KDE teams (and even the XFCE team) stop reacting... to the stupid part of their users, and especially to Microsoft or even Apple... only then will it ever become the year of Linux on the desktop.
I’ll explain: If you got something, that perfectly imitates something else... then what’s the point of switching in the first place? See... it’s not getting you anywhere, to imitate.
If you, on the other hand, got features, that nobody else has, or has even thought about...
I mean, from what I see, the Linux community got an insane amount of genius that is simply thrown away for the fear of not being loved by Windows users.
It’s like with women: If you want a girl, you don’t come to her all needy, trying everything just to be loved. That’s just gonna drive her away. You make yourself stand out. You draw her in, by being something special that she wants to be a part of. I mean, who wants someone who tries to suck up to himself? Nobody.
Guys, let’s make the best fuckin’ desktop environment on the planet!!
Of course we listen to the actual needs of the users. But not from that needy standpoint. Not to show them. We don’t need anyone’s approval.
Allow yourselves to revolutionize the way people think about desktop environments! If you got something that you think is really great, draw us in! Be the leading figure. Whoever told you that you can’t be the one that Steve Jobs and Bill Gates look up to for inspiration: Tell them to go fuck themselves for limiting you! It’s bullshit! You decide what you can do.
And then you just do.
Because in the end, that’s what really will make users love you!
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
On Ubuntu and some other distributions, browser mode seems to be the default anyway, so many users may not really care either way.
I don't think it has ever been established which mode is better or whether there aren't other, even better ways of interacting. Just because a bunch of vociferous programmers prefer one or the other doesn't mean it's objectively better. All desktop developers (and that includes Macintosh and Windows) seem to be groping around blindly in the dark, with programmers and "designers" picking and choosing according to personal preference rather than objective facts.
The GP knows this, yes, but won't use it because he/she is most likely one of the people who bitches about the "zomg serious inexcusable bug that absolutely EVERYONE sees so why don't they fix it NOW" about how badly Firefox handles eighty hojillion tabs after every click opens a new one, and there's no way he/she is going to give up THAT source of delicious, delicious bile.
Would someone please mod the parent article "troll"? That diatribe gets posted again and again by Windows fanboys, and it contains many factual errors. It isn't even worth responding to that idiocy point by point.
http://www.0xdeadbeef.com/weblog/2008/07/the-new-gnome-duality/
GCC is now being rendered totally obsolete by LLVM which is fixing all of the problems with GCC and has built a clean new compiler, with a modular code base.
Well, if after more than 20 years, gcc is being rendered obsolete by another open source compiler infrastructure, I would call that a resounding success for open source.
By putting up with some binary drivers what these people dont understand that a system that is 99% open source still could be made viable for many more users and thus the deployment of the OS would increase substaintially, and far more open source code would be run than if we had kept linux as it is now, with its impossible and difficult driver situation and so on.
There is no "difficult drivers situation" on Linux; Linux probably has drivers for more hardware than OS X or even any particular version of Windows (since Windows often lacks drivers for older hardware).
The only reason drivers seem like a problem occasionally is that Windows machines usually ship with the OS preinstalled and configured specifically for the hardware it ships on, while Linux is often installed from scratch.
If you install both Windows and Linux from scratch on the same machine, Linux is usually far easier to install because a lot of hardware just works, while for Windows, you need to manually track down binary drivers if they even exist. The situation has improved somewhat in Windows 7 but it's still pretty bad.
I think KDE has gone the wrong way by packing ever more functionality into the file chooser; the file chooser in KDE is now a mini-explorer that's similar to, but different from, the regular explorer. Try explaining all those buttons to your mom sometime.
You don't need file choosers at all on modern multi-tasking desktops: you can simply choose your file in the regular file system explorer and drop it into your application. You can also drop files into the file chooser dialog. In different words, yes, you can "use Nautilus as a building block", and you can do so already on today's Gnome desktop.
Getting rid of the file chooser altogether would probably be the right thing, but it's maybe a bit too radical. But a simple file chooser together with drag-and-drop support is a reasonable compromise, and it's what Gnome is doing.
The only other direction that might be worth going into would be Android-style componentization; with that, you could have a different file chooser for any application, and the user could even configure which combination of components make up the application. However, trying to pull that off in C/C++ is tough.
Apps->nautilus->preferences: Always Use Browser (check for browser, uncheck for spatial).
Also easy enough to configure different menu/desktop/panel launchers to let you choose on the fly if you prefer. Not exactly a huge issue, except for those who are impressed by out-of-the-box default configurations (personally, I tend to customize my desktop - you know, wallpaper, screensavers, window decorations, default behaviors, etc.).
I find the Gnome default with two task bars particularly annoying, since the modern trend is to have laptops with short and wide displays, putting vertical pixels at a premium. It seems that in another few years a typical laptop will have a display that is one pixel high and 10,000,000 pixels wide. Yes, the damn taskbar can be changed, but it is somewhat tricky.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Having switched to KDE4.x from Gnome, spatial view is the one thing I miss. I never liked using Konqueror for file management in KDE3.x, which is why I mostly used Gnome. I wish someone would write a spatial view file manager for KDE. I came to Linux from OS/2 back in the last century, so spatial view seems like the normal way to do things for me. Although I confess that I still use Midnight Commander for a lot of stuff, especially when I am moving a lot of files from place to place.
Maybe they just operate on a five-year cycle; just wait when in 2014 they'll announce that spatial was actually better, and they'll return to it yet again.
Sig erased via substitution of an identical one.
I guess I could agree that that split view is a killer feature - in the sense that it would kill any interest I would have in using a tool that forced me to waste screen space that way. But then I've had the "sidepane" turned off in Nautilus for so long that it came as a surprise to me to find that I'd had to make that choice.
I'm probably not much like the target audiences for either set of UI designers. I only put up with the inefficiencies of a file browser under fairly uncommon conditions, such as doing a rough sort of the ~/tmp/ dumping ground, or of a large batch of pictures - never normal everyday stuff! And when I do want a file browser rather than a command line, it's because I want quickly (but "by hand") to sort through many files - hundreds is not uncommon. At such a moment, the waste of a sidepane or other unnecessary split view would be a killer, indeed, in exactly the opposite of the sense you guys see it. :-/
martin "what, me login for this?"
Visit our resource http://www.im-narod.com
> The point of a spacial file browser is to use your spacial memory
I thought spacial file browsers were for "spacial people" e.g. retards ;).
Seriously though, I agree. Lots of these "fancy UIs" that these jokers come up with only work fine for users who just need to manage a handful of objects (windows, tasks, files, folders) at a time.
I find this silly since there is evidence that people are already able to manage a handful of objects at a time ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magical_Number_Seven,_Plus_or_Minus_Two ), but can't manage far more.
We don't really need help when there are a few objects and need help when there are lots. But that's when all those stupid GUIs start getting in the way.
For example: thumbnailed windows don't really help when you have > 10 of them (especially if they are similar looking documents - using the same standardized template), same goes for those graphical selectors where they show the windows from a 3d or fancy perspective. Useless if you have 20+ windows, cool looking when you have three or four windows, but why'd you need them when you only have a few windows?
When you have a few objects to track you should be able to remember which ones are which. When you have way more, you need some help. That's where computers and software should help. But they don't!
The exceptions are some game UIs. Some of which are proof that you can build UIs that work for "noobs" and still help skilled users.
Games are also proof that people, when sufficiently motivated to, can actually do far more than what these Desktop GUI makers assume. Very many actions per second. Keeping track of stuff. Learning of difficult combos. So where's the Desktop GUI that actually helps you to sustain a high "actions per second" average?
I've personally suggested this:
http://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/DesignersPlayground/KeyboardShortcuts
And something like it in 2006:
http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=121349
I think this sort of thing will help skilled users more, while not getting in the way of "naive" users (you can still leave the flashy stuff for them).
Car analogy: current OS GUI designers seem to be making cars that look really cool (and are theme-able) but have top speed of 30kph (play a beautiful animation while doing so), have a range of 3km, and have only space for one person at a time.
Not really helpful when we need to do some serious traveling.
WRT the file management dialog itself, the important thing is being able to see the entire file path (as opposed to separate buttons). Once I figured that out (actually, someone on /. told me), the Gnome file dialog receded into imperceptibility. It's no longer annoying, so I don't notice it. (And I have no idea what either the Konqueror or Dolphin file dialogs are like, so they must also be acceptable.)
P.S.: I've never been sure WHAT the "spatial view" meant. Apparently it actually refers to something concrete, but I don't know what. (If it's the spreading the file path across a bunch of buttons, then get rid of it quickly!)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
No, she won't. She will use Windows.
CE? It's the only Windows-brand operating system that runs on anything with better battery life than an x86 netbook. That's because makers of other devices aren't free to port the operating system to more power-efficient architectures.
This is free software, so there is no motivation to "provide enough resources". If one has to do that, one may as well buy software.
Freedom, not price.
Maybe that why software companies hire people to test the software.
Red herring. The required testing effort increases with each supported configuration whether the software is free or non-free. At some point, the price of testing exceeds what the mass market is willing to pay for a license to run non-free software.
If they are going to have to pay, they may as well go with what they can buy in a store where they can call someone at customer support
And pay per call, or just give up after the publisher's date of end of support. At least with free software, several firms can compete for users' support dollars.
"The fact is, people dont want to wait years for someone to back engineer some piece of hardware and the idea that hardware companies will provide the specs is unrealistic idealism, even with specs it can be months after Windows users have been able to use the hardware."
Unrealistic idealism? How do you explain the 5618 .c files (which we'll be conservative and assume only supports one hardware device each - unlike the realtiy where there are drivers that support many different hardware revsions e.g. the e1000e driver supports *all* 1Gbps Intel PCI-E cards) in the Linux 2.6.31 drivers directory? How do you think the came about? The Linux driver tooth fairy?
The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf
Why? Is there some reason that they both require the same interface? Do people really use them in exactly the same way?
Should be forced to use a browser that opens a new window every time a hyperlink is clicked
Forced? It is an option, and you talk about forced? What a hateful thing to say! You must be filled with hate if you want to remove an option in one program because you don't want people enjoying a different option in an unrelated program.
I used spatial mode for over a year, in both single window and multiple window modes, and it definitively has some advantages. Browser mode makes it awkward to open multiple windows because they are so big, so much that reusing windows becomes more comfortable and thus tabbed windows became a necessary, but tabs are suboptimal for a variety of reasons, the most obvious ones are that you can't see more than one at a time and that you can't drag tabs between, out of and into other windows. And even if you could you then you face the problem of the huge browser windows again.
I got a new, bigger monitor a few moths ago, this made me switch to browser mode because with a big monitor spatial mode becomes a game of hunting for browser windows, and because now I can comfortable manage multiple browser windows, but in an small screen I'd probably switch to spatial mode again.
Spatial mode is bet for simple document handling, drag and drop between folders and applications is a joy in spatial mode. What spatial mode is never *ever* good for is "management" moving, merging and comparing files across different tree branches and across different drives or servers, for that stuff browser mode is better than spatial, but still not as good as Midnight Commander or Gnome Commander.
Spatial mode has some use for some users and that means some people different to you are happy, I hope you can bare with it.
But... the future refused to change.
Why can't anyone get a clue that simplicity and speed is the balance of efficiency known as Salamand? Everyone forgets when either KDE and GNOME were the default desktops on computers back in the 300 to 500 MHz days and how slow they were compared to the efficient minimal applications that were optimized for the sake of these earlier computing environments.
Get a clue, just because the MHz are there doesn't mean I want the same thing done SLOWER but only appears faster because of my over-the-top processor. I want efficiency. Let something else use those MHz, not a file browser. What's that smell I get in userland? My desktop looks pretty at my expense? This is why window managers other than KDE and GNOME and only the necessary libs will exist today right next to IceWM and TWM and FVWM and flux123abc. Sometimes I want to just have the same environment on my speedy desktop as I do on an underpowered handheld, but with some more spring in the chair than in my step.
They had a theory!
Was it bunnies?
"The dew has clearly fallen with a particularly sickening thud this morning"
Spatial file browsing is more intuitive for two groups of people:
1) People coming from Mac OS Classic
2) People who have never used a computer before
If GNOME thinks they're getting a lot of new users from either of those groups, they're deluding themselves.
But the real point is that, in most people... the vast majority of people... spatial memory is far, far stronger than rote memory. It's different for geeks, but even then it might only be because years of BASH shells have trained their rote memory to be as-strong or stronger.
Spatial took a bit hit when Microsoft "implemented" it for Windows 95, but completely screwed it up in every imaginable away-- surprisingly, even people who think all Microsoft software is a crime against humanity blamed the concept of spatial browsing instead of blaming Microsoft's specific implementation of that concept.
And Apple, after perfecting the concept, let the NeXT guys loose on their file browser... of course the NeXT guys had no clue what spatial was, or how to implement it, and somehow managed to make a version somehow even more botched than the Windows 95 version.
This is a sad decision for me, because it means that once and for all, there are no file browsers that keep the damned icons and windows where I goddamned put them. A lifetime of fumbling trying to find files and windows... lovely. :(
Comment of the year
You mean like how a flamewar erupts whenever somebody mentions GoboLinux?
In terms of usability, it's a blindingly obvious good idea to rationalize/modernize the default Unix filesystem, and yet the community remains vehemently opposed to it.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Not sure why this is moderated as interesting. The point of a spacial file browser is to use your spacial memory (which is big, and is the reason why you can find things all around the house or on a messy desk easily) to manage your files. Every time you open a folder, it opens in the same place on your screen. This lets you mentally associate screen locations with files.
That's not what defines a spatial file browser at all. It's a common feature, to be sure, but not one of the fundamental ones.
The purpose of a spatial file browser is to behave in the same fashion as the physical objects its metaphor is based on. The most obvious (and frustrating) way this manifests is that you cannot have more than one window displaying the same directory/folder.
The problem with spacial browsers is that they don't scale beyond a certain point. They were great on older machines where you'd only have a few hundred files, but managing a thousand files with a spacial UI will just confuse the user. A good compromise would be to use spacial mode for documents and an explorer for everything else.
While this is true, the simple fact is most users don't typically have to manage thousands - or even hundreds - of files. The only real exceptions are MP3 files, which are usually managed for them by some application (iTunes, iPhoto, Picasa, etc).
Not sure why this is moderated as interesting. The point of a spacial file browser is to use your spacial memory (which is big, and is the reason why you can find things all around the house or on a messy desk easily) to manage your files. Every time you open a folder, it opens in the same place on your screen. This lets you mentally associate screen locations with files.
The problem with spacial browsers is that they don't scale beyond a certain point. They were great on older machines where you'd only have a few hundred files, but managing a thousand files with a spacial UI will just confuse the user. A good compromise would be to use spacial mode for documents and an explorer for everything else.
This is pretty contradictory.
The real problem with a spatial interface is when you're examining a folder structure that you've never encountered before, or encounter so rarely that you don't have a chance to get a spatial sense of. Like the depths of the OS, or a music or photo library managed by a music or photo management app, or a file server that's modified all the time by other people
That's why the ever-changing, unmappable web demands a browser-style interface.
Games are also proof that people, when sufficiently motivated to, can actually do far more than what these Desktop GUI makers assume. Very many actions per second. Keeping track of stuff. Learning of difficult combos. So where's the Desktop GUI that actually helps you to sustain a high "actions per second" average?
1. Most people don't play games.
2. Most human-computer interactions don't have any _need_ to "sustain a high "actions per second" average".
Seriously, what usage patterns are you envisaging here ? I'm a very heavy multitasker, and the proportion of time I feel limited in my productivity by the GUI is miniscule (and typically not the fault of the UI itself, but the underlying hardware, or something similar).
You may not know how much you'd miss the benefits of a car or other vehicle till you've actually used one. Then you might feel almost crippled when you have no access to them.
If you've seen skilled "dumb terminal" or cash register workers operating the corresponding Application Specific UIs, you'll see that very many people can learn to operate UIs very effectively and efficiently.
With features like my proposal, a Desktop UI would allow such workers to operate multiple applications and multiple windows as quickly as if they were one application specific UI. You would not require a monolithic application designed for user-efficiency.
As it is, the popular Desktop UIs often get in the way with flashy "cutscenes" between actions. And you are required to click multiple times, or alt-tab, or winkey-<number> many times just to get to the window you want.
Try it yourself: switch amongst 4 different windows quickly, and try to immediately work with them the split second you switch to them. The four windows could be: email, documentation, editor, ssh to remote machine #1 (and even more related windows).
With most "popular" GUIs you can't even do that quickly - you have to move you hand from the keyboard and click. Windows 7 allows you to do that if they are different application windows with winkey+<number> (but the switch only happens on key-release not key-press which means it is slower).
You can do that with "screen" but that's a CLI interface. Then there are some tiling window managers that might allow you to do that, but this functionality can be in a "normal" GUI without affecting the beginner users.
I'd rather waste time on Slashdot than waste it on my Desktop GUI.
They do not care about source code access. They care about price, features, and support.
Freedom means support from multiple third parties who compete on price for services offered, not just the original publisher who may have a business reason to deny support.
at least there is someone to call, as opposed to FLOSS where there is generally no one to call. Please tell me who I call for support for [a bunch of high-profile free software projects]
Canonical sells paid support for everything in Ubuntu main. And as far as I can tell, a lot of other Linux distributors do the same thing.
With features like my proposal, a Desktop UI would allow such workers to operate multiple applications and multiple windows as quickly as if they were one application specific UI.
My question remains. What scenario are you envisaging where this requirement exists in the first place ? Why would anyone need to be flicking between - and interacting with - a large number of of unrelated windows every second or two ?
Try it yourself: switch amongst 4 different windows quickly, and try to immediately work with them the split second you switch to them. The four windows could be: email, documentation, editor, ssh to remote machine #1 (and even more related windows).
Yes, that's pretty typical of my workday (only with about 30 windows). The limiting factor is not how quickly the UI can shift me from one window to another, it's how quickly I can change my thought processes to start using the new applications. I can switch from one app to another in the blink of an eye, but I can't do anything useful with them for (relatively speaking) much longer because that's how long it takes before *I* can mentally change tasks.
You can do that with "screen" but that's a CLI interface. Then there are some tiling window managers that might allow you to do that, but this functionality can be in a "normal" GUI without affecting the beginner users.
I use screen every day. I fail to see how it offers me any quicker or more efficient task switching than Alt+TAB.
I'd rather waste time on Slashdot than waste it on my Desktop GUI.
If you really are wasting meaningful amounts of time waiting for your Desktop GUI, it's time to upgrade that 486.
> - a large number of of unrelated windows
Who said they'd be unrelated? Given you regularly use 30 windows, I'm sure you can easily think of a scenario where you could have 5-7 related windows. "alt tab" only helps for 2 active windows, maybe even 4, but after that it stops helping.
> I use screen every day. I fail to see how it offers me any quicker or more efficient task switching than Alt+TAB.
Screen has combo+<number> to switch to a particular screen. That's a lot quicker and less error-prone than "alt tab, tab, tab, tab".
Yes many people can get from point A to point B just by hopping. But that's suboptimal.
> If you really are wasting meaningful amounts of time waiting for your Desktop GUI, it's time to upgrade that 486.
That's not really the point. The point is to not be impeded by the GUI more than you have to be. Stuff doesn't have to be so crap.
I can understand when my legs take a while to move me from one point to another. But why should switching amongst 9 windows be slower than switching between two windows? I see no good reason for that. Especially when Desktop GUI developers have enough time to spend on "features" like "wobbly windows" and "shake window to show desktop". It's clear a lot of them are clueless[1].
I can understand why switching amongst 30 random windows would be slower since most human minds have difficulty tracking more than 7 plus/minus 2 objects without regrouping them into group-objects. But the GUI should allow quick access to "7 plus/minus 2".
The goal should be for the user to be more restricted by the limits of his/her mind than the limits of the GUI. Computers should augment the user's mind (not replace it).
Current GUIs might not restrict naive users, but they do restrict users like you who can actually tolerate having 30 open windows (I've seen users who have to keep closing and reopening/relaunching windows/applications because they either can't cope with having more than a few windows open, or don't understand how it could work).
Lastly, I suspect that user interfaces can go from functional/tolerable to "insanely great" when you make them feel more like an extension of the user's body. One way of doing that is to reduce the latency/delays. Thus the iphone's low latency "no tear" scrolling is more likely to feel like a part of a user's body, rather than a mere device.
[1] Google Chrome is another example of UI fail. When you middle click on a link to open a new tab, Google Chrome should always open the new tab _adjacent_ to the source tab. Currently the positioning of the new tab might as well be random (it's not random, but it's ridiculous). When you finally find an interesting link you want to read NOW, instead of later (like the previous new-tab links), it should be in an easily predictable spot. Google Chrome fails this. In the normal world, people find lost items in the last spot they look. In the google chrome world, people apparently keep searching for lost items after they find them.
Who said they'd be unrelated? Given you regularly use 30 windows, I'm sure you can easily think of a scenario where you could have 5-7 related windows. "alt tab" only helps for 2 active windows, maybe even 4, but after that it stops helping.
That's why I have 3 screens to put them on. If I have a bunch of related windows I need to look at simultaenously, it's far more efficient to actually look at them in parallel, rather than serially.
That's not really the point. The point is to not be impeded by the GUI more than you have to be. Stuff doesn't have to be so crap.
But I'm not impeded. At all. I can switch between a small number of tasks quickly and easily with alt+TAB, or a larger number with the Taskbar. In all cases the bottleneck is how quickly my mind can productively switch between things, not the machine. This is as true today as it was fifteen years ago.
I can understand when my legs take a while to move me from one point to another. But why should switching amongst 9 windows be slower than switching between two windows? I see no good reason for that. Especially when Desktop GUI developers have enough time to spend on "features" like "wobbly windows" and "shake window to show desktop". It's clear a lot of them are clueless[1].
Firstly, it's not slower in any meaningful sense of the word. Secondly, the reason the functionality you want doesn't really exist is because there's simple no demand for it. You still haven't identified any usage scenario - let alone a common one - where the ability to quickly and frequently switch between a large number of windows will improve productivity [and isn't better served with a different solution].
Current GUIs might not restrict naive users, but they do restrict users like you who can actually tolerate having 30 open windows (I've seen users who have to keep closing and reopening/relaunching windows/applications because they either can't cope with having more than a few windows open, or don't understand how it could work).
No, they don't. Windows (which I use) was - from a UI perspective - quite capable of the heavy multitasking I do when the Taskbar first appeared in 1995. Even OS X, which had awful multitasking (both from a UI and technical perspective) for many years, and remains heavily application-centric today, does not meaningfully impact my productivity.
Whether it takes me 1/5th of a second to switch between windows (best case keyboard-shortcut) or 2 seconds (worst-case finding and clicking a Taskbar button), that time is dwarfed by the 5-10 second "orientation period" needed after switching and (typically) minutes then spent looking at the window that was switched to. Being able to constantly switch tasks in, say, half a second, is not going to show any meaningful improvement in productivity, outside of corner cases. People just don't switch tasks that frequently when they're working, not even amongst the ADD generation.
Actually you should be able to set it per folder. I still have folders with only a few files where I prefer Icon view - especially if the Icon shows a preview of the content. And can be resized a little larger.
And guess what: It's precisely what the OS X Finder offers (as well as the dearly missed OS/2 workplace shell).
I guess I'm lucky and don't require that 5-10 second orientation period.
It is really annoying when I know exactly what window I want, but it takes longer than it has to, to get to it.
It's like driving a car with a laggy steering wheel. You can still get from point A to point B, but no way can you consider it a good car. It's crap.
Yes, multiple big displays would help, but multiple displays aren't as portable, cost more $$$ AND most importantly you wouldn't need them as much if GUIs weren't so crap!
As I have been saying, switching a window doesn't have to be so much slower than looking at another display and refocusing. The reason switching a window is significantly slower than looking at another display is because the popular Desktop GUIs aren't helping.
I regularly have to switch amongst 3 or more windows during my work (which in the current stage involves creating and updating a bunch of design documents).
Recent example:
1) Document listing firewall rules
2) Document listing firewall objects
3) Email listing a bunch of hosts and what ports the hosts require to be allowed by the firewall.
4) Notepad - because pasting stuff into notepad and recopying said stuff from it is often faster if you want to convert stuff into plain text for easy repasting- Microsoft Office does give you paste options but they can be fiddly (in some scenarios it doesn't give you the plain text option, and it actually is visibly slow for some reason). Also you can keep a bunch of text that is commonly required to be entered. So instead of typing such stuff again, you switch to notepad (left hand does alt tab, right hand gets ready for quick selection with mouse), copy, switch back, paste, repeat if necessary. Autocomplete doesn't help if the customer wants lots of stuff to start with the same prefixes (e.g. all stuff in one data center has the same prefix).
So it could be: read part of email, add address objects, add protocol objects, insert/modify rules, go back to email read next bit, and repeat. Copying stuff to+from notepad will be involved in some parts as mentioned.
In case you're wondering, yes the customer requires documents in MS Word format.
Another scenario:
1) LAN switch port allocation - new version
2) LAN switch port allocation- old version (for reference)
3) Switch port mappings for servers and enclosures.
4) IP Address allocation document.
5) Email
6) Notepad
So I get a message that asks me to add a bunch of stuff and move existing stuff around. I need new IP addresses, need to change some IPs, need to change the ports (enclosure and switches) stuff gets attached to. And need to make sure I haven't made mistakes (and accidentally deleted or left out stuff).
I hate to say this, but windows even allows a user to make that decision. Open up each folder in a new window is a preference. Oh yeah GNOME hates allowing users to make decisions. Somewhere a few years ago that was announced that they would do less preferences. I hate spacial, too many windows to close when you are done.
Only 'flamers' flame!
Does slashdot hate my posts?
Attempting to drip with sarcasm...difficult to pull off here.....
Is this news? What's next? After five years of fiddling around, a Linux user decides to change their windows frame colour to orange?
Get a fucking life guys... oh, sorry, that is your life...
I remember when it was weird for folders not to launch new windows. 'course I was used to using Mac OS 7. Then everybody up and changed things when the internet came around. Everything had to be 'integrated' with the browser and stuff like that.
The browser doesn't really need to determine how I use a computer.
That being said, I actually kind of like the 'browser' behavior better, but that doesn't mean I think anyone who likes new windows is wrong.
If you think he misunderstands spatial mode, why don't you explain it from your point of view.
The problem with spatial browsing is the it can get messy if you have to navigate a hierarchy of folders. If I want a new window open I will explicitly tell nautilus to open one, I don't need a half dozen of them open just because what I wanted to get to was six folders deep.
Maybe I misunderstand spatial browsing too, but I did grow up using an Amiga which used that type of mode for its file browser and I remember in the later days of using it I came across and started using some hack which would close the windows behind me as I clicked to open a new folder. So I think it less a case of people not understanding and and more that it isn't useful to most and it is just untidy. The default should be what suits the majority rather than the "enlightened" few who only think they know best and that if something works for them it must be good for everyone else.
The boys have won.