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."

Comments

Re:Is it really anything *new*?

[Torrance]

Debian uses spatial by default. I know, because it's about the first thing I change on a fresh install.

Re:Nautilus following KDE's Dolphin?

[ta bu shi da yu]

Well, the rationale for changing from spatial to browser mode in Nautilus is because much of the functionality is now being implemented in Gnome-Shell.

From the following post by Alexander Larsson:

The current ideas behind the design of nautilus is that its the main way to access files. By this I mean everyday stuff like finding and opening your files, rather than "file management" (reorganizing files, copying files, etc). This together with the desktop having links to important places (as well as being a repository for currently worked on files) makes this a sort of "desktop shell" in the sense that its how apps are launched to a large degree. This is also why spatial mode is the default for the desktop icons (and why browser mode is availibile in the menus as "File Browser" for those times you want to
do intense file management).

However, in the gnome-shell design a lot of the things nautilus is currently used for (locating and opening files) is integrated into the
shell and mixed together with the ui for locating and starting applications. This makes a lot of sense to me as launching applications and opening files with an application are closely related actions, and a merged UI could do a lot better than the current sort of double UI with the panel launching apps and the desktop launching files. The shell also wants to de-emphatize the desktop as a place for storing files in use and launching links, for good reasons (read the design paper[1] for details).

This leads to two initial conclusions from my side. First of all we should disable the drawing of the desktop by default. Second we should default to browser mode. This might seem a bit suprising (sic) since I've generally been on the spatial side. But, this has mainly been because I've seen nautilus as much more used as a kind of file activation shell rather than a hardcore file manager, and when that changes the rationale for spatial mode change too.