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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.
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?
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!
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 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)
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.
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!
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'.
If Windows is so easy to use, why am I constantly asked "How do I do this?", "Why won't this work?" and "How do I make this work?" by Windows users?
The Windows UI is dog shit.
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.
Which reminds me of the Windows help system. Do any normal end users use it? I don't use Word at all but I am, for some reason, the guy everyone asks how to do something in Word. I just use the help system. This is considered deep, powerful black magic by most people.
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.
You were doing OK until you hit this. There are few standards on the Windows platform for GUI that matter. Look at Windows Media Player, MS Word and, just for the hell of it, Internet Explorer 8. Toss in Lotus Notes, Quickbooks, iTunes and you have a full swing helpdesk nightmare. KDE and Gnome applications are remarkably consistent in their respective UIs. On top of that, I can run KDE apps on Gnome and Gnome apps on KDE. It just works.
I'll take Linux over Windows every day because the business model is not selling defective by design software and then extorting money from the user to fix known defects. Your hardware, driver, and developer rant? I've never experienced the same issue - save hardware documentation. I've had many hardware manufacturers who have withheld documentation, but nary an open source project that did or failed to have workable documentation after the first version or two (about par for the course for proprietary software, anyway..
-- $G
> 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.