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Ask Slashdot: Is the Recycle Bin a Good GUI Metaphor?
dsginter writes "During a recent Windows 7 upgrade, I disabled the 'Recycle Bin' from appearing on the user desktop. Why? Because this allows the users to retrieve errant deletions. While this was the goal of the 'Recycle Bin' in the first place, most people (including myself) are in the good habit of keeping a tidy workspace and 'taking out the trash' when they see that it is full. For some people, their OCD meant that deleting a file was a two step process: delete the file and then empty the recycle bin. By disabling it from view, I have found that the original function is restored for the smattering of times that it is actually needed. Why are we wasting pixels on such a poor metaphor?" Going further, is there some combination of metaphor and method of use that you'd find more useful or natural?
I think you are out of line *forcing* other users to abide by your view of how the desktop should operate.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
This is a pointless and fucktarded article.
Way to go editors.
The sole purpose of the recycle bin is to be a copy of the Trash. NeXT's "black hole" was the same thing.
What we are seeing are user interface designers copying a nearly 30 year old design from Macintosh, because as far as they are concerned it is the "only" way to do things. If you suggest something different, they immediately bristle, because they've been taken out of their comfort zone.
"It has to be this way. This is what users want."
Except that nobody has ever asked the user about any alternatives.
Stop being a pussy.
I hate grammar Nazi's.
I understand that we should always try to improve on the current state of affairs. However, in this case, I think the the "solution" is the answer to a question that no one has asked.
Let the resume' building commence.
You so smart.
No, really.
Here's a pixel for your effort: .
OK, people don't use their computers all in the same way. I don't know what made the author think that the majority deletes everything immediately after dropping files in the recycle bin. I don't. Can't tell if I'm with the majority, but I can tell that my behaviour changed as the hard drive space increased. With my current PC, it is not unusual that I have several gigabytes of stuff in the recycle bin. Occasionally I see total free space getting low-ish and I remember that I haven't purged the bin for months. 64x64 pixels wasted out of a total 1600x900 in my case. So what?
Super+X to spawn a VT, rm filen[tab], enter, Ctrl+D.
Emotions! In your brain!
Even if I delete a tiny little file, the trashcan icon goes from completely empty to totally full.
Perhaps the trashcan graphic could show the actual size of the deleted files relative to the space allocated on the hard drive for said files.
That way you would only need consider taking out the trash when the can is actually full.
Rename the Recycle Bin "Steve Jobs Mansion" and a committee will prevent you from emptying it for 10 years.
I always thought of the recycling bin as a place where you "recycle" storage memory to be used again for somewhere else. Delete 5 MB now, use it again for something else later.
I don't see why you can't just symlink it to /dev/null. If you are going to delete something, delete it already. If you might want to save it, save it. For all the rest (accidental deletion) there are snapshots, versioning systems or backups. The 'Recycle Bin' or 'Trash' is not used properly by anyone because it adds an unnecessary step. I loathe taking out the trash at home and I wish that everything you put there could automatically go wherever it goes when I put it on the curb. Computers are supposed to make stuff easy, not replicate real life.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Why are we wasting pixels on such a poor metaphor
Because, I actually want to have an easy way to empty the recycle bin. It's utilization of disk space wasn't a major concern for many year, but now with the introduction of SSDs, and the fact that huge SSDs are not yet affordable, I find myself running out of space on mine quite often. When I do, I tend to find I've got some large files sitting in the recycle bin.
Why is the Windows trash can a folder, yet I can not just browse the contents? In KDE I can just look in the folder and treat it just like any other, and I can purge by date to clean it up. All files are exactly what they were before but with the one additional option to restore it.
I know an Outlook user at work who uses Deleted Items as a place to *store* emails. We've always been tempted to ask him if he stores his lunch in his trashcan.
I like the idea of a recoverable deletion bucket. But, it should be less intrusive. Deletions should occur without prompts and if users want to recover files, they know where to go. Additionally, the system should treat the deletion bucket like a stack where deleted files are permanently removed as more disk space is needed.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
As far as I can tell, the recycle bin was an attempt to emulate the trash can in the Macintosh UI. The difference was that, like so many other things (and this is coming from a life long Windows user, not an Apple fanatic), Microsoft did it badly where Apple did it well.
It's hard to pinpoint exactly what the difference is, but in Windows it just doesn't seem to make sense. It just looks like any other desktop icon, whereas in the Macintosh it clearly has a special purpose. Possibly because it's always there at the bottom right hand side of the screen (where it seems like it should be, don't ask me why), whereas Windows just moves it around as it sees fit.
So no, I don't see anything wrong at all with the poster's policy of removing it from the desktop. Anything that removes a possible source of confusion for users is a good thing in my book.
Many users have this problem/symptom/disorder. Causing the recycle bin to appear only when hard disks are full (as opposed to the current popup box or hard limit methods currently available) would be an ideal workaround.
This should actually be do-able under Linux with a little scripting. Since the OCD user stereotype described here probably doesn't fit in the "uses lots specialized windows apps that don't run under wine" category, that could be an ideal, workable solution.
How could this possibly be a good idea? And how can you implement this and then accuse every other Windows user of having OCD? Pot. Kettle. Black.
This is an absurd personal preference to force on your users, and a good example of an admin crossing the line from "ensuring the system works well" to "forcing the users to compromise their workflow because of the personal whims of the admin". Admins are supposed to keep users from interfering with the operation of the system, but it's equally important that they don't interfere with what the users are doing more than they absolutely have to.
This is right up there with admins who don't set the time properly / leave the display at a ridiculously low resolution, then lock down the preference setting so it can't be adjusted.
http://www.apple.com/macosx/what-is-macosx/time-machine.html
Fuck whether or not N=NP. Can users handle the power and responsibility of a recycle bin icon on their desktop? This, THIS is the most important open question in Computer Science. Naturally, this too is equivalent to the God Poutine question.
Frankly, the "Recycle bin/trash" is a good(but not perfect) UI convention for a great many common computing situations. It serves as a reasonable recovery point/"in retrospect I fucked up" self help tool. It also imposes basically no requirements on the system/filesystem architecture. Would minor little additions(like having it automatically sort items by date/time of deletion) make it better? Sure. Is there anything fundamentally wrong? Not really.
Now, in high-resource environments, there is a much stronger case to be made that the "recycle bin" is obsolete and must die; but only if the system/FS/programs can be modified to accommodate the necessary changes. If, say, I mostly deal in text of some sort(writer, lawyer, programmer) even a modern laptop drive(never mind the cheap network storage) is Ludicrous Storage. Why can't I traverse a high-granularity timeline of every change made to every file I deal with?
That's the thing: For situations where you have to contend with legacy limitations, or where user space requirements are still comparatively close to the limits imposed by available technology, the "recycle bin" UI metaphor is pretty damn good. It is basically just a folder(with a tiny dollop of metadata to allow "restore this item") so it imposes minimal requirements; but still helps save users from common fuckups.
However, for environments where storage is massively ahead of traditional user requirements, and one has the liberty to re-examine certain legacy restrictions, you could arguably do much, much, better, with full versioning of all kinds of stuff.
How nice it must be to be so perfect a being that you never accidentally delete a file. For the rest of us mere mortals, I think we'd all prefer to keep our options open.
Really -- you're focusing on lost desktop space and some kind of extra effort to delete files "permanently"?
IMHO, the bigger issue is that the Trash (MS called it Recycle because it sounded more PC and Apple already had a Trash) metaphor combined with large disk drives allows people to turn the Trash into a storage place (like Outlook's Deleted Items).
OK, this is and of itself isn't an issue, but periodically the trash gets emptied and then usually someone (sorry, women in marketing, but you're the most common victims) is on the war path because the trash worked like it was supposed to.
It'd make more sense if there was a trash "policy" that was time based and not disk space based. Like trash at home, it gets "deleted" every week when the garbage man comes.
Yeah, there's this thing called Karma.
This entire post and thread of comments is a waste of space and peoples time (which is what you claimed to be trying to eliminate int he first place)!
What about the "Laundry Basket"? I'm never really taking things out of the trash, but in the morning you sure as hell can see me searching through the laundry basket to find that shirt that always seems to disappear.
The recycling bin is wrong for several reasons:
- It is an icon, and all icons except this one represent applications. It breaks the metaphor.
- The concept of an undelete-store has some merit, but it absolutely needs to have a limited lifetime for its content.
- It is hard to find as it has no fixed location. And it eats icon space without good reason.
- Because it has no fixed position, the notion of drag&drop to it is fundamentally broken. Delete has to be a fixed gesture or command, not a variable one, as it is a unique operation. In addition, having it as an icon is accident-prone.
Personally, I have set deletes to be permanent and do not use the recycling bin anymore. I never have caused real damage by accidental deletions. Anything important has to be backed-up anyways, as disks do fail.
In my view, the recycling bin is one of the results of Microsofts attempt to allow users to stay incompetent, instead of requiring them to lift their competence level a bit and become proficient. If you consider how much time people spend to learn how to read and write, refusing to learn a bit more in order to be a competent computer user is just plain stupid.
That said, most computer users are low-skill (with regard to computers) and want to stay that way. They will not even understand why a better set-up could make them more productive. Remember the first rule of teaching: Only those that want to learn can be taught. Most computer users do not want to learn. Hence I advise you not to mess with the MS way of doing things, stupid as it may be.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I use ZFS and automatically snapshot the filesystem once a minute. Any snapshotting filesystem will allow you to restore previous versions of files (or accidentally deleted files). I don't really see the use of a trash can.
I have switched over to shift-delete because that skips the recycle bin and permanently deletes it, so the visibility of the recycle bin won't help me.
Is it August already? Or is the "idle" section of the site down?
Development is programmable; Discovery is not programmable. (Fuller)
Honestly I'm not sure why the OS doesn't keep iterations of files by default. I know the recycle bin example is catching some flack, but I agree with the notion that this is a dated concept.
It's only a poor metaphor for the few really anal retentive people who can't be bothered to learn how and why their OS works. But that's not right - the metaphor isn't in error - Trash works just like a trash can. Put stuff in and take it out, empty it when it's full or stinks. What the writer wants is an incinerator.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
I thought that was THE metaphor for deleting files, dragging them to the shredder.
Plus, my wife edited a .wav of a chainsaw buzzing followed by a scream and associated it with the action of shredding a file. That added to the effect, you shred a file, hear it get cut up and scream its last. The message it re-inforced was FILE DONE GONE!
I've only just skimmed the summary, but I completely agree, it'd be wonderful to have multiple recycle bins, each a different colour so I can organize my trash. I put red files/icons in the red trash, and green ones in the green etc. I'm pretty sure this helps the OS with housekeeping, because it makes it easier to restore the bits for future files. Sometimes, the colour is not seen before, so I've set up a system to pick the trashcan colour from a colour wheel - this helps organization further.
On top of this scheme, I have various levels of trash: shallow, deep, and megadeep. When I first delete a file, it goes into the shallow trash so that I can restore the file immediately if I've made a mistake. If I'm really sure I don't want a file, or I need more disk space, every so often, I dig into the shallow trash, and move them into the deeper trashcan, and again with the other levels, finally to be deleted at the end of the chain. It's cumbersome, but this way I can make sure I won't delete very important files too easily.
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
The problem you describe lies with your need to empty the Recycle Bin.
Leaving it on the Desktop is nice for the times you really *do* want to permanently empty those files as well as the times you want to undelete.
Off topic: Why force your personal preference on the users of your company? I think that's poor form. Let them decide how they want to use their own workspace.
I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..
There, fixed it for you.
The only reason Windows uses the term "Recycle Bin" is because Apple used the term "Trash" first for that purpose. However, that doesn't change how it is or was intended to be used but which the majority of users tend to ignore; a temporary storage area intended to give the user a chance to recover a file perhaps accidentally deleted. The biggest problem with this is that while it is a two-step process to completely delete a file immediately, too many people drop files in the Recycle Bin and forget it, letting the folder fill up drive space and desktop ram until it starts affecting computer performance. This is not a Windows-only problem.
What these OSes need to do is determine when a file is dumped into the 'trash' and after a user-selectible time or perhaps a default time of 1 month, any files stored there 30 real-time days or longer are automatically deleted or compressed and stored in a 'trash compactor'. If the second option, after 1 year (or again a user-selectable period) the files then are permanently removed.
As a consultant, you would be surprised at how many consumers especially let their recycle bins get so overstuffed that their computers run out of hard drive space.
It's obvious you've never been an admin managing a bunch of lusers who ring support when they can't work out how to even turn caps lock off, rubbish bin is there for a reason, deal with it or don't use it. Why the hell is this shit on the front page?
what's best for everybody, just like Hitler and his incinerator.
--
Users are mental cases with deleting and trash. Our general policy is generosity and tolerance for user storage needs (I'm making quotey signs with my fingers). When mail client performance is slow or the mail store backup gets too porky, trash folders are a good place to start looking to slim down a bit.
Once I'd right-clicked on a trash folder and glanced at the user for an 'okay, go ahead' look before clicking 'empty trash' when he jumped up and shrieked "no! I keep stuff in there!" - when I opened the folder I found a detailed hierarchy of subfolders full of messages, most of which were ones he'd sent to himself with files attached and with a description of the file as the subject.
I've had a few other users with somewhat-less-so-but-still-kooky trash behavior - deleting everything to satisfy an obsessive need for an empty inbox, then referring to the Trash as the de facto mailstore. But the needed stuff gets mixed in with the trash, as do thousands of spam messages when *that* folder is emptied. Or a more general fear of ever deleting anything, though we keep years of mailstore data for any-point-in-time restores, archive all incoming and outgoing mail, and put everything on tape. Ensuring that we have backups five ways to Sunday of anything they could ever possibly need doesn't ameliorate the need for the hoarding.
It's the "intuitivity" fad that's making us waste pixels and a whole lot else on something that, well, isn't attainable. Look at the proliferation of helpdesks despite putting lots of monies and efforts in making them unnecessary.
Admit that "intuitive" doesn't exist (no, not even the nipple, ask any mom), and you suddenly gain a lot of room to play with your paradigms: You're suddenly free to train the user, enabling you to focus on interaction design.
You've just forced the users to change their desktop and the way they interact with their computers because for some personal reason you don't want the icon on your desktop.
Some people make mistakes like this. Of those, some eventually learn. I wish you luck on your journey.
Windows doesn't have one, it has been totally subverted. Windows has an "application launching" metaphor.
Nobody uses the desktop metaphor on Windows, they use the start menu to find the application they want then they open a file and find the file they want from within the application.
Or they click on the application icon on the desktop... Now there's a WTF. Then open a file using the application.
I don't know anyone who uses the Windows Desktop as a desktop...
Apple, Gnome, XFCE OTOH all get it right. Last time I looked KDE tended to do the windows thing.
Deleted
For people that have massive OCD like me, that meant that deleting a file was a two step process: delete the file and then empty the recycle bin.
Fixed.
Seems like the person who wrote this 'story' is in denial about their OCD.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
Obsessive-compulsive disorder leads to get another Windows "administrator" deploying policies to make the system less user friendly. Bravo!
Want the recycle bin cleaned up? Try doing it properly - deploy powershell and create a service similar to the temp cleanup script on better systems (like UNIX and UNIX clones) where temp files, or in your case, the recycle bin is cleaned up automagically after (n) days. Or, just leverage the cleanup utilities built into Windows. Or, better yet, if you want a single-step delete method for yourself, RTFM and discover the shift-delete method, which immediately deletes the file(s) rather than moving it(them) to the recycle bin.
In other words, become a better system administrator rather than forcing a user-hostile change down your users' throats.
(recommendation: tag this article "ocd")
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
The bad thing about the recycle bin is that when you empty it, it deletes all the files inside it, whether they are recently deleted, or deleted a long time ago.
How it should work is some sort of file-limbo state... where when you delete it, it is scheduled to be permanently deleted in 2 weeks. That way, there is a constant stream of files being permanently deleted, at the same rate you delete files. This is how Gmail's delete function works.
It's actually a four step process:
1. Try to delete file
2. Are you sure you want to delete this file? [Yes]
3. Try to empty the recycle bin
4. Are you sure you want to empty the recycle bin? [Yes]
And then the file is gone.
Yes, there are registry tweaks to turn all this crap off. There should be a check box though to disable this nonesense for people who aren't in the habit of deleting stuff they don't mean to. At least shift-del is only a two step process.
Saying your "phone ran out of batteries" is like saying your "car ran out of gas tanks".
You should never actually need to empty the recycle bin, ever. You can adjust the size of the recycle bin and Windows will automatically delete the oldest files once the recycle bin is at capacity, allowing you to retrieve recently deleted files you realize you want back. That is the purpose of the recycle bin.
What would you do with a Beowulf cluster of Trash cans?
After reading through the Apple User interface guidelines, and studying UI for a few years, and even designing a few myself professionally, I asked Andy Hertzfield about the Trashcan metaphor, and of everything that he insisted about GUIs and desktop metaphors, he said that he regretted this one the most.
The point is that, as stupid as it may be, the owner of the machine SHOULD have omnipotent power over what happens, and is or is not allowed.
IT doesn't "own" the computers any more than the users "own" the computer. The company "owns" the computers.
Challenging IT's computer sovereignty is something only upper management has any business doing. Users who attempt to do so should get sanctioned, and rightly so.
Perfect philosophy if your goal is to get outsourced. Seriously, whenever I have an employee that thinks this way I have to educate them. IT's job is to empower the users to get their job done more efficiently. Period. You serve the users.
Users "own" the applications, in a logical sense. It's their responsibility and their right to be an integral part of the process in determining how it functions. It's a two way street.
There are some things that each side is correct in putting their foot down and drawing a line in the sand - and this one is firmly owned by the users.
There's nothing wrong with the concept of the Recycle Bin except for it being called the Recycle Bin. I put cardboard, paper and glass in to the recycle bin in my kitchen so that it can be turned in to more cardboard, paper and glass. I don't put files in the Recycle Bin on my computer desktop so they can be made in to other files.
You need to start holding down the right shift key when you press delete. You can disable the Recycle Bin completely and disable delete confirmation. Not only is your OCD your own problem, but you are also an idiot.
Here's a verbose answer to the question: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2011/02/16/10129908.aspx
The recycle bin is a folder, but not a directory.
The saddest poem
uh.dsginter, maybe you should get your meds adjusted.
That's how a bad IT department works.
A good IT department realizes the following:
The limits of their own knowledge.
That users are supposed to be part of the process in determining how systems should operate - they are the ones that have to use it day in and day out.
That, unless there is a damn good reason for requiring something, IT's job is to empower the users and then get out of the way so they can bring in revenue for the company.
I don't show any desktop icons, personally. Between the Win7 taskbar and start menu/search field, there's really no reason to have to go back to the desktop to start applications or access anything. I know this is a personal preference thing, but once you start showing icons the whole thing can get ugly quick.
--The universe will not be altered by forum threads, even those which are very wry. --Tycho Brahe (Penny Arcade)
I always rename the recycling bin to "Compost Heap" and set it to delete the oldest files automatically when it reaches a certain size.
I'm now in the habit of using a `srm` (safe rm) which moves things to /tmp/ using `mktemp -d`. I know not all systems automatically clean /tmp on boot but that's the way I think of that command. When I remove files, I'm aware they're still around but not forever. It gives me time to think if I want it back but also to know it will be removed permanently without further intervention.
Selah.ca. Pause, and calmly think on that.
I don't think that is right. Because some GUI environments have all icons represent Documents (Xerox Star) and folders, there are no stand alone applications in Star. And specifically, Windows and Mac OS has a mix of documents, folders and applications.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Or, get a Mac. No such little annoyances. I don't hate Windows. It's kind of like hating a Yugo. Not worth the mental energy. I use it when I need to. Like rental car.
I will create a sig when innovation restarts in the U.S.
first, the Mac has a trash bin also, used in the same way as with Windows... second, it's even used to eject CDs (last time I checked; very poor metaphor).
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
You haven't seen my desktop.
Set to empty itself immediately.
At work the janitors come around and empty the trash every day. Maybe an automated garbage collector is what's needed.
At home I empty the trash when its full, or its garbage pickup day.
Okay, so I haven't lol'd this hard since the last time I ran into Rick Astley on the internet.
But seriously,
"wasted pixels"
How's about wasted hard drive space. If your user base consists of home users on personal machines (as mine does) you don't get standard hardware profiles with big hard drives or cloudspace that can rebalance to fit any requirement, and teaching users the difference between DELETE & SHIFT+DELETE as it relates to freeing up hard drive space is a headache. This guy is thinking in the era of infinite hard drive space, which realistically we have almost achieved, but not while there's all this legacy equipment mucking about.
Also solid state HDDs never really lose anything and there's always serious recovery programs and, and... WTF, troll'd'.
ants. There are many more ants than humans. Should we always ask, what will benefit the ants?
Who cares about the "majority" of users? You don't have 100 million people sharing a desktop. Even a shared computer is normally used one person at a time. So there is in fact a simple answer; make it configurable. Which is already the way it is. Choice solves the lots of people problem, the lowest common denominator doesn't.
As far as windows defrag goes, yeah, from a servicing perspective it's one of the few things you can say you did and justify charges that makes a measurable difference. Even if that difference is too small to notice.
You can get a 500G HD with shipping for under $50, paying somebody do defrag is a poor solution in the rare case where the disk was full enough for the fragmentation to slow things down noticeably.
Someone should create a GUI which facilitates my every irrational thought and desire. I am the center of the universe. A supermassive sucking entity requiring ever more resources, simply because I desire them. My entire interface with the computing world should be centered around me. It is not enough to abstract those processes, such that they accommodate me. The underlying processes must be changed to fulfill my desires.
By the way, I built my house below sea-level, support Obamacare, and am looking forward to collecting my 99th week of "unemployment" benefits too. It'll be ok, because the government can always just print more money.
the original GUI didn't query you when you dumped stuff into the trash, only when you finally emptied the trash, which is handy for multiple file deletions, like cleaning out a folder. I currently have a UNIX drive mapped in, and so everything is deleted instantly, but it asks first, while in the commandline, when it's deleted, it's gone! My preference is the first instance, place files aside and then delete them as a bundle, but my second choice is where delete means DELETE.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
The submitter actually has a point here. The trash bin fills one important function: recovery of accidentally deleted files. Allowing users to empty the trash bin runs counter its main function, and the trash full icon is really counterproductive here.
Ideally, the trash bin should be represented by a single icon, and release deleted files automatically as the system would need more disk space (where have I seen this?). Better yet, the trash should have an API so that applications could also benefit from the ability to recover files in the same way.
Hidding the trash icon is not a good idea however, since it eliminates a key system function. Maybe a better option would be to use a single icon, and run a periodical task to delete some of older trash files if disk space goes below a minimum (or the trash exceeds a quota)-- if the system does not do this already.
Personally, I go one step further and set my recycler space to 0 so that all files are permanently deleted first time. There is a window that pops up and says "are you sure you wish to delete this file" When I click Yes it is because the answer is Yes. If I am not sure then the answer is no. I don't understand how anyone can go from being sure about something to doubting it later. This shows a fundamental lack of understanding of the word 'sure'.
What about seperating your recyclables? There's just the one recycle bin for everything, what if the file i'm deleting isnt recycling friendly?! Can I pay extra for a desktop skip? These are questiosn raised by true OCD sufferers..
-- If at first you don't succeed, lie!
The name "recycling bin" for the delete purgatory has made me cringe ever since it was invented. "Recycling" the files or the bytes would mean putting them to another use, while retaining some of their structure/effort that went into them/frozen energy/labor, call it what you want. The things I delete aren't reborn in a different shape, they just disappear. No recycling, no landfill, no pollution: that's the great thing about virtual objects. I think the original intention of the term "Recycling bin" was that you allow the computer to reuse the storage, but that shouldn't be the main point of deleting stuff (if it is you should rather get more storage), and anyway it's a broken metaphor. You don't recycle space in common parlance.
When I want something back I have to be quick (before the garbage truck comes) and poke through an unappealing, because unordered, pile of rubbish. This step could be improved. I like the idea of ghosts in the place where that file used to be. The webmail app Roundcube does that: deleted messages are still visible in the directory listing for a while, only faded.
They just dumped the buttons for shutdown, minimize and maximize. I'm sure they would love your idea. Or Firefox: no feed for you. Why have UI for an action when there's still a keyboard combo or context menu entry to access it? Hey, let's get rid of all chrome, that would be really zen.
IT is not CS. This is an IT question. N=NP is a CS matter. Mechanics versus mechanical engineers.
Shift+Delete
Done in one.
No, you serve the company and not the user that wants Bonzi Buddy or similar shit on their computer. You give people as much leeway as they need but when it comes down to their desires versus company policy it's the policy that wins no matter how screwed up it is.
Some people seem to think their work computers are a personal sex toy and act accordingly. Sorry kids - it's not actually yours unless you paid for it.
most people (including myself) are in the good habit of keeping a tidy workspace and 'taking out the trash' when they see that it is full
Whilst my dataset is no more valid that the submitters, I have never seen anyone feel a desperate need to keep an empty trash can.
It fills up to a certain (configurable) limit, then starts permanently removing the oldest files. Seems pretty good behaviour. Just leave it alone.
There are some problems with the implementation in OS X, but the interface, conceptually, is pretty good. The concept of going "back in time" is easy to explain, and it's fairly conducive to how the brain naturally recalls things.
It basically works like using --link-dest with rsync, but doesn't have to scan the whole drive and they overrode the restriction on hard linking to directories. It's even nice from a command line: you get what looks like a perfect history of your drive, with all the redundant stuff hard linked.
The graphical interface is delegated to applications. The Finder, obviously, does it, but so do a few others, like Mail and Address Book. What you can do is pick a backup date to go back to, and you'll see your folder as it was then, or you can use the search bars to find the most recent copy of a file or contact or email. Wikipedia has a screenshot.
It ought to be feasible for most apps to support: if you've got a typical productivity app, it should be able (and I believe iWorks does this) to render a document as if it were launched on a particular date.
The trash can is fine, but the desktop should go. One thing I liked about Ubuntu Netbook Remix was precisely that: they turned the desktop into an app launcher, rather than a place to save anything. I'd love to shove that interface down the throats of some lusers in the family -- save all their crap on the desktop, I bet you all know people like that. A system without a desktop would force lusers to keep things tidy, hopefully.
Circumcision is child abuse.
How about the "'Oh, f*ck!' receptacle" ? Whenever I find myself looking through the recycle bin, it's usually after thinking something like that.
Just be sure to escape the asterisk if you're deleting files from within it... or whatever they do in Windows.
I sit at my desk and on its surface is a tool. I use this tool and all I get is an empty desktop. To get this result I can dump the computer in the bin.
cb
the video that inspired it
Or "Keepsake Bin" or "Use another day cabinet" or ...
Without making any OS changes, by default things are deleted to the recycle-bin, however, if you hold shift when you delete, it will delete it permanently without moving it to the recycle bin. The dialog box will display a different warning that you are permanently deleting the file (as opposed to the are you sure you want to move this to the recycle bin). This works when selecting delete from a context menu, pressing delete on the keyboard or dragging onto the recycle bin itself (provided shift is held down).
Also, if you right click on your recycle bin and go to properties, you can disable the recycle bin - leaving it on the desktop and also leaving it's drag and drop delete functionality (if the recycle bin is disabled but visible and you drag a file onto it, it will permanently delete the file).
(sorry if someone has already written this, I didn't read all comments)
Seems like you're addressing the symptom, not the disease. Your users are constantly emptying the recycle bin, defeating its purpose in the first place, yet they need you to save them from themselves when the fuck up and delete something important.
Backups would help these folks a lot more than dicking around with their desktop settings. There are plenty of viable approaches here. Enabling shadow copies on their drives would probably be enough as long as they've got disk space to burn (and at least for spinning disks, that's a pretty safe bet these days). Better yet, get them accustomed to using a network share and take care of the gritty details yourself. Heck, Windows 7 has a pretty decent backup tool built in, just slap in a cheap second hard drive and let it handle the rest.
People will be people. Don't try to stop them, you probably can't. Just set up some safety nets and catch them when needed.
A metaphor is when you put one thing in terms of another to create understanding.
The computer recycle bin is a functional container into which files are placed to be recycled later into disk space that can be used again.
Seems to me it's actually a recycle bin, not a metaphor for one.
How about you suggest to the people who have the version of OCD that you are talking about how to set the recycle bin size to 0 and hide it rather than ruining the functionality for the majority of users who do not have the issue. As a Sys admin you need to be aware of the needs of all users and attempt to accommodate everyone; not just the ones with your disorder. Would you consider it reasonable for a blind sys admin to remove all monitors? (I realize that is a more drastic step but it is still accommodating a disability to the determent of those without it).
If you don't want users to retrieve what they delete accidentally, (which pretty much just makes you an asshole a nightly or startup script, or just limiting the size would have been a better option) , find or script something like the old Amiga Black Hole Trashcan Replacement
In my experience, most people don't even realize they need to empty the Recycle Bin, or care to do so. This guy is a douche and I bet no one at his place of work (or anywhere else) likes him.
You are correct that it is pointless to delete things twice. However you are wasting your time and defeating the purpose of the system by emptying your recycle bin.
Unless you are running some ancient relic of a home desktop, storage space should hardly be an issue. When deleting extremely large files they bypass the recycle bin and are directly deleted...so there is no need to pedantically empty it. As you noted, it is a waste of user time to do so.
However I can't tell you how many times I have found occasion to desire something that was previously deleted...perhaps months ago. Sometimes we make stupid decisions. Sometimes when going through and cleaning up files we accidentally delete the newer version and leave the older version. Sometimes when working ona project we make changes that later on don't end up working out so well and we decide we want to roll back to a later date. There are countless unpredictable reasons why we may want to retrieve a previously deleted file.
The correct way to use the recycle bin is to delete things and then forget about them. If you ever need that space, which you won't, you can manually empty it. Until that time, it is a waste of your time to empty it, and will probably come back to bite you someday when you realize it was a providing a function that's actually useful.
I think anyone who swears theyve never needed to recover a deleted file is either full of it or has a bad memory.
Why delete when you can just get a bigger hard drive?
Program Intellivision!
The recycle bin is a perfect metaphor for how it's supposed to be used. You toss stuff in it and periodically empty it. If you realize you've toss something before it gets emptied you can get it back. If you empty it immediately it serves no purpose and if you never empty it, just like a real recycle bin it will overflow and mess up your room. Delete stuff and empty it after a few days to give yourself time to regret your deletions and if you want to bypass it shift + delete will do so.
I'm in skeptical of claims of different levels of fragmentation between file systems. No file system can achieve better performance than by writing files into as few contiguous blocks as it can. As it cannot predict the future, it can only choose the "best" contiguous block of free space to write the next request to, with "best" being determined by any number of heuristics. But no matter which contiguous free block the file system actually chooses, it cannot avoid fragmentation, and with it performance loss, as long as the data simply has to go somewhere on any actual physical surface, no matter if it is rotating, optical and/or magnetic.
10 GB free space on a physical volume. Write 1 file of 1 GB. Contiguous write is fastest, contiguous read is fastest, so write 1 GB contiguous file. Write 1000 files of 1 MB. Again, contiguous operations are fastest, free space should remain as contiguous as possible, so there's 1000 files written adjacent to each other. Write 1x1 GB, then 1000x1MB another 4 times until the disk is full. Delete 1000 of the small 1MB files, but choose them at random. Write another 1 GB contiguous file and watch it get fragmented into 1000 parts. Delete 1 GB file, write 1000 x 1MB files. Rinse, repeat until write and read performance reaches rock bottom.
Unless a file system can predict the future of random deletes and writes, fragmentation will become an issue after a while. Everything else is just a choice on when to actually defragment: on access, when idle, when critical or on demand only.
You can't always get what you want ... you get what you need.
That often means a "misguided admin creating their own policy" if what the user wants appears to cross over an invisible line.
For instance sometime back when an employee asked me to speed up her computer and I did that by removing Bonzi Buddy and a pile of other shit I was setting a new policy because the stuff wasn't technically a virus. The user got incredibly angry that I was removing her purple gorilla and it became clear that most of it was a play for a new faster computer despite it actually being a new and fast machine as good as any desktop in the place (unfortunately in an old case).
People will bring these fights to the upper levels of management for even the most stupid things (I had to reinstall the malware and then endure a pile of abuse from all sides about how the computer was completely unusable - the fucking thing had been sabotaged), so if an admin is pissing you off stop bitching and send it up the tree. They are not your boss.
Some users will completely fuck things up (eg. rogue DHCP server on a network with old switches that can't stop it) if left with no restrictions and other more reasonable people get stuck with relatively draconian rules designed to stop the idiots. Because some fool has stuffed up twice and doesn't understand why you get rules about having to get stuff examined carefully before it goes anywhere near the network. The larger the place to more idiots it gets exposed to over time and the worse the restrictions are. Sadly you get tossed in with the reception staff that don't know how to use the MS Windows start menu and need desktop icons for everything (I've got no idea how this happens but it's depressingly common) and the guys that download malware that pretends to be a DVD ripper.
In Soviet Russia, we keep trashcan, delete user.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
I'd like the toilet as a file discarding metaphor. Once it's in there, you can get it back, but you probably don't want to. And once you flush, it's just gone.
Dude, if you literally can't stop yourself from emptying the recycle bin the instant a file appears in it, the problem's not with the "metaphor". It's with your admitted OCD. And I flat out don't believe that "most people" have the same issue you do.
I think it's highly unlikely that a majority of users immediately empties the recycle bin the minute a file appears in it. That's pure projection on the part of a nutty admin.
Seriously. Where the hell are these people who immediately empty their recycle bins every time they delete a file. That's completely fucking nuts.
Not an admin here (except at home), but I help a lot of people with their computers, and I've NEVER seen this.
Wherein the user first overwrites the file with junk, then deletes the file.
I had a sysadmin years ago who had undelete ability while no one else did, and you couldn't "empty the bin". Once we found that out, we were sort of surprised. A quick batch file overwrote every file with a large mess of garbage, then deleted it.
So now your smart users are punished, and your stupid ones thrive. Unless someone on your staff wants to maybe abuse them sometime, should they be foolish enough to put personal information on the drive "temporarily".
Dude, think about that for a minute. Sure, there are people like that. Is hiding the recycle bin really going to solve your problems with them? If they're too stupid to know not to pour coffee on their machine, or to read and understand a message telling them they can't send more mail until they delete something... I submit that, yeah, they ought to have their machines taken away. Hiding the recycle bin does exactly nothing but piss off competent computer users.
You're going to admit right here in public (on Slashdot, no less) that 1) you don't have enough self control to stop yourself from emptying the recycle bin every few hours and 2) you can't figure out how to move the recycle bin icon from one part of your screen to another?
Dude, your problem is not with the UI. I believe, as the saying goes, that it exists between keyboard and chair.
Well, obviously you have to delete if you're going to delete. You don't need to delete the damn recycle bin icon to avoid needing to confirm a delete, and by itself, deleting the icon wouldn't even solve that problem. And finally, the submitter's solution doesn't relieve the need to empty the bin - it (by freaking design) makes it MORE DIFFICULT to empty the bin. And it's more than "a convenience if you happen to delete a lot of files you meant to keep". It's a damn lifesaver if even once you delete an important file by accident. And the submitter didn't even do away with the bin - he just hid it.
Look, either dropping a file in the recycle bin and forgetting about it, or immediately hard deleting a file are both fine options - nothing wrong with either one in the right situation. What's crazy is wanting to drop a file in the recycle bin, but then not being able to stop yourself from immediately hard-deleting the file, simply because the "empty recycle bin" icon changes to "recycle bin with crumpled paper" icon. What's absolutely round-the-bend loony-tunes is forcing everyone else in the company to lose access to their recycle bin because of your neurosis. Seriously.
I don't even have icons on my desktop....
sorry if this is pretty much a repeat, thread is tl,dr...
Because for one thing, the bin by default limits itself to 10% of the size of the disk, and I'm pretty sure that for larger disks, no matter what percentage you select, there's a hard limit to how much space the bin will take up (automatically deleting things to keep under the max size). And what the hell does RAM have to do with it? Windows is not keeping the contents of the recycle bin in RAM, for heaven's sake.
Doing tech support I have encountered a strange phenomenon many times, people who store important files in the recycle bin.
Yes, that's right, they have a file they can't afford to lose, so they stick it in the recycle bin because it's easy to find on the desktop.
When I explain to them that windows will automatically delete stuff in the recycle bin when it needs more space or someone runs a cleanup tool or a scheduled cleanup, they don't understand it. If I ask them do they put their important paperwork in the wastepaper basket beside their desk they get rather upset and demand to know if I think they're stupid or something. About two thirds of them still don't get it when point out to them that it's the exact same thing to put files in the recycle bin.
Personally, I would not feel bad if the recycle bin were removed, at least then you wouldn't have pretentious morons putting important stuff in it for convenience.
I've seen a lot worse (like the non-techie who deleted every file that he didn't know what it was for, he gutted his O/S completely), but those are other nightmares and nervous twitches.
I only used a recycle bin on a computer UI for one month and that was back in the last century. While I perfectly understand the concept of being able to retrieve inadvertently deleted files I am more comfortable with the gone is gone approach. My collegues keep calling that weird. But if they do I just pull some pr0n from their recycle bins when others are nearby.
On se Internetz nobody noes your German.
My OCD won't allow me to have a Recycle Bin on the Desktop either.. Why is it always full when I just delete one file!? I like the idea of a recycle bin; having the ability to recover accidentally deleted files, but it doesn't happen enough that I need an icon on the desktop. Especially since I can access it another way..
Actually, users are already forced by default settings choosen by the butt-holes at Microsoft.
But i agree that users should be asked.
Its no different than aliasing rm to rm -i. In real unix rm deletes stuff.
If you did this to my computer, I'd punch you. Afterward, I would then show everyone how to get the recycle bin back on their desktop so they can use it like it was intended. I would then find a way to get your ass fired.
The recycle bin is a wonderful simple concept. If I delete a file and find that I actually need it back, I can get it back. No special file recovery tools. If you claim you've never needed to get a file back that you've accidentally deleted, then you're lying.
Firing up the way back machine... I never understood the rationale behind the drag the floppy to the bin to eject it functionality on the old Apple Macs (late 80's, early 90's) - made no sense to me at all, suggested formatting rather than ejecting. Is it the same for CD/DVD, I haven't used Apple for many years?
Go permanent? In your dreams and my worst nightmares.
Instead of catering to their bad behavior use negative reinforcement to teach them better behavior. "If you delete the file and can't recover it then YOU will type the document back in, in addition to your regular tasks"
-- Programming with boost is like building a house with lego. It's a cool but I wouldn't want to live in it
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Why not make the confirmation window for a delete have three buttons:
The latter would skip the Recycle Bin stage and permanently remove the file.
"Someday, sysadmin asked:
- Sensei, do you want new wallpaper for your desktop? I have collection of wallpapers with star sky and moral law.
- Why do you think my current wallpaper is worse? - repsonded In Fu Wo.
- I don't know which wallpaper you have now. I've never saw your desktop. You always have multiple windows open.
- Neither did I seen it, - said a respected In - I'm working."
use a trash can.
I don't want your pithy ramblings showing up when I select File | New in Open Office.
because it's never the baby or child or cat or whatever a sudden jerking movement or possibly a seizure that could cause the accidental deletion of something you really want to keep... too bad there's not a recycle bin that traps all deletes until you can further authorize the deletion while keeping the files out of sight with the ability to fully remove them all at once... oh wait!
i use gnome and i nearly always shift+delete and my fs is encrypted so i cant undelete. maybe /tmp would be a better place as i forget to empty it. however, that would mean if you reboot you lose it. maybe a timer per file ls better.
I don't get the recycle bin thing. In 15 years of having it on win95 and beyond, I've always disabled it. When I want to delete, i want it gone. End of story. If I need it back, I'll go to backup... or reconstruct it manually if I've done something truly stupid... and doing that once or twice will teach you to be careful with the delete key.
To me the second step in deleting should be the regularly scheduled free space wipe.. not a recycle-bin delete.
Huh?
Everything I delete gets shredded, once you click OK there is no going back...
While the only time that happens in real life is when the floors are being cleaned
Netware got it right two decades ago. When files are deleted, they are gone from the file system tree and the file space is returned as free disk space. However, you can open a recovery utility, Salvage, and recover the files if the disk space of the file data hasn't been overwritten.
An improved version could be done with modern OSes and versioning file systems - no more recycle bin metaphor: In the OS you would launch a deleted file recovery utility to view recoverable deleted files. With proper FIFO and under-the-hood defragmentation techniques, the entire free space of a hard drive could be deleted files (and/or older versions). On top of having all the "free space" be recoverable deleted files (but still completely available, i.e. you can still fill up the hard drive and use the file space of deleted files), you could have a control panel applet where you can configure a recycle-bin like "mandatory minimum" for recoverability: you could set the number, size, or age of recoverable files to keep (or set any/all of these criteria), and the drive space of these deleted files wouldn't be returned to the free space pool until the safety criteria for the deleted files expired. This would also be where you configure your deleted file wiping parameters, like deleted files are recoverable for a week, then the disk space and file names are securely wiped to be never recoverable.
Hard Delete...This way you get away from the recycle bin, and you don't use it as a storage container. We should not think about going back to those files. If I'm going to delete something I KNOW I want to delete it.
Just make it a shredder instead with deep over write. no trash at all. That way all files stay were they are unless your sure you want to delete permanently.