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Why directories are 'broken'Why directories are 'broken'Posted Oct 26, 2010 10:37 UTC (Tue) by epa (subscriber, #39769)In reply to: Shuttleworth: Unity shell will be default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04 (ars technica) by Arker Parent article: Shuttleworth: Unity shell will be default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04 (ars technica)
Watch any nontechnical person using Windows or the Mac. When a file is saved (from the office suite, from a browser download, wherever) they usually have no clue where it went. There is then a hunt through various incomprehensible magic places to find the file when they want to attach it to an email, etc. Either that, or they avoid folders altogether and save everything to the desktop background, that being the only place they can find it.
Arguably, it's not the folders model itself that is broken but rather Microsoft and friends who have broken it by obfuscating the directory hierarchy away from the user and making crappy filepickers in each application rather than a simple, usable file browser that's common to the whole desktop. But in its current state, and for most users, the nested-folders model isn't working well.
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Why directories are 'broken' Posted Oct 26, 2010 16:59 UTC (Tue) by cry_regarder (subscriber, #50545) [Link]
"Arguably, it's not the folders model itself that is broken but rather Microsoft and friends who have broken it by obfuscating the directory hierarchy away from the user and making crappy filepickers in each application rather than a simple, usable file browser that's common to the whole desktop."
Amen!
Why directories are 'broken' Posted Oct 26, 2010 20:25 UTC (Tue) by droundy (subscriber, #4559) [Link]
Alas, inkscape (and probably other programs) breaks things in much the same ways. It ignores its initial working directory, and instead maintains two distinct "working directories" for saving and opening, which are preserved across instances of inkscape and unaffected by the location of the file currently being edited.
Having recently used inkscape a bit, this was *very* frustrating. It'd be lovely if our GUI programs could use the "folder" approach nicely...
Why directories are 'broken' Posted Oct 26, 2010 20:23 UTC (Tue) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
once they figure out that they can have everything go to the desktop, and have folders there, most people start using folders fairly well.
the problem is that the OS/application defaults put the files somewhere else that makes sense to the application developer, but not necessarily anyone else
Why directories are 'broken' Posted Oct 27, 2010 14:33 UTC (Wed) by ibukanov (subscriber, #3942) [Link]
> Watch any nontechnical person using Windows or the Mac.
Yes. I have observed that for almost 15 years. People cannot find a file unless it is on Desktop. This has become worse with recent tendency to use Downloads or similar folder by default to save files.
What is interesting is that many people seems just remember the location of the file on desktop and if the icons is rearranged they have some hard time initially. For those people the button that MS have added in Windows 98 (or something) to show the desktop was a real productivity boost and so was the ability to drag files from the desktop to open them in applications (like mail attachments etc.)
Yet it seems all those modern interfaces do not try to explore that tagging by visual location on the screen.
Why directories are 'broken' in Windows apps Posted Oct 30, 2010 0:37 UTC (Sat) by stevem (subscriber, #1512) [Link]
Absolutely. I can't count the number of times my gf asked me for help to find the document that she just edited by clicking on links in email or IE.
Now she's got a Linux machine and she's much happier.
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