| |||||||||||||
Seigo: Plasma.next()?Seigo: Plasma.next()?Posted Jan 29, 2013 18:59 UTC (Tue) by Tara_Li (subscriber, #26706)In reply to: Seigo: Plasma.next()? by aseigo Parent article: Seigo: Plasma.next()?
> On consumer devices, picking through file hierarchies is a lot more
> painful due to input method limitations. The use cases of such devices is > also fairly different.
I've not found picking through file hierarchies that much more difficult on my Android tablet (WinTec Filemate Identity), in those apps such as CoolReader that expose it. On the other hand, the built-in Gallery app goes through my *ENTIRE* filesystem, and finds all of the cover image thumbnails from my e-books, and presents them as a flat view of folders for each directory that contains an image - but doesn't preserve the fact that those folders were already in folders to group them together.
Frankly, it's asanine, and I hate it.
If people have too damned much trouble understanding folders in folders, then have your app display a file drawer for a folder containing folders, a filing cabinet for a folder containing file drawers (to be cutesy, stack the folders that aren't in subfolders on top of the filing cabinet...), and a file room for containing filing cabinets.
Those kinds of people are not all that likely to be working more than 4 levels deep, anyway.
(I hereby dedicate the idea of icons of file rooms, file cabinets, file drawers, and file folders, used to indicated different levels of containment, to the public domain - or I would, if it weren't so bloody obvious it should legitimately already be in the public domain!)
(Log in to post comments)
Seigo: Plasma.next()? Posted Jan 30, 2013 9:51 UTC (Wed) by aseigo (guest, #18394) [Link]
> presents them as a flat view of folders for each directory
> that contains an image
So, I ended my post by saying "don't judge Active by the limitations of Android/iOS" ... and what do you do? ;)
and yes, i hate these applications, too. they are ridiculously unuseful. we aren't recreating those applications, however, because we think they suck. we want to do better, and i think we are achieving that.
we're not trying to make another Android clone (a failure i see in most other F/OSS mobile products, btw: androidish but with some differences in the home screen gesture navigation .. it's not enough0, we're trying to make a damn good touch interface.
> If people have too damned much trouble understanding folders in folders
people aren't stupid. folders are stupid. they enforce a single sorting mechanism based on a single tagging that must follow a parent->child relationship. single entry hierarchies break down rapidly as content grows in richness or volume.
we're not trying to fix the UI for people's stupidity, we're improving the UI to match the realities of people's content complexity.
i routinely handle huge hierarchies of files (source code trees, e.g.) and find the metadata approach on tablets far quicker and more powerful in that context.
Seigo: Plasma.next()? Posted Jan 30, 2013 14:05 UTC (Wed) by sorpigal (subscriber, #36106) [Link]
> people aren't stupid. folders are stupid. they enforce a single sorting mechanism based on a single tagging that must follow a parent->child relationshi
I'm on board with finding a better way to organize things and I believe that KDE as a project won't take away things just because it's cool, but what is the answer for cases when a user really does want a rigid hierarchy? I have not used KDE4 for a few releases, or the Active stuff at all, but it seems to me that there isn't a known solution to the problem that will satisfy the people who want hierarchies and the people who would find life easier without rigid parent->child restrictions (especially since sometimes these are the same people).
Are you hoping that a purely non-hierarchical system won't be as unpleasant as people seem to fear or do you know of a solution that is known to satisfy both cases?
|
|||||||||||||