The Nautilus spatial interface

Posted Apr 1, 2004 14:30 UTC (Thu) by wookey (subscriber, #5501) [Link]

Fair enough, but this choice (new dir/page in new window, new dir/page in same window) has been around for a long time, and there are strong preferences in both directions. Many apps give you a choice, especialy web browsers, mail clients and file managers. It is a choice you really need to make wholesale or not at all, and you need to have a window manager and app-selector that works well with the idea (e.g. an icon bar/taskbar that shows every window, as opposed to every app, doesn't work well with it at all).

My users here all insist on the 'new window' scheme, for example, because they all come from RISC OS, where everything has always worked that way. They find it intensely irritating to have the last directory 'go away' when opening a new one, because they expect to be able to drag and drop between them. Joe likes doing it the way he is used to, which is fine - it's nice that we get a choice. Which the default should be is always going to be contentious, and everyone is free to choose, but I too felt that the article came across as 'I don't like this so it must be wrong', which is not really taking a sufficiently balanced view.

Posted Apr 1, 2004 15:26 UTC (Thu) by movement (guest, #871) [Link]

Your implication that they haven't considered the effect on users is patently ridiculous. Everyone who knows a little about UI design is aware that guidelines and research results are an input to the design process, not an output.

The change, I think is a positive one, for a number of reasons. First, remember that the previous in-place method had problems: it was non-obvious how to easily drag and drop stuff between places; it took longer to identify the folder a window is showing (it's a lot easier to identify something if its general shape is different); such a scheme is still not very usable for navigating large hierarchies.

Studies have shown that the target user market do not cope well with deep, complex hierarchies anyway. The new scheme has some obvious advantages for shallow hierarchies: "ah, my spreadsheets folder is here, just where I left it". Bear in mind the eventual impact of the Storage project, too.

The minority of users that can handle complex hierarchies with ease still have an easily available switch to use.

Posted Apr 5, 2004 3:39 UTC (Mon) by stephenjudd (subscriber, #3227) [Link]

Exactly. In the original Mac OS Finder implementation, holding down the option key would close the parent window, and I too had exactly the same habits you're developing.

Once you are used to using the GUI for file manipulation (copy|move) the spatial finder becomes invaluable for dragging and dropping.

If all you use the file manager for is inspecting directory contents, I can see how you would find this behaviour annoying. Once you use it to truly manage files, it becomes helpful.

Posted Apr 9, 2004 22:25 UTC (Fri) by anon (guest, #20786) [Link]

Actually, moving to "new window for every directory" is a step back towards the original Mac Finder, and away from modern browsers. It's more like moving the accelerator pedal back up as a handle instead.

This is an opinion, not a fact. Also, a file manager is not a browser.

I personally think the Mac got the file management aspect correct, and "progress" since then has been towards harder-to-use gui's. People are better at quickly picking things out based on location, color, size, than by a complex file name.

However, if you're used to one or the other, it will be easier to use the one you're used to.

I think that having both browser and file manager interfaces on Nautilus is a good design decision.