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Spatial Is Not EasierSpatial Is Not EasierPosted May 19, 2004 13:46 UTC (Wed) by Prototerm (guest, #20227)Parent article: The Spatial Way Every time there's a significant upgrade to Gnome, I install it, and try it out with a newly created user account. Usually, I quickly miss a lot of the right-click context menus provided by KDE, and go back to the familiar. The changes to Nautilus, however, are a different kettle of fish. This article mentions that the spacial way of looking at a filesystem is easier, and more natural. I couldn't disagree more. Any filesystem (Linux or Windows) is heirarchical in nature, and IMHO it's more natural to work with it as a heirarchical structure. I find opening directories in a new window to be cluttering and cumbersome, not to mention confusing in itself. I am "drilling down" from a higher to a lower level of the file system, and I expect a file manager to reflect that fact clearly and concisely. I find the flexibility of the "navigator" way of doing things more intuitive than the object-oriented way. The article mentions the potential confusion with open and save dialog boxes using the navigation metaphor, and I think that exposing a user (particularly a new one) to different ways of accessing the file system in this way is a bad idea. A problem not mentioned is that, sooner or later, even a new user must deal with the command line, which doesn't follow the spacial way, either. A common complaint of GUI's is that they shield users from reality. The spacial view, by trying to hide the structure of the file system, hurts more than helps in this respect.
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Spatial Is Not Easier Posted May 19, 2004 15:00 UTC (Wed) by LogicG8 (guest, #11076) [Link] I agree,It's a good thing(tm) for a GUI to follow a physical metaphor (like the "real world" concept of nested folders) to lessen the learning curve. I feel however like it is a rather poor idea to bring along the complications and annoyances of that metaphor. In a computer you are not inhibited by the physical properties of actual objects. In the real world I make a mess of my desktop if want to look at a few different files from a few different folders that were nested in folers themselves. The real world folder system is messy and complicated. Why would I want to translate that mess that is unavoidable because of the physical properties of folders onto my computer desktop which is not encumbered by physical constraints? Oh yes, because it follows the metaphor more completely and makes it easier to learn... Except the Internet and more specifically the world wide web are now facts of life. The spatial metaphor falls rather flat on its face when presented with the mass tangle of pages that is the web. So your users have to learn the browsing metaphor anyway. That is a mistake. If you are concerned with simplicity don't make your users learn multiple metaphors. Have one metaphor and be consistent with it. Apple the undisputed champion of usability dropped the spatial metaphor. What does that tell you? On a rather separate rant:
gconf uses flat text files Posted May 19, 2004 15:30 UTC (Wed) by emk (subscriber, #1128) [Link] Not to rain on anybody's parade, but gconf stores all your preferences in flat text files (at least the last time I looked). And furthermore, it actually has full documentation for most of them, right in the GUI editor. There's a lot of differences between the registry and gconf, and nearly all of them are in gconf's favor.gconf's a little bit arcane, certainly, but many of the criticisms people are raising are factually incorrect. I've used Gnome since about version 0.20, but 2.4 and 2.6 are the first versions I've really liked.
Spatial Is Not Easier Posted May 19, 2004 15:32 UTC (Wed) by Alan_Hicks (subscriber, #20469) [Link] Bingo. You hit the nail on the head. Computers are not the real world. File systems are not a collection of real files. These are abstractions. We create abstractions because they are easier for us to deal with than the real things they represent. Layers of abstraction are created to make things easier, and browser based navigation is a higher layer of abstraction than spatial. Sometimes lower layers are preferred. I still do most of my work on the commandline, but my e-mail is read in a GUI client. I browse the web primarily with a GUI browser. I navigate my filesystem with a browser-like navigator. I simply think the GNOME developers have gotten extremely arrogant. They display a "we know what's best for you" attitude that just sticks in my craw. I'm sorry, but I won't be using GNOME 2.6. The one and only feature they've added which I like, is the new open/save dialogue window. This should be easily worked in xfce, my current linux desktop of choice.
Arrogant GNOME developers? Posted May 19, 2004 16:19 UTC (Wed) by coulamac (subscriber, #21690) [Link] The GNOME developers made a design decision to make spatial nautilus the default mode. Why does that make them arrogant? Browser Nautilus is still readily available by many different means of access-- it's one right-click away, for instance. They left you the choice to browse by another means.The developers of any desktop must make design decisions at some point or another. Sometimes, developers are willing to go against the usual way of doing things and try another way, which they feel has usability advantages. Maybe they're right about the usability advantages. Maybe they're wrong. You, however, are stomping on them for trying to do something out of the ordinary by calling them "arrogant." God forbid anyone try to move out of the Windows browser paradigm for a minute! The bottom line is that the developers who write the code and maintain the code get to make the design decisions. That is the way that all freesoftware works. The Nautilus developers made a daring (maybe inspired, maybe ill-conceived) change to spatial file browsing as the default. Time will tell whether they are right or wrong. You, however, are the one being arrogant to say that your dislike of the *default* mode of browsing reflects the arrogance of the developers who take the time and energy to write and maintain the code.
Arrogant GNOME developers? Posted May 19, 2004 22:01 UTC (Wed) by illtyd (guest, #2124) [Link] The GNOME developers made a design decision to make spatial nautilus the default mode. Why does that make them arrogant? Because they have removed currently existing methods for changing defaults. This is even more applicable to the WM discussions above, but note this from the page referred to in the article It's also interesting to note that newer releases of Nautilus will have this available as an option in the Preferences (Edit -> Preferences) dialog - but currently, your only way is to make an edit within GConf itself. I haven't noticed any refutation of the comment earlier that suggested this option was going back in so quickly because of all the comments.
Arrogant GNOME developers? Posted May 19, 2004 23:14 UTC (Wed) by stephenjudd (guest, #3227) [Link] If a change is going in quickly because of lots of comments, that seems like responsiveness and humility to me.
Arrogant GNOME developers? Posted May 20, 2004 9:34 UTC (Thu) by ekj (subscriber, #1524) [Link] If people implement a change, even after *knowing* that a large part of the users are going to hate the change, would it be too much to ask to leave a button to change it back to the old default somewhere in the preferences-gui ?
Spatial Is Not Easier Posted May 19, 2004 20:22 UTC (Wed) by tjc (guest, #137) [Link] It's a good thing(tm) for a GUI to follow a physical metaphor (like the "real world" concept of nested folders) to lessen the learning curve.Well, I'm not so sure. You learn the metaphor once, but you're stuck with the limitations imposed by the metaphor for as long as you use it. So the longer you use it, the less productive it becomes. From the article: "It sticks to the fact that people associate better with the computer's interface when they know that files and folders seem real..." This statement is not fact, its supposition. Most of UI design is based on what one assumes to be true about user interaction with computers, based on observation. Its the author's opinion, one that he shares with the majority of the current UI development community, which is probably why he feels comfortable stating his opinion as "fact." Safety in numbers, and all that. So your users have to learn the browsing metaphor anyway... If you are concerned with simplicity don't make your users learn multiple metaphors. Have one metaphor and be consistent with it. Excellent point, one worth pondering for a while...
Spatial Is Not Easier Posted May 21, 2004 12:28 UTC (Fri) by Wol (guest, #4433) [Link] And it's pretty well known that "ease" and "power" tend to be opposites. If I actually have to USE my computer for WORK, I want to have power. All these "ease of use" features drive me up the wall by interfering with my attempt to do work!My favourite is when I sign my name in Word - I hit return and next thing I know my name has been changed to an alphabetised list! Cheers,
Spatial Is Not Easier Posted May 19, 2004 16:49 UTC (Wed) by markhb (guest, #1003) [Link] You make a couple of good points. First, when I started using OS/2 3.0, before I had seen Win95, the whole "spatial" windowing confused me. My thinking was, I clicked on this folder here, so why did it open over there? Having the new view take the place of the old view made a lot more sense... the folders are nested, just like matryoshka dolls. People can deal with that.Second, the only other major platform that used a spacial GUI was MacOS n (n < 10), and that had one key distinction from Linux: the user never saw a command line, so they never saw that the folders were actually hierarchical. The illusion of spatial persistence was never broken. Trying to apply a strict spatial metaphor in a CLI-heavy OS like Warp or Linux didn't work in 1994, and I doubt it will be well received by its target audience now.
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