Re: Nautilus in FC2 opens too many windows when browsing

From: m.marien (mm)
Date: 10/11/04 

Date: Mon, 11 Oct 2004 13:48:17 -0600

"General Schvantzkoph" <schvantzkoph@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:pan.2004.10.11.17.36.28.922508@yahoo.com...
> On Mon, 11 Oct 2004 16:36:17 +0000, Matt wrote:
>
>> General Schvantzkoph wrote:
>>> On Mon, 11 Oct 2004 11:18:03 +0000, Northpoint wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>On Mon, 11 Oct 2004 10:35:26 +0000, Matt wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>I installed FC2 some weeks ago after using FC1 and RH8 for years. Now
>>>>>I
>>>>>find that Nautilus opens a new window everytime I click on a directory,
>>>>>so by the time I find the file I want, I have a bunch of windows to
>>>>>kill. It used to let me navigate the directories without opening new
>>>>>windows. I have looked through the preferences menus and I don't see
>>>>>how to change it. How do I make it stop opening all these windows?
>>>>
>>>>I have wondered the same thing for awhile. The closest setting I can
>>>>find
>>>>is under "files/close parent windows" but that doesnt do what we want.
>>>>
>>>>I hate having all those windows open also. What a pain.
>>>
>>>
>>> You can fix this by going to gconf and then apps/nautilus and enabling
>>> always_use_browser.
>>
>> Thanks! That works, although there is this troubling warning when I
>> start gconf-editor:
>>
>>> This tool allows you to directly edit your configuration database. This
>>> is not the recommended way of setting desktop preferences. Use this tool
>>> at your own risk.
>>
>> It doesn't suggest an alternative ...
>>
>>> It's hard to believe but some moron thought that
>>> opening a separate window every time you went down a level was somehow a
>>> good thing, they call it spatial browsing. If they had opened a tab
>>> instead that would have been OK, maybe even an improvement, but opening
>>> a
>>> new window is idiotic.
>>
>> Yes, and I would say the stupidest part is that a person has to post to
>> usenet to find an obscure way to change it. I'd never even heard of
>> gconf before ... I don't know why they don't offer a preference in
>> nautilus ...
>
> I hardly ever use Nautilus, I prefer CLI, so I haven't followed it's
> development. But I'm wondering if the maintainer of Nautilus changed after
> 2.4. The original developers were the designers of the original Mac and it
> showed. The Nautilus browser interface was clearly an improvement over
> other desktop managers, it was designed by people who knew what they were
> doing. The spatial browser that was introduced in 2.6 is the work of
> incompetents. Only someone who's only experience with a computer is
> Windows would think that opening a million windows would be a good thing.
> The worst aspect of Internet Explorer (besides the vulnerability to
> viruses and driveby downloads) is that it opens a new window for every web
> page. Linux browsers like Galeon open new pages in tabs which is a much
> cleaner approach. Other common *nix applications like Xemacs also keep
> things clean by opening new files in buffers not new windows. Nautilus
> went in the wrong direction, they should have added tabs not multiple
> windows. They also should have added a history list so that you could jump
> back and forth to recently opened directories. Finally they should have
> added split windows like Emacs so that you could copy from one directory
> to another without having to have multiple messy windows on your screen.
> Instead they went back to a primitive Windoze style interface.
>

I hate to disagree with such a well thought out argument from a CLI guy.
However, I take offense to the "primitive Windoze style interface". The
Windows Explorer, like similar GUI applications, is a capable interface for
managing files - wholly dependent on the *ability* of the user. It has a
single window interface with a directory tree view sidebar pane and list or
contents view pane in "explore" mode in addition to the "open" mode which is
the default single pane multi-windowed contents view interface. IMHO
multi-windowed file managers suggest that the files exist on different
objects where in fact they are all part of a homogenous network of resources
and are best handled with a single window interface in "explore" mode as
described above.

In the "explore" mode you can "drag and drop" or "cut and paste" single or
multiple files and directories from the tree pane to the list pane or any
combination of the methods or views. If you "drag and drop" you can use the
right mouse button to modify the default method between copy, move, link or
cancel. I believe "cancel" is a foreign concept for CLI. "Oh sh--" is the
normal reaction to a mistyped command and the messy recovery. Of course with
the "cut and paste" method the context popup menu has a much richer list of
methods to choose from then the simple "drag and drop" method.

I can appreciate the CLI interface as I still fall back on it for some
operations. However, I don't use it when I need to select multiple files
with unique long filenames. That is better suited to a GUI interface. In
addition, I don't pretend to know everything about the "primitive Windoze
style interface", but I do know it's immensely more popular then the CLI for
some reason.

Finally, when are the other GUI's going to catch up to the Mac and Windows
object oriented interface sometimes called file associations. While it's a
management job to work with files, more people tend to work with documents.
Why hinder them with management responsibilities. "Open with" should be the
override, not the default.