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GNOME GUI Graphics Software

The State Of The GTK+ File Selector 701

Posted by timothy from the niggly-details dept.
Anonymous BillyGoat writes "The next stable release of GTK+ (from the 2.4x series) will have a new file selector, and of recent, a lot of activity has been going on around that. One of the GNOME artmasters, Tigert, has released a mockup of the new file selector and the GTK developers are busy working towards that. Meanwhile the people from OSNews have some other ideas, while an OSNews reader has made even better mockups."
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The State Of The GTK+ File Selector More

The State Of The GTK+ File Selector

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  • I really liked the original version better (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 07, 2004 @12:46AM (#7900394)
    here [cottonwoodsw.com]

    (first post)

    • Re:I really liked the original version better (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 07, 2004 @12:52AM (#7900440)
      At least it was standard across the majority of Windows 3.1 applications, instead of 1/2 of the GNOME/KDE applications.

    • Re:I really liked the original version better (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ethx1 ( 532391 ) on Wednesday January 07, 2004 @12:53AM (#7900444)
      I think it is funny how a lot of Linux programmers really depise Microsoft and its products yet we keep seen all these gui "improvements" that borrow from Windows. The mockup by tigert with the commmonly used folders on the left pane is from is from XP (maybe 2000). I am not a Bill Gates fanboy or anything, just something that I noticed.
      • Uh except that MS got it from Mac!
    • Right. It doesn't matter who stole it first. It's still about two years behind the rest of the world. Sheesh.

      I have a love/hate (mostly hate) relationship with M$ too, but at the same time I can't help but note that people getting jazzed about a common file selection dialog box really puts Linux in perspective regarding its viability as a desktop productivty OS.

      • Re:I really liked the original version better (Score:4, Informative)

        by be-fan ( 61476 ) on Wednesday January 07, 2004 @01:31AM (#7900677)
        Hey, its just the GTK+ people that are living in the stone age!

        Seriously, though, the file dialog is hardly representative. It was just an oddity in GTK+ that just got put off way longer than it should have. Other parts of the desktop are not like that, and in a lot of respects, they are ahead of Mac/Windows. For example, I can access remote servers transparently, right from the file dialog in KDE. Very handy when you live in a networked environment like a university.

      • Re:I really liked the original version better (Score:4, Insightful)

        by haystor ( 102186 ) on Wednesday January 07, 2004 @01:51AM (#7900782)
        To be fair, MS is playing catch-up in a lot of areas too. Ever try following a shortcut to a directory in a dialog box? This only recently worked the way you expect it instead of just selecting the shortcut file itself. A subtle difference but one that trained me never to bury directories too deep on windows because I may have to work to get to them.

        Multiple desktops anyone? I don't know who's responsible for this but it sure as hell isn't MS.

        There are quite a few cool things that have come from open source, but you generally have to be the kind of person that can try *and* use options.

        Being happy about a decent file selector for GTK is similar to being happy that an MS operating system can finally muster something similar to kill -9...oh wait, we're not there yet. It's still stuck in the mentality that "End Task" merely requests the task to shut itself down. The Kernel Power Toys from MS don't do the trick either.

        MS is trialing in development in a lot of areas. It's just that after they finally steal something it's considered standard and nobody notices it.
        • I just discovered this the other day...

          The registry key
          HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\WaitToKillAppTimeout
          (And if it isn't that one, just search the registry for 'WaitToKillAppTimeout')

          is defaulted at I think 5000ms. Changing this to 0 gives you back that "shot to the head" effect.

          Also, others have mentioned the desire for lsof or other such things...

          go checkout SysInternals [sysinternals.com]. They have tons of freeware monitor file handles , processes, threades, memory, DLL Accesses, port accesses, disk accesse

    • Re:I really liked the original version better (Score:5, Informative)

      by eswierk ( 34642 ) on Wednesday January 07, 2004 @01:39AM (#7900724)
      This is the true original version [apple.com].

  • I need to ask (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Xpilot ( 117961 ) on Wednesday January 07, 2004 @12:49AM (#7900411) Homepage
    Why is it everyone gets the hang-ups over a freakin' FILE SELECTOR? GNOME critics will always say "GNOME is the worst DE in the universe! It sucks! Why? Because... it has...uh... a lousy...FILESELECTOR! Yeah, thay's it".

    Now that the fileselector is improved, what will you bitch about now?

    • Re:I need to ask (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Now that the fileselector is improved, what will you bitch about now?

      the stinky foot

    • Re:I need to ask (Score:5, Funny)

      by thebatlab ( 468898 ) on Wednesday January 07, 2004 @01:03AM (#7900522)
      Maybe people get hung up on it b/c file selection is used all the time and the old one was an eyesore. Sorry, it was. This one is much improved though it still has a 1980's feel to it.

      >> Now that the fileselector is improved, what
      >> will you bitch about now?

      Well, since bitching about it has gotten it improved a bit, maybe people will still bitch about it and get it improved more. If nobody said anything it would have stayed as it was.

      Reminds me of an old joke:

      A new couple just had their first child, a baby boy, and were extremely excited to go through all the parenting ordeals. Diaper changes, late night feedings aside, these things would lead to wonderful moments like the first time he crawled. The first time he walked. The first time he spoke. The days went on and as the baby aged he went through all the usual stages of baby-hood. He crawled like no other and once he started walking it was all they could do to keep up with him. A year passed and he hadn't said a word. The parents asked the doctor and he said it was normal for some children not to begin speaking until they were 1 1/2 and possibly 2. The terrible 2's hit with not even a whimper. The doctor continued to reassure them that there was nothing wrong with their child but they grew worried. The years rolled on and still not a peep. Then on his sixth birthday he looked down at his chocolate cake and said "I don't like chocolate cake. I prefer vanilla". The parents were flabbergasted. "Why haven't you spoken before?!?!", they asked. "Everything was fine up until now", he replied.

    • Re:I need to ask (Score:5, Informative)

      by be-fan ( 61476 ) on Wednesday January 07, 2004 @01:18AM (#7900619)
      - GTK's poor resize performance compared to Qt.
      - GTK's poor expose handling compared to Qt.
      - For practical purposes, lack of component technology. Bonobo is there, but almost no apps use it. Meanwhile, tons of KDE apps use KParts.
      - For practical purposes, lack of a network-transparent filesystem. gnome-vfs is there, but not many apps use it, and its not supported through the standard file dialog. Meanwhile, every KDE app uses KIO.
      - Nothing comparable to DCOP (until D-BUS comes out).
      - Lower-level UI framework, compared to KDE's higher-level framework. GNOME's button Ok/Cancel button order is dictated by the HIG, while in KDE, its dictated by the framework, and would take a single line of code in kdelibs to change for all KDE apps.
      - Lack of UI integration at the technology level. KDE apps use XML-GUI to define their layout. GUI layout can be change without touching a single line of code. KDE apps support customizable toolbars at the framework level, so all apps get it for free. The HIG is great, and GNOME's UI is very polished compared to KDE, but it would be nice if GNOME did like KDE and enforced a lot of those things in the code framework level.

      Let's look at some of the upcoming GTK+ 2.4's [gtk.org] features that Qt/KDE already has.

      File selector (#29087)
      ------
      KDE has it.

      Combo widget (#50554)
      ------
      Qt has it.

      New action-based menu API (#55393)
      -------
      KDE has it. [kde.org]

      Toolbar improvements (#55393)
      --------
      If you click on the feature request number and look at the proposed features, you'll see that Qt/KDE has a lot of these already, like customizable toolbars.

      Autocompletion and history for GtkEntry (#69613)
      --------
      KDE already has this. [kde.org]

      XCursor support for GDK. (#69436)
      ---------
      Yep, this too. [trolltech.com] And they even mention Qt right in the first post of the feature-request thread, how nice!

      • Re:I need to ask (Score:3, Offtopic)

        by abigor ( 540274 )
        Very, very nice work. But the obvious technical merits of KDE aren't enough to convince those who feel irrational and emotional about two things: Qt's "corporate" status, and a visceral hatred for C++. I can't figure either of these things out. If you want to write GPL'd code with Qt, go ahead. If you want to develop commercial software, buy a license (a miniscule cost for any software shop). It's pretty simple. And the weird conspiracy theories about Trolltech and SCO are just laughable.

        The C vs. C++ thin

        • Re:I need to ask (Score:3, Interesting)

          by joib ( 70841 )
          Ah, the eternal C vs. C++ flamewar. I've been somewhat of a C++ fan, actually learning C++ before C when I started learning about programming a long time ago. But lately I've been gravitating towards C, primarily because of its simplicity. Rob Pike (one of the creators of Plan 9) summarized C++ quite well with "it's a very difficult, tricky, special-case-ridden language that takes taste and experience to use well.". E.g. take a look at gotw.ca (Herb Sutters website) for a large bunch of situations where C++

        • Re:I need to ask (Score:5, Insightful)

          by 0x0d0a ( 568518 ) on Wednesday January 07, 2004 @04:22AM (#7901371) Journal
          As it happens, I like to GPL my code.

          However, I'm not married to the GPL. There are some things that I want to be able to put in the public domain or BSD license, and some that should be LGPL. Furthermore, there are people (very prominent open source folks) who do not like using the GPL and do not use it.

          TrollTech's licensing scheme does not allow that.

          For a random minor library, this would not produce much of a stir. However, TrollTech is trying to maintain license control over what it tried to push as the standard widget set for Unix. To me, this is the next closest thing to trying to use libc as a lever (since this is fundamental for any standard GUI app). We already went through far too much pain with Motif to want to do it all over again. It just isn't worth hassling with.

          Furthermore, TrollTech no longer produces a GPLed Windows Qt version. You want to make cross-platform software (which is free using GTK+ or Swing or whathaveyou), you need to purchase a license. Again, many folks don't care, but some do.

          A lot of folks take a moralistic stance -- "look, TrollTech has a right to make money *somehow*. What do you propose they do, just give everything away?" I simply can't accept one organization being able to use such a fundamental thing as the standard widget set on a platform as a club. If that means that we can't have a corporate-provided widget set and need to use a volunteer-produced (actually, a number of companies fund GTK+ development, so this isn't entirely true), then so be it. It's been done many times on Linux, and can be done with a widget set as well.

          The sad thing is that many folks that intensely dislike Qt have no problem with KDE. KDE gets a lot of crap that really derives from the choice of Qt as a widget set. However, if you use KDE, you're stuck with Qt, so there isn't much choice.

          The C vs. C++ thing is also tough. I suspect a lot of people feel some sort of strange allegiance to the "traditional" Unix way, and believe C solves all problems equally well as C++ because hey, that's what Unix (and Linux, and so forth) uses. This just isn't true, of course, especially when it comes to reusability.

          At one point, I would have agreed with you. However, with C++, I simply have not seen the code reuse benefits. The C++ code reuse model (and to some extent, OO in general) requires a huge amount of work, essentially doing a complete and highly detailed design before beginning any coding. If, at some point, you realize that you've made a small error and need some additional data, your changes may need to be vast and far-reaching. This was a popular design style ten years ago, but currently trendy stuff, like extreme programming involves more iteration.

          Secondly, the STL is not a convincing argument with Qt, because Qt does not make any effective use of the STL, unlike, for instance, gtkmm.

          Finally, while C *is* a specialized language not designed for general application development, that does not mean that C++ is particularly better. I agree that C has a number of flaws as an application language, but C++ does not fix the significant problems.

        • Re:I need to ask (Score:5, Insightful)

          by IamTheRealMike ( 537420 ) * on Wednesday January 07, 2004 @06:15AM (#7901669)
          Very, very nice work. But the obvious technical merits of KDE aren't enough to convince those who feel irrational and emotional about two things: Qt's "corporate" status, and a visceral hatred for C++.

          What, so the reason people don't use Qt is because they are irrational and emotional? Let me remind you that C++ users can always use GTKmm which is arguably more "C++" than Qt will ever be.

          Let me explain to you why the autopackage project has a very nice GTK2 based front end, and no KDE or Qt frontend. NB: plenty of people have offered to work on one, including core KDE hackers. We never saw any code. Make of that what you will.

          We chose to use GTK from C because:

          - C is a simple language that both me and Hongli (the other principle author of it) knew well. I've done plenty of OO programming in Delphi and Java before but only a little C++. The greater featureset of C++, in this case simply wasn't worth the hassle of ensuring we both knew it well, and weren't churning out constructs that the other couldn't understand.

          It also increased dramatically the number of people that could work on it. Surprising though it may be, not everybody (especially in the unix world) knows C++.

          - C has a stable ABI. For a program that is supposed to work anywhere without recompilation this is a big deal. That won't be an issue in a few years when gcc 2.95 is but a distant memory, but at the moment it is.

          - It required no bindings. You can, of course, use C++ with GTK by using the rather spiffy GTKmm which gives you STL and a C++ish API so that other than a few minor oddies you'd never know the underlying toolkit was written in C, but this is an extra dependency, the cost of which was simply not worth it.

          I look at the Gnome source code and shudder. It just reminds me so much of writing GUI code for Windows 3.1 and 95 (yes, I've done that).

          If you're going to compare modern GTK to Win32 then all I can say is that you either haven't actually done any GTK programming or you haven't done any Win32 programming. I've done plenty of both and I can tell you that GTK is about a million light years away from Win32. The API is sane, consistant, and the toolkit is a powerful one.

          Now let me tell you what I don't get.

          I see people bitching (mostly ignorantly) about GTK, Gnome, C, whatever and praising the shining pearls of light that is KDE and Qt, yet the fact is that GTK is way more popular.

          No, really, it is. I have no Qt or KDE apps on my desktop at any point these days. That's not because I don't like Qt or KDE - I do - but the fact is that I don't choose apps based on what toolkit they use but on merit. I use Firebird (XUL), emacs CVS (a mixture of raw Xlib and gtk2 these days), irssi (ncurses), Pan (raw GTK) and so on.

          Yet, I once read a KDE developer claim that Yes! It's true! He had spent a whole month without glib installed on his system - he wanted to prove it was possible to do it, and well done he did. But if people have to do macho time trials to prove they can do without something - isn't this a hint?

          I could be cynical and say that GTK is more popular because the people using it are busy getting shit done in whatever language lets them work most effectively (c, python, c++, whatever) instead of trolling about the superiority of Qt and C++ on Slashdot, but I won't. I'll let readers make up their own minds. I use what works for me.

  • Looks a lot like the Mac OS X file selector (Score:5, Insightful)

    by putaro ( 235078 ) on Wednesday January 07, 2004 @12:49AM (#7900414) Journal
    Only not quite as functional. The pathname entry is good, but it looks like it doesn't have the quick drill down. If you're going to copy, why not copy the good parts?
    • But I would suspect that most ppl will see in it what they want, or not want, to see.
    • I don't think it looks like either the Mac OS X Cocoa or Carbon API file selector.

      The Cocoa file selector effectively shows a spreadsheet of all the files in all parent folders of the current one. Fast to navigate but IMHO bewildering for a novice user. Also, the favorites are in a pop-up menu that you can't drag folders to.

      The Carbon file selector is based on the classic Max OS navigation service; essentially it shows a dialog with a mini-Finder (i.e. file manager). I liked this method; opening a file

  • I know these folks are working hard... (Score:4, Troll)

    by Osrin ( 599427 ) on Wednesday January 07, 2004 @12:50AM (#7900419) Homepage
    ... and I don't want to be rude.

    Neither of them are particularly inspiring though, I thought the community was hoping to steal the hearts and minds of the consumer in 2004.

    This is not meant as a troll, although I know it will be read as such by some.
    • Neither of them are particularly inspiring though, I thought the community was hoping to steal the hearts and minds of the consumer in 2004.

      I think you're right. We are trying too hard to copy what has already come before. No matter how good we do it, we are still copying.

      So, with my years of experience at interface and graphic design, I've spent the last couple hours trying to come up with a file selector that tries to be, as you said, inspiring.

      What do you think?
      http://mshiltonj.com/new_stuff/file_selector.html [mshiltonj.com]

  • Ummmm, Who Is Eugenia? (Score:5, Funny)

    by nuintari ( 47926 ) on Wednesday January 07, 2004 @12:51AM (#7900425) Homepage
    Maybe I should read into this more, but who is Eugenia, and what does sending him/her love have to do with saving my files?

    • Re:Ummmm, Who Is Eugenia? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      here you go [ifrance.com]

    • Re:Ummmm, Who Is Eugenia? (Score:4, Informative)

      by jared_hanson ( 514797 ) on Wednesday January 07, 2004 @01:04AM (#7900530) Homepage Journal
      what does sending him/her love have to do with saving my files?

      Well, in the case of her if you don't know, then you and your parents missed a very important conversation.

      In the case of him it probably doesn't have a whole lot to do with it, even if evidence presented in Jurassic Park is to the contrary.

      In all seriousness, I believe it is referring to the maintaner of OSNews [osnews.com]. I believe it is a she, and they post quite a few UI mockups on their site, and some constructive discussion usually follows.
      • yeah, I noticed the name attached to the story after I posted this, and seriously started looking for an answer to my "wtf?" Not being an OSnews reader, I had no idea.

        And seriously, my parents and I missed all those very important conversations.
      • More information.

        Here is a link to her personal website [eugenia.co.uk].

        And now a quote from her site:
        My favorite places on this planet is my parent's village in Greece, called Skiadas (think bald mountains and lots of goats)

        I don't know about you, but this immediately conjured up images of certain Slashdot links. I can most definately say that said link is not my most favorite place on this planet.

    • Re:Ummmm, Who Is Eugenia? (Score:5, Informative)

      by }{avoc ( 90632 ) on Wednesday January 07, 2004 @02:42AM (#7900997)

      The love-sending widget will not be present in the final release of the new file selector, and is included in mockups to demonstrate how developers can add in special-purpose widgets into the window. For example, The GIMP may insert a quality slider in that place for saving JPEG images.

      Early mockups used the phrase " Frobnicate the file [ximian.com] ," which was changed to " Lart whoever asks about this button [ximian.com] " after countless questions as to the use of frobnicating files.

      These screenshots are linked from Federico Mena-Quintero's Activity Log [ximian.com], which is really rather fun to read. You may also be interested in Planet Gnome [gnome.org], which aggregates the weblogs of many interesting Gnome and Open Source personalities.

  • One possible feature I'd like to see (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Limburgher ( 523006 ) on Wednesday January 07, 2004 @12:52AM (#7900434) Homepage Journal
    Will the shortcuts on the left side (home, etc) be configurable? That would be one way to beat the crap out of Windows once again. On my one Windows box, I never put anything in My Documents, I keep it all elsewhere, ona FAT32 partition for dual-booting use. I'd LOVE configurable shortcuts.
    • Will the shortcuts on the left side (home, etc) be configurable? That would be one way to beat the crap out of Windows once again.

      The shortcuts on the left side in the windows file selector are configurable.

    • Re:One possible feature I'd like to see (Score:5, Informative)

      by ultrapenguin ( 2643 ) on Wednesday January 07, 2004 @01:02AM (#7900508)
      Left-side shortcuts on common file open/save dialog boxes can be easily configurable by using
      a) group policy editor
      b) tweakui from microsoft.
      (both of these assume you are running Windows2000/XP/2003)

      In either cases, you have a choice of setting the shortcut to a namespace clsid (my computer, my docs, etc) or to a full pathname to anywhere you want.

      For example, my file/open dialog on my windows machine has desktop,mycomputer,2 direct links to company file shares, and a path link to a temp directory on my machine.

      But, of course, you couldn't be bothered to know this, since its easier to just complain.

    • Re:One possible feature I'd like to see (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ron_ivi ( 607351 ) <sdotno@@@cheapcomplexdevices...com> on Wednesday January 07, 2004 @01:08AM (#7900560)
      Agreed. It's the features more than the look that matters to me.

      I'd like:

      • to be able to type "../../whatever.txt" in the "filename" textarea and have it work reasonable,
      • the complete path to be a gui-widget that I can copy&paste from
      • to be able to type D*31.GIF and have it work reasonably (glob like a shell)
      • by extention, have "/u*/l*/b*/mozilla" typed into the text area find /usr/local/bin/mozilla if that's the only match.
      Typing is so much easier than mousing sometimes, I'd really really like to have those wildcards work.

    • Great, install KDE. (Score:3, Informative)

      by Inoshiro ( 71693 )
      I've said it before, and I'll say it again, the KDE v3 file selector is the best one I've ever used simply because the shortcuts on the left hand side are easy to use and customize (just give 'em a context click, and you can change the name, location, icon, etc).

      And then you add in cool features like the kio_slave support (so that the location can be a WebDav dir for DnD file publishing, etc), and the fact that the custom locations can be made app specific (wow, my digital camera knows about my image dir,
    • The My Documents folder on the windows desktop is configurable. I have it pointing at a Maped Network drive which is one of my linux machines serving SMB shares.

  • Nice Mockup (Score:3, Interesting)

    by nervlord1 ( 529523 ) on Wednesday January 07, 2004 @12:52AM (#7900437) Homepage
    I love osnews little version, with all the directories in the path displayed at the top, the idea being you could click on them to go back to that directory.
    Example:
    user clicks root, stuff, music
    (root, stuff, music, / appears at the top)

    user decides he needs to go back to root, clicks root
    (top now says: /, root)

    It could really work, and be really useful.

    Keep at it gnome boys!

    • Re:Nice Mockup (Score:3, Interesting)

      by timotten ( 5411 )
      I love osnews little version, with all the directories in the path displayed at the top, the idea being you could click on them to go back to that directory.

      I like it, too: going up a couple of directories only requires one short click. Using a combo box either requires two clicks or a dragging motion.

      The problem is that it will suck for really deep directory trees. (Getting to the root will require clicking the arrow button several times.) I would like a compromise where the first button pops up a list

  • Gnome is lookin' good! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by rm -rf $HOME ( 738703 ) on Wednesday January 07, 2004 @12:52AM (#7900439)
    I've stayed far away from the KDE/Gnome debate for the past couple years, choosing instead to stick with simple, stripped-down window managers like fluxbox [sourceforge.net] and FVWM [fvwm.org].

    But a buddy was showing me some of his favorite GTK themes on his Gnome desktop, and I have to admit that I was impressed. Unfortunately, when I checked to see how many packages I'd have to install for Gnome, there were over 30 -- Mozilla was one of the dependencies!

    So, can any /.ers recommend a... svelt window manager that supports some of this wonderful eye candy?

    • Re: Gnome is lookin' good! (Score:5, Informative)

      by Black Parrot ( 19622 ) on Wednesday January 07, 2004 @01:11AM (#7900581)


      > But a buddy was showing me some of his favorite GTK themes on his Gnome desktop, and I have to admit that I was impressed. Unfortunately, when I checked to see how many packages I'd have to install for Gnome, there were over 30 -- Mozilla was one of the dependencies!

      > So, can any /.ers recommend a... svelt window manager that supports some of this wonderful eye candy?

      The eyecandy comes from different places. Applications that use the GTK+ widgets will render with your choice of GTK+ theme, regardles of what window manager you use. The window manager eyecandy will only effect the "decorations" around the windows, though some of them will allow nice customizations for that. The panel and panel applets are provided by GNOME itself.

      I use GNOME, but mostly for the panel these days; most of my favorite applications have been cast aside by current GNOME management. However, by using GARNOME [gnome.org] I can comment out the builds for crap that I don't want, and almost trivially add back in a cast-aside GTK+ application that I do want.

      I use the Sawfish window manager (another cast-aside), customized to look like the old ShinyFusion theme I used to use under Enlightenment, with many virtual desktops to organize my work (I typically stay logged in for six months at a time), and with lots of nifty buttons in the "decorations" to allow things like maximize-vertically, maximize-horizontally, maximize-both, etc.

      BTW, you can window shop for eyecandy at themes.org [freshmeat.net]. It is organized according to what component supports a theme (window manager, toolkit, etc.).

  • Tab completion? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 07, 2004 @12:54AM (#7900451)
    One thing I really like about the current file selector is that I can start typing a name and press tab, and it will show only entries starting with what I typed. It even supports wildcards. Does anyone know if that will still be there? As long as I have that, I really don't care what it looks like - I'll still be able to find stuff efficiently.

    • Re:Tab completion? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by caseih ( 160668 )
      Exactly. Having tab completion has become essential for me. I can drill down to a file or folder far faster with tab completion than any other scheme (although ms's dropdown completions aren't bad). The OS X file selector certainly is simple and usable and hard to mess up, but it's significantly slower to use than the current gtk file dialog box. The fun thing is that tab-completion currently allows the current gtk dialog box to have the equivalent of simple bookmarks (~ tab to go home), and filters (

  • It's about time!! (Score:5, Funny)

    by MongooseCN ( 139203 ) on Wednesday January 07, 2004 @12:54AM (#7900453) Homepage
    It looks like sending love to Eugenia is on by default in the file selector. I always hated having to goto a bash shell after opening a file and doing an "echo love > /home/eugenia/warm_fuzzies".

  • shell prompt (Score:5, Funny)

    by brer_rabbit ( 195413 ) on Wednesday January 07, 2004 @12:56AM (#7900462) Journal
    I still don't see how this is going to help my shell prompt.

    • Re:shell prompt (Score:3, Insightful)

      by tigert ( 8580 )
      It wont :)

      But there are a lot of people who need it. I use terminals myself too for tasks that make sense - compiling stuff (other peoples code mostly :) and for IRC (never got used to xchat and such).

      But for non-text stuff like using the Gimp, editing and finding photos etc, there really needs to be a good file selector, it's about fricken time and I'm excited to see it happen now. It needs to have good keyboard shortcuts too, so one can use it without the mouse, like when saving a document from a text e
  • I think this is a little improvement, but if they had an option to change the panel of the "favorites" I would see it as a bigger step toward an integrated desktop.

  • innovate damnit. (Score:2, Flamebait)

    by Suppafly ( 179830 )
    It's a shame all of them just look like bad ripoff's of what windows has had for a while. And the one designed by Eugenia at osnews is just retarded. File selectors should be longer horizontally since file names can be long. Having something that is taller than it is long is just dumb, there just isn't a polite way to say it.

    • Re:innovate damnit. (Score:3, Insightful)

      by timotten ( 5411 )
      File selectors should be longer horizontally since file names can be long. Having something that is taller than it is long is just dumb, there just isn't a polite way to say it.

      The file list widget -- but not necessarily the file selector dialog -- should be long horizontally, and all the mockups are better than the current layout (a narrow widget for directories to the left of a narrow widget for files). Eugenia's file list widget is actually wider and contains more information than tigert's. In fact, i
  • Why not an address bar that you can type into for faster directory navigation? I think they should just steal the design of the kde file selector.
  • Is this some kind of special File Selector? Why is such a big deal being made about it?

  • too complex (Score:5, Interesting)

    by POds ( 241854 ) on Wednesday January 07, 2004 @01:04AM (#7900536) Homepage Journal
    The problem with those mockups is that they seem specificaly tailord to GNOME. Ie it uses icons for HOME, Desktop, Most recent files etc but all of these are classic things that are integrated within gnome and no use to someone that uses blackbox or other light window managers as they're primary window manager.

    Why cant we just get rid of the icons and by doing so cut down the size of the selector and simplly have a listbox of pre-defined locations to save files?

    Also it would be good if that list could be changed by editing a configuration file, maybe an XML file?

    KISS

    • Re:too complex (Score:3, Informative)

      by RdsArts ( 667685 )
      Nothing says "KISS" like a XML file to configure the **** out'a the file selector.

      If you want to see real KISS, check out ROX-Desktop. A DnD item with a filename under it, save by dragging it to your filer. Open by draggin the file from the filer to the app. A file manager manages the files, so you don't have a dialog trying to cram all it's functionality into it.

    • Re:too complex (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Coryoth ( 254751 )
      The problem with those mockups is that they seem specificaly tailord to GNOME. Ie it uses icons for HOME, Desktop, Most recent files etc but all of these are classic things that are integrated within gnome and no use to someone that uses blackbox or other light window managers as they're primary window manager.

      Ideally all of those icons are completely configureable (and easily). If that is the case, then you simply set whichever icons you want to use instead of the stock GNOME ones. There were always g
  • This evening, I did one thing that gives me much joy - writing and submitting invoices.

    I write them using a stupid-simply web app thingy I hacked together long ago, which generates PDFs which I then attach via e-mail to the clients.

    KDE has an awesome file selector - as I go down the list of PDF files, and choose one, a preview window shows the PDF scaled, right there in the selection window.

    That makes it SO EASY to make sure I have the right invoice for the right client!

    The preview window in KDE previe
    • You can add previewing to this new GNOME file selector. The 'Send love to Eugenia' part in the screenshot from TigerT is just there so be an example of where/how to extend it. So a PDF viewing applications could extend the fileselector to include a preview window for instance.

    • Re:KDE's file selector (Score:3, Informative)

      by 0x0d0a ( 568518 )
      KDE has an awesome file selector - as I go down the list of PDF files, and choose one, a preview window shows the PDF scaled, right there in the selection windo

      You're confusing GNOME and GTK+.

      The discussion is about the GTK+ file selector, which is analogous to the Qt, rather than the KDE file selector.

  • Web/file browser (Score:2, Interesting)

    by gnu-sucks ( 561404 )
    I think the next 'evolution' for linux desktop would be the merger of browsers for local and network data.

    Yes, this is like windows. But linux could do it so much better.

    A truely cohesive network workstation should be able to save or open any document to or from anywhere. Appletalk shares, WebDAV, HTTP POST, FTP, rsync, etc.

    So a next-generation save/open box should include comprehensive network protocol support.

    Of course, any mounted file system (networked or otherwise) can easily be saved to with all c

    • Re:Web/file browser (Score:2, Informative)

      by RdsArts ( 667685 )
      Why not AVFS [inf.bme.hu]?

      Don't make things browse to network shares. Make networked things look like file systems to the tools available. Same idea, only with less recoding, and as such a smaller point-of-break. :)

    • I can't agree (Score:5, Insightful)

      by 0x0d0a ( 568518 ) on Wednesday January 07, 2004 @01:26AM (#7900651) Journal
      So a next-generation save/open box should include comprehensive network protocol support.

      With all due respect, I think that this is a really, really awful idea. Unfortunately, Microsoft has traditionally taken this approach (for political, not engineering reasons). The KDE project, which takes a very Windows-like approach to a number of architecture decisions, copied their approach, and GNOME has come uncomfortably close.

      The reason why I'm not a fan of implementing network transparency at the KIOSlave or GNOME-VFS or whatnot layers is that this sort of functionality is *not* KDE or GNOME or whathaveyou specific. It just isn't part of the desktop environment. It should be implemented at a lower level, so that *all* programs running on the machine can take advantage of the functionality. There are a couple of projects that do this -- take a look at LUFS [sourceforge.net] for a proper (IMHO, of course) implementation of what you're asking for.

      • Re:I can't agree (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Telex4 ( 265980 )

        So a next-generation save/open box should include comprehensive network protocol support.

        With all due respect, I think that this is a really, really awful idea. ...
        The reason why I'm not a fan of implementing network transparency at the KIOSlave or GNOME-VFS or whatnot layers is that this sort of functionality is *not* KDE or GNOME or whathaveyou specific. It just isn't part of the desktop environment. It should be implemented at a lower level, so that *all* programs running on the machine can take advan

    • Re:Web/file browser (Score:3, Informative)

      by be-fan ( 61476 )
      So what does KDE do for a "next-generation save/open box?" Because KDE has had support for this, in the form of KIO, for years. [heise.de] In any KDE file dialog, you can just save a file to "fish://foo" and it works just fine. It supports a ton of protocols, including SMB, bzip2, http, ftp, pop3, smtp, webdav, nntp, etc. Hell, there is even a cool KIO handler for APT, to turn Konqueror into a package manager :)

  • Note to flamers (Score:5, Insightful)

    by arvindn ( 542080 ) on Wednesday January 07, 2004 @01:21AM (#7900625) Homepage Journal
    Everyone please read this before you start flaming.

    The last /. article about the new file selector was filled with "this is totally stupid", "this is worse than the old file selector", "this is the last chance they have to fix it, and they've royally screwed it up", "usability experts, bah! This is why gnome will never catch up with kde" etc.

    Now listen. The change that's happenning in the new file selector is primarily that they're creating a new API. Got it? The programming API. That's why the screenshots looked the same. The screenshots tell you nothing. As long as the API doesn't suck the front end can be freely changed without breaking anything, and everyone can do their own mockups and various ideas can be tried and the experts can weigh in with their opinions and so on. This can go on for a long time, and the front end will stabilize when it has reached (near) perfection.

  • Where is the pathname? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by spitzak ( 4019 ) on Wednesday January 07, 2004 @01:35AM (#7900697) Homepage
    Why can't they put in ONE text field with the entire pathname, so it can be cut & pasted, and it can be easily examined and compared to another file in an email or other source, and it is obvious how to type in a pathname?

    This can't be that hard, really. I did it ten years ago in a NeXT file chooser I wrote.

    Have a SINGLE text field. Anything before the last '/' is the "current directory" and anything after is the "current file". Then add all the buttons and tab completion and scrolling list. As the user edits the text, update the display to match. As the user hits the buttons, re-edit the text.

    I consider this obvious and I am dumbfounded that nobody seems to be doing this even today.

    I don't care if Grandma is confused by pathnames. Grandma is also confused by insertion-editing of text fields but nobody seems to be trying to make it overwrite.

    Show a little incentive, and do this right!

  • File selectors are crippled directory browsers (Score:4, Insightful)

    by AReilly ( 9339 ) on Wednesday January 07, 2004 @01:39AM (#7900719)
    Acorn got this aspect of GUI design right. You don't need a file selector. Opening or reading things is best done by clicking or dragging from an existing directory browser. Saving or outputting is easily done by dragging an icon that represents your file into an existing directory browser. Need to open a directory browser to do that? How is that different from needing to open a file selection dialog?

    File selectors? How modal. How quaint. Just say no.
    • Drag and drop is so manual. Who wants to fuss around with getting windows lined up just to save a file. Instead of hitting "CTRL-S," typing in a filename, and hitting enter, I know have to start up my file manager, unmaximize my window (I almost always have my windows maximized), get the two both visible at once, and drag the file over? And then I still have to name it!

      Sounds like a stupid way to sap-away productivity just to adhere to "real world" metaphors.

    • Thankyou! (Score:3, Insightful)

      by horza ( 87255 )
      Yes, the one thing I am sick of under Linux is the stupid Windows-copy file selector. Every time I want to save a file I have to pop it up and wend my way tediously from the normally illogical default start point. I would love an Acorn-like drag-and-drop system, much like ROX [sourceforge.net] tries to do. Make it globally selectable in KDE/Gnome what file selector module to use so those that prefer the old way can keep it but those that need the drag and drop can have it in all their apps.

      Phillip.

  • Missing the point (Score:4, Informative)

    by dmiller ( 581 ) <djm.mindrot@org> on Wednesday January 07, 2004 @01:48AM (#7900774) Homepage
    The point of the new GTK+ file selector is not so much how it looks than the fact that it is based around a new, extensible API. The old implementation was so tied to the API that its appearance couldn't really be altered (on a system-wide level), the new file selector can.

  • all I want (Score:5, Interesting)

    by XO ( 250276 ) <blade,eric&gmail,com> on Wednesday January 07, 2004 @01:54AM (#7900796) Homepage Journal
    Is a damn file selector box, where if I enter a DIRECTORY NAME into the box, and then press ENTER, it will SWITCH to that DIRECTORY, rather than giving me an error, or showing me an empty selector box that isn't pointed to anything.

    That's what irks me the most. I don't care how PRETTY the damn thing is.
    I can't even make out what the hell half the controls on those mockups ARE...

  • Not enough alphablending (Score:5, Funny)

    by MisterFancypants ( 615129 ) on Wednesday January 07, 2004 @02:08AM (#7900875)
    Seriously, these file dialogs don't have enough alphablending. While they're at it, they should throw in some lens flare too.

  • Hall of Shame (Score:5, Insightful)

    by cryptoluddite ( 658517 ) on Wednesday January 07, 2004 @02:33AM (#7900970)
    I wish gnome developers would study the UI Hall of Shame [libero.it] and fix the many glaring UI problems -- then gnome would be a really nice desktop.

    Consider:

    • The main point of a file selector is to choose a file. In the mock-up, only 22% of the dialog's space actually shows files compared to XP where 60% of the space is used for files. And honestly, a lot of the 22% is wasted in the GTK mockup. Defaulting to 'list' instead of 'small icons' doesn't help.
    • There is lots of empty space next to the cancel/open buttons and 'send to' checkbox that is just wasted (see XP for how to do it right and still look appealing).
    • Having 'Show All Files' button next to the filename field means there is less space to see the filename or type in a path into that field.
    • the 'up' button is located about as far away from the files as possible, ensuring lots of extra mouse movement. There is no 'back' button.
    • The 'shortcuts' list takes up lots of space and looks terrible when shortcuts with short and longs names are mixed, like in the example. Please tell me it doesn't resize with the window!

    I use gnome instead of kde (on gentoo) but the lack of any UI sense is frustrating. Another example: the gnome-panel buttons grow to be unbelievably large if there are only a few windows open. This just looks terrible and combined with the layout problems make it nearly impossible to have a vertical or expanding bar that doesn't just look disgusting.

    I really think linux is set to take off on the desktop this year, but these usability/aesthetic details can really have a large negative impact.

    • Re:Hall of Shame (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Animats ( 122034 )
      Exactly right. Go read "Tog on Interface". The wrong stuff is taking up most of the real estate. Not only is it yet another combo box, it's a lousy combo box.

      The whole "Locations" column is redundant once you've started selecting a file.

      Let's see some long filenames and long pathnames in those mockups, and see how it holds up. The example has no scrollbars. That's unrealistic.

      Why do we have "full screen", "minimize", and "close" options on a dialog box? Note that the "Cancel" and "close" buttons t

  • 'New Folder'??? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MyFourthAccount ( 719363 ) on Wednesday January 07, 2004 @02:38AM (#7900984)
    It's pretty funny that the 'even better' mockups have a 'New Folder' button on a 'Open File' dialog box.

    Surely the intention of this button is to make absolutely 100% sure that the user can select a file that doesn't exist. I mean, what other file could a user possibly want to open?

    There is simply no better file to open then the one that remains in a directory that doesn't exist yet.

  • Fileselectors are obsolete! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Florian ( 2471 ) <cantsin@zedat.fu-berlin.de> on Wednesday January 07, 2004 @04:20AM (#7901365) Homepage
    File selector boxes are a legacy of the early MacOS until version 6.x, which was single-tasking and didn't allow to switch between several applications running parallel. In fact, a file selector box is nothing but a miniature replica of a graphical file manager (like the MacOS finder, the Windows Explorer, konqueror, nautilus, rox etc.). The more "functional" file selectors got, the more bloated and redundant vis-a-vis the file manager they became.

    It would make more sense IMHO to abolish file selectors altogether and instead throw users into their preferred file manager for opening files. All it would need is a freedesktop.org standard protocol for file manager/application interaction and perhaps a $FILEMANAGER environment variable. (Theoretically, $FILEMANAGER could then also be a shell in a terminal.)

    -F

    • Re:Fileselectors are obsolete! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by master_p ( 608214 ) on Wednesday January 07, 2004 @05:39AM (#7901587)
      What you are saying is quite an interesting idea. Another version of it is to use a window of the selected $FILEMANAGER as the dialog for opening a file. For example, when I open a file in KWord, a Kongueror file window comes up in modal form, allows me to select one or more files, and then is closed. In this way, the look & feel (as well as other extras that the current environment puts into my filemanager) will be easily replicated.

      Another idea is to use the simplest possible list (a simple dialog with a file list box and a text box with the path) and have a big red button which says "file manager". By pressing this button, a file manager window will come up in the current directory of the file dialog box, and let the user continue do file management from there.

  • The problem with file selector is it's existance (Score:3, Insightful)

    by CaptnMArk ( 9003 ) on Wednesday January 07, 2004 @07:01AM (#7901830)
    A better GUI would be to have no file selector at all.

    I wonder how long it will take for everyone (GNOME/KDE) to realize that...

  • the KISS approach: use locatedb (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mydigitalself ( 472203 ) on Wednesday January 07, 2004 @10:12AM (#7902714)
    i photoshop user interfaces all day, so forgive me for not having the energy for visually articulating this idea...

    the idea was inspired by Suggestion 3 [gnomepro.com]. if you go and read the discussion thread [osnews.com] about this, the idea was actually to implement a FILTER rather than a SEARCH. i find this articulation a bit silly really because SEARCH implies a global search not a filter.. which made me think:

    if you had a really simple dialog box that had a search capability you could just start typing in "hilton pari". in the background one just interrogates the slocate database and starts to put all items that start with "hilto..." in a list view below. the list view should display the parent folder of that element with a hyperlink/expander of sorts to illustrate the full path to that file.

    furthermore if you abstracted this functionality, you could offer the same global search capabilities across filenames in the "recent documents" interface. so this would extend the search boundary to elements that are possibly not in your slocate database (SMB shared docs for example).

    there would still be browing capabilities to allow users to do regular browsing of CD, Network etc... but i just thought this would be a highly Googleian way of opening files.

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