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Gnome's Nice Little GUI Perks 502

Posted by timothy from the thinking-of-users dept.
asdren writes " Steven Garrity has written a short article highlighting some 'user interface niceties' found in Gnome with regards to file renaming, screen captures, fonts and file zooming." Garrity points out that "... tiny details can have a significant impact on the user experience on operating systems. Inconsistencies that seem insignificant when considering individually, but together they degrade the overall polish and sense of stability in the system," and points out a few places where Gnome manages to avoid such inconsistency.
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Gnome's Nice Little GUI Perks More

Gnome's Nice Little GUI Perks

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  • Operating Systems? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Sinus0idal ( 546109 ) on Sunday February 08, 2004 @12:48PM (#8219175)
    Didn't think Gnome *was* an operating system.
    • Poor choice of words. What is Windows anyway? Operating system? Desktop environment?

    • Re:Operating Systems? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Kippesoep ( 712796 ) on Sunday February 08, 2004 @12:59PM (#8219268) Homepage
      But surely you did think it's a GUI, which is what the article is about.

  • 6 points (Score:3, Funny)

    by Tongue In A Box ( 664849 ) on Sunday February 08, 2004 @12:49PM (#8219183) Journal

    So that's it huh? Years of development, we've come up with better screenshots. Not-so-annoying handling of renaming files. Media players with some nicer features and wait for it....wait for it....zooming!

    Look out Microsoft, your days are numbered!

    • Re:6 points (Score:4, Funny)

      by imsabbel ( 611519 ) on Sunday February 08, 2004 @12:53PM (#8219216)
      Skip the media player with nice features.
      Its just that hardware overlay isnt working :)

    • Oh my god!! (Score:2, Funny)

      by twoslice ( 457793 )
      Look out Microsoft, your days are numbered!

      My days seem to be numbered too. I just looked at my desk calendar and they stop at 29! Oh my god the world is going to end in 21 days!

    • and it took Microsoft how long (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 08, 2004 @01:04PM (#8219311)
      to get Windows a decently stable and complete Desktop? 10? 15? Let's not forget GNOME is a relative new-comer at 6 years old, and the fact that it has a fraction of the number of developers and resources Microsoft can devote to their desktop should tell you how quickly it is progressing. Yes it is far from perfect, but you simply have not been paying attention if you aren't astonished by the advances GNOME (and KDE) have made in the last 3 years.

    • Re:6 points (Score:5, Insightful)

      by officepotato ( 723274 ) on Sunday February 08, 2004 @01:25PM (#8219453) Homepage
      That's more important than you'd think... It seems that everyone loves OSX, which is notable for having an incredible display manager and style standards. People notice the little perks like the camera-shutter sound more than they notice the bigger architectural changes.

      At my job, I run a network of mainly Windows XP computers, and a small lab of linux servers with KDE 3.2 installed as the default desktop environment for whoever wants to use it. Invariably the first user comments are on the bouncing icons, translucent menus, or the fact that GAIM shows buddy icons in the main list. People generally don't care what the operating system is, but they do notice changes in the UI.

      Linux has matured as a server OS, but being fast and pretty will bring it to the masses.
    • And never mind the nightmare of the configuration engine.

    • Re:6 points (Score:4, Interesting)

      by CaptnMArk ( 9003 ) on Sunday February 08, 2004 @02:32PM (#8219877)
      Smarter file renaming was done in OS/2 >10 years ago (alt+click required).

      • Re:6 points (Score:4, Interesting)

        by CaptnMArk ( 9003 ) on Sunday February 08, 2004 @03:03PM (#8220063)
        While we are at it... The above is my #1 windows annoyance.

        #2 is the drag and drop than often happens in tree view when you are slighly clumsy with the mouse/double click. OS/2 fixes this too by using the right mouse button for all drag&drop operations.
        (and using the left drag one for multiple-selection).

  • support for WebDAV in nautilus (Score:5, Interesting)

    by stonebeat.org ( 562495 ) on Sunday February 08, 2004 @12:51PM (#8219203) Homepage
    Although Steven some nice features, he missed to mention that Nautilus supports WebDAV [webdav.org] as well. WebDAV stands for "Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning".
    However Nautilus needs to improve the WebDAV functionality. MacOS has the best implementation of a WebDAV client as far as I know.

    • Re:support for WebDAV in nautilus (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Ambassador Kosh ( 18352 ) on Sunday February 08, 2004 @01:22PM (#8219436)
      KDE has transparent webdav to every kde application through the io slaves. You could use konqueror like filemanager and do webdav://server or webdavs://server since it also has ssl webdav support but more useful is that you can use those urls from any kde application so in your word processor, code editor, sound recorder etc you can save to webdav just like you would your home dir. To make it easier to get back to it you can bookmark it.

      I normally don't use the webdav functionality however stuff like sftp works the same way.

  • file dialog (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Coneasfast ( 690509 ) on Sunday February 08, 2004 @12:54PM (#8219224)
    i personally think the file dialog could use some improvements, (i know, this is gtk), maybe it could use a few more navigation buttons to speed things up, seems a little primitive atm ?!?!
    • i personally think the file dialog could use some improvements, (i know, this is gtk), maybe it could use a few more navigation buttons to speed things up, seems a little primitive atm ?!?!

      That and weird little things like not being able to use wildcards in the file open dialog boxes. Personally, I think they should work on stuff like that, which affect basically all applications, before they work on the file manager/browser.

    • Gnome 2.6 will feature a new file selector throughout, though individual GTK apps still must be ported to use it.

    • We're working on it (Score:5, Informative)

      by dspeyer ( 531333 ) <dspeyer&wam,umd,edu> on Sunday February 08, 2004 @03:48PM (#8220303) Homepage Journal
      Check out the work in progress [chello.nl] on it. It's quite usable, but we're still adding features.

      The fealing on the GTK list seems to be that there's a need for an entire new widget GtkFileChooser, and programs will eventually convert to this new API. IMHO, this is a very bad idea, as the oldstyle will never really go away any more than the win3.1 style has in the windows world. I think we ought to just add the new features and protect future APIs with preprocessor flags. Code for that might look like:

      fs=gtk_file_selecter_new(_("Open File..."));
      #ifdef _GTK_FILE_SELECTER_IS_EXTENDED
      gtk_file_selecter_prepend_filter ("<Fonts>*.ttf/*.pcf");
      #endif /*_GTK_FILE_SELECTER_IS_EXTENDED*/
      But that's for later. For now, the code that's up there works, and it might make your GTK-related life a lot more pleasant

  • Google Cache (Score:5, Informative)

    by c4Ff3In3 4ddiC+ ( 661808 ) on Sunday February 08, 2004 @12:54PM (#8219227)
    A google cache link is available here. [216.239.57.104]

  • Interesting to non-Gnome users (Score:3, Interesting)

    by $calar ( 590356 ) on Sunday February 08, 2004 @12:54PM (#8219228) Journal
    I have been using Gnome for a while, so it's no surprise to me when it comes to the things discussed in this article. About the only new thing I learned is that you can drag and drop screenshots into another program.

    I do think that Gnome developers have paid good attention to detail in the last two 2.x releases. Without KDE 3.2, I'd have to throw in some criticisms there, but KDE 3.2 just rocks. Very refined.

  • Google cache (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 08, 2004 @12:56PM (#8219248)
    Site seems to be down already, heres google to the rescue:
    Google cache [216.239.37.104]

  • Huh? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by GillBates0 ( 664202 )
    In Windows XP, one click selects a file, then a second click (and a short delay) renders the file name editable. In Mac OS X, any click on the file name renders the file name editable. In my experience, on both platforms, the file renaming functionality is triggered by accident far more often than it is intentionally.
    Gnome, and the Nautilus file manager (the equivalent of Windows Explorer or Mac OS Finder) allows you to rename files only by right-clickling and choosing "Rename..." from the context-menu. W

    • Re:Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Audity ( 600754 ) on Sunday February 08, 2004 @01:11PM (#8219367)
      He never said you couldn't rename files in windows by right clicking-them. The point was that there's a "feature" in windows and OS X that allows you to rename files easily. The problem is it's too easy and gets triggered by accident often. Gnome doesn't have this problem (and niether does KDE).

      • Re:Huh? (Score:2, Insightful)

        by dont_think_twice ( 731805 )
        The problem is it's too easy and gets triggered by accident often. Gnome doesn't have this problem (and niether does KDE)

        Ironically, we are now in the position that windows and mac are more powerful than gnome and kde. Gnome and kde, on the other hand, are locked down by the developers to behave in certain specific ways that are considered "intuitive".

        Luckily, we have so much choice in linux, and I am sure there will always be filemanagers for users who want power, not simplicity. Still, it is a stra
          1. Ironically, we are now in the position that windows and mac are more powerful than gnome and kde. Gnome and kde, on the other hand, are locked down by the developers to behave in certain specific ways that are considered "intuitive".

          *BLINK* What are you talking about? Windows and Mac UIs are polished (mostly), but not nearly as powerful KDE or Gnome (though Gnome has gone the "small is good" route). Neither KDE or Gnome are locked down, and if any thing they have too much...though give me more!

      • It does get triggered too often in Windows, that's true. But the solution is to set the doubleclick speed for the mouse, something you can do in Win, Gnome and KDE. Don't know about the Mac, but I would assume so. So if a person is a little slower on the double click, just increase the time between clicks for what counts as a double click. That way if someone has a muscle problem that prevents quickly repeated actions, a double click will still work. The "rename" feature only gets called if the time be

      • Re:Huh? (Score:3, Informative)

        by MrWa ( 144753 )
        How is this an improvement?! Instead of clicking once, waiting a second, and clicking again to rename a file, I now have to right-click then select something from a pull-down menu! It's a step backwards! It actually seems more intuitive to be clicking on the thing you want to change. What is the next step? Will it be making you click on a file and then press CTRL-Shift-R?!

        On one hand we (meaning people that post on /.) praise Linux because of choice and then we praise the Gnome developers for deciding t

    • Re:Huh? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by dboyles ( 65512 )
      Just checked on both Windows ME and XP, and confirmed my earlier memory of using the Right-click menu to rename files in Windows. As in Nautilus, the right click menu *does* contain the option to rename files...and I guess that's more often used than the delayed-double-click mechanism, which I think is an additional method to rename a file.

      Windows does have that functionality, but I think the point of the Gnome rename interface is that you can't trigger the rename operation by the delayed double-click. T

      • Re:Huh? (Score:2, Insightful)

        by dancingmad ( 128588 )
        I call sheningans:

        I use an XP box at home (themed to look OSX-ish) because there is some software I have to use with Windows and I don't have the heart to dual boot, but I can't ever remember accidently editing a file name when I attempted to open a file.

        I know this is /. and all, but can we keep the anti-MS FUD in check?
        • Nope, it's true. The vast majority of the populace is retarded and has trouble double-clicking fast enough(by vast majority, I actually mean say 10% -- just sounds cooler). They click on the name, not the icon as it is a bigger target. I occasionally have to resort to telling them to click once, then hit .

          You apparently are not in that category. In fact, I would guess just about all of the users of gnome would not be in that category. However, it should be a tunable feature to allow for accessibility/usab

        • Re:Huh? (Score:5, Informative)

          by PaulK ( 85154 ) on Sunday February 08, 2004 @02:44PM (#8219946)
          As someone who has done retail computer service since the early eighties, let me point out that MS-FUD is not an issue here. This is a real problem.

          I have seen quite a few machines where windows wouldn't boot due to accidental file renaming, and quite a few from deliberate renaming through ignorance.

          When the problem is pointed out, the response has pretty much the same: "Why does it let me do it, then?" or "Why is it so easy to do if it's wrong?"

          I've also seen systems where children have done dramatic file renaming, because it's easily within their grasp.

          Granted, this is not a huge problem, but it is consistant. More common is the bulk movement of system files via drag & drop.

          From a technical standpoint, the double-click rename "feature" is actually a weak point in longterm system security/stability.

        • Re:Huh? (Score:3, Insightful)

          by antiMStroll ( 664213 )
          "I know this is /. and all, but can we keep the anti-MS FUD in check?"

          It happens to me all the time, on the 50+ XP and 2k boxes I admin plus the 2 I use at home. Did you reset your double-click speed in the mouse setup? A criticism is only FUD when it's untrue.

    • Blame the OS?!? (Score:2, Informative)

      by danrees ( 557289 )
      In Windows XP, one click selects a file, then a second click (and a short delay) renders the file name editable. In Mac OS X, any click on the file name renders the file name editable. In my experience, on both platforms, the file renaming functionality is triggered by accident far more often than it is intentionally. Gnome, and the Nautilus file manager (the equivalent of Windows Explorer or Mac OS Finder) allows you to rename files only by right-clickling and choosing "Rename..." from the context-menu. Wh

    • Re:Huh? (Score:3, Informative)

      by TrancePhreak ( 576593 )
      I always use F2 to rename files in Windows. Little known shortcut key.

  • I'll show you significant impact! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by seanvaandering ( 604658 ) <sean...vaandering@@@gmail...com> on Sunday February 08, 2004 @01:05PM (#8219320)
    tiny details can have a significant impact on the user experience on operating ystems.

    Okay, while I completely agree with that article, Ill share some of my 'user experiences' using Linux vs. Windows and how things in Linux coming from a Windows POV are still archaic at best.

    For instance, yes like windows, you can hit the Print Screen button and get screen shots the same as windows, BUT it popups up a program asking you what to DO with the screenshot and how to save it - very nice.

    However, From a user who used IE just for the convienance when on WIndows, I migrated to Linux beore the MyDOOM crap and heres what Ive found:

    Mozilla still has a ways to go, and is still IMHO a superior browser to IE, mostly due to the fact it does not allow executable installations and popups enabled by default -- HOWEVER, installing Java as a plugin in the browser and making it a "symbolic link" in the plugins directory of the JavaVM is tricky at best. If i didnt have a clue about these things Id be trashing Linux right there. No one in windows land has no clue what a symbolic link is, or how to "create one" in a command line.

    There are other things also, but ill stick to the most basic and most obvious problem that a linux newbie would encounter right off the bat after installing Linux after migrating from Windows.

    Keep in mind, its the things that DON'T work that ultimately decides if a user is going to stick with a particular operating system/GUI/client or not -- unlike most of the slashdot crowd, the general public simply does not have the patience to try and troubleshoot a problem or PAY anyone, for that matter to get the same functionality that they had before.

    • Re:I'll show you significant impact! (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      A symbolic link in windows is known as a "shortcut" You can create one in Konqueror by dragging a icon from one window into another and then selecting "Link here". No command line needed.

      The KDE and Gnome guys have gone long ways to eliminating the use for the command line, so your complaint about java is obsolete. It just works in most distros. Just install the java rpm from the package manager in your distro.
    • Even Slackware installs the symbolic link for the JRE in the Mozilla plugins directory. If Slackware does it, I'm sure most or all of the friendlier distributions also do it.

      What distribution did you install that doesn't do that?

      --RJ

    • Re:I'll show you significant impact! (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Brandybuck ( 704397 ) on Sunday February 08, 2004 @07:58PM (#8221824) Homepage Journal
      You know, trying to learn Windows from a UNIX POV, I've found some Windows things that are still archaic as well. This creates a significant impact on the user experience.

      There are dozens that I could mention, but the biggest is the window manager. Whatever the name is for the Windows window manager, it does not have snapto or window shading. This is a major annoyance when you have multiple windows up on the screen. Neither does it have easily controlled z-ordering. It is not an easy to use window manager. The look may have improved, but the behavior has not changed from Windows 3.0.

      The only reason the public has stuck with Windows as long as it has is simply because they are familiar with it. No other reason.

  • File naming and other stuff (Score:5, Interesting)

    by WWWWolf ( 2428 ) <wwwwolf@iki.fi> on Sunday February 08, 2004 @01:09PM (#8219346) Homepage

    Just this weekend I was still getting used to this weird operating system known as MacOSX: "How the heck do I rename a file?" Found out that clicking on the file name works. Yet, I far prefer GNOME's renaming idea: Renaming file is in the context menu, Edit menu and key F2 - and not selecting the file name extension is nice.

    I also like the idea of using SVG for icons - scalable icons rule, and have done so for years in operating systems no one uses. I just wish the SVG themers could come up with even a single aesthetically pleasing and extensive collection of file icons. The button themes are good already.

    Oh, and Emblems. Nautilus had these years ago. These things rule. OSX 10.3 got colored names. Not sure if Windows has innovated this feature yet.

    Now that I finally have some very infrequent access to a Mac - the supposed bastion of good UI design - I've started getting a little bit annoyed that GNOME stuff and WindowMaker are actually better at times. Both are lightyears ahead of Microsoft, though =)

    • OSX 10.3 got colored names.

      These things are called Labels. They've been in the classic Mac OS for more than a decade.

    • Re:File naming and other stuff (Score:4, Informative)

      by Jimithing DMB ( 29796 ) <dfe&tgwbd,org> on Sunday February 08, 2004 @02:13PM (#8219756) Homepage

      One thing that most people completely ignore about OS X's file renaming is that even if the file is name is selected for editing you can still do pretty much anything with it. You can drag it (by its icon) anywhere, you can Command+Delete it, and so on.

      About the only thing you can't do is cut/copy/paste because those actions are context sensitive and so operate on the text instead of the file. Of course, no respectable Mac user ever actually uses Cut/Copy/Paste on files.

      In any case, compare the Mac OS X behavior with the windows behavior. You click once (on a files icon or text) to activate the file, THEN you can click on the text to rename it and better hope you didn't click too fast or else you open the file. When you do get into renaming mode if you try to drag the file anywhere it interprets the mouse down on the icon as "end rename" and totally eats it so now you have to release and click on it again. The bad thing about this is that it has apparently trained people to think that entering into rename mode "accidently" is a bad thing when on a Mac it really doesn't matter and the best course of action is to simply ignore the fact that the label text just highlighted because it really doesn't make any difference.

  • ./'d article text paste (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 08, 2004 @01:09PM (#8219350)
    Formatting is the best I have time for

    Getting to Know Gnome
    by steven [10:56 PM February 3, 2004]

    For the last few months, I've been using Fedora, a Linux distribution, as my primary operating system along with the Gnome desktop environment. Linux as a desktop platform still has lots of weaknesses, but I'm generally pleased and am very much looking forward to the progress planned in the next year.

    I've written plenty before about the tiny details that can have a significant impact on the user experience on operating systems. Windows XP is rife with little visual glitches and inconsistencies that seem insignificant when considering individually, but together they degrade the overall polish and sense of stability in the system. It's like seeing cracks, no matter how small, in a bridge you're walking on.

    I've noticed a few little user interface niceties worth sharing:

    Smart File Renaming

    In Windows XP, one click selects a file, then a second click (and a short delay) renders the file name editable. In Mac OS X, any click on the file name renders the file name editable. In my experience, on both platforms, the file renaming functionality is triggered by accident far more often than it is intentionally.

    Gnome, and the Nautilus file manager (the equivalent of Windows Explorer or Mac OS Finder) allows you to rename files only by right-clickling and choosing "Rename..." from the context-menu. While it may seem like the function is "hidden away" behind the context-menu, give that renaming files is a far less frequent tasks then double-clicking on them or moving them (click+drag), this is an appropriate trade-off. Accidentally triggered the file-renaming functionality in both Windows and Mac OS, I'm happy to report that the Gnome technique is much better.

    Also, when you do rename a file, the file name, not including the file extension is selected by default. So, if I want to rename a file called Diary.doc to Journal.doc, I right-click the file, select "Rename...", and type the new name. The ".doc" file extension isn't select by default, so it goes unaffected. In the rare case that I do want to rename a file, including the extension, I can easily manually select the extension as well. To do the same task in Windows, you must re-select the first part of the file name, manually excluding the file extension (which takes a fair amount of manual dexterity with a mouse) to avoid removing the file extension (Mac OS gets extra points here for avoiding file extensions where it can).

    Smart Screenshots

    In Mac OS X, when you take a screenshot, a PDF file is placed on the desktop. PDF is an awkward choice for a file format for a screenshot and if the desktop is obscured by windows, as it often is, then there is little feedback of where your screenshot has gone (though, to their credit, the camera-shutter sound is the best audio feedback of a screenshot on any platform). In Windows, the screenshot is sent to the clipboard, and then must be pasted into an application for use. Again, there is no feedback as to where your screenshot has gone.

    In Gnome, when you take a screenshot, you are greeted by a window with a preview of your screenshot with options to save it. You can also drag the preview from this window directly into an application (an image editing application, or into an email for an attachment). Nice.

    Don't Tie My Hands

    Using Windows Media Player, it is quite difficult to get a screenshot of a playing DVD. If you take a screenshot while a DVD is playing, you'll see a big empty black box where the movie should be. In order to overcome this issues, Totem, the movie player I'm using on Linux (which is a great, simple, media player - something that doesn't seem to exist on Windows) there is a tool built in to take screenshots of a playing movie. Under the "Edit" menu, select "Take Screenshot", and you'll be presented with a window much like

  • author is right, but he doesn't know it (Score:4, Insightful)

    by dont_think_twice ( 731805 ) on Sunday February 08, 2004 @01:11PM (#8219371) Homepage
    The article does show why linux is more user-friendly than windows, but not in the way that the author intends.

    He claims that file-renaming is better in nautilus because the only way to do it is through a context menu, and furthermore, the filename without extension is highlighted by default. Personally, I find both of those "features" terribly annoying. Quite often, all I want to do is change the extension on a file. Nautilus' behavior makes this much harder than it is in windows.

    But the great thing is that there are plenty of file managers for linux, and even plenty built specifically for gnome. So I just use a different one that I like better. Choice is what makes linux better than windows, not the default behavior of one app.

    • He claims that file-renaming is better in nautilus because the only way to do it is through a context menu, and furthermore, the filename without extension is highlighted by default. Personally, I find both of those "features" terribly annoying. Quite often, all I want to do is change the extension on a file. Nautilus' behavior makes this much harder than it is in windows.

      No offense, but I don't think that parent post is so terribly insightful.. IMHO the difficulty in this particular case is exactly

    • But the great thing is that there are plenty of file managers for linux

      You know that there are also lots of alternative file managers for Windows, do you ? If you want you can even replace the Windows Explorer with them.

  • The extension idea (Score:2, Interesting)

    by unborn ( 415272 )
    Actually the extension idea makes a lot of sense. And it has already been submitted as a wish to bugs.kde.org:

    http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=58749

    Please cast your vote!

  • WMP (Score:5, Informative)

    by dancingmad ( 128588 ) on Sunday February 08, 2004 @01:33PM (#8219505)
    Using Windows Media Player, it is quite difficult to get a screenshot of a playing DVD. If you take a screenshot while a DVD is playing, you'll see a big empty black box where the movie should be.

    I'm no fan of WMP (I use BS Player or Windows Media Player Classic) but it's easy enough to get a screenshot from it, just turn down hardware acceleration.

    • Yea, right. (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Inoshiro ( 71693 )
      This makes sense. No, wait, what's hardware acceleration? I just want to take a picture from this DVD I'm playing on my computer!

      Do you have any idea what kind of people use computers? Everyone! Not just people who know what hardware acceleration is, or even know where to start to find that particular slider in a control panel. It's a fucking joke that you'd be modded up for saying that, too, since having a menu entry for it is proper UI design -- because then you have the possibility of explaining it

  • Some irritating glitches too... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Tord ( 5801 ) <.moc.liamg. .ta. .nossnaj.drot.> on Sunday February 08, 2004 @01:35PM (#8219519) Homepage
    I use Gnome every day at work and while there is much about the environment to love, there are also some really anoying glitches that I don't understand why they haven't been addressed allready. A few examples:

    1. You can easily create or install themes by clicking your way through or drag-n-drop, but there is no apparent way of REMOVING a theme.

    2. You can't change the location a launcher or shortcut points to once you have created it. That's irritating if you just needed to move the file or rename one folder in a long path and don't want to go through the hassle of creating a new launcher, name it and select icon from a long list again.

    3. You can drag-n-drop emblems onto icons from the sidebar, but you can't remove them in the same easy way. To do that you need to right-click the icon and go into a totally different dialogue.

    4. View files as a list in Nautilus and there is no way you can right-click on the background to get the context menu in order to for example add a folder. You then have to do it through the top-of-window menu instead.

    5. Listview in Nautilus again: you can't drag-n-drop a file from another window without dropping it onto an entry.

    6. There is no way you can change the permissions or emblems of multiple selected files in one go from Nautilus. You have to address them one by one.

    Just like Gnome's small features really adds to the experience, these small glitches really destroys it too when you run into them. Gnome is my prefered environment though, here's to hoping that some of these gets fixed in the next release...

    • 2. You can't change the location a launcher or shortcut points to once you have created it. That's irritating if you just needed to move the file or rename one folder in a long path and don't want to go through the hassle of creating a new launcher, name it and select icon from a long list again.

      You don't quite have to create a whole new launcher from scratch. Here's the procedure to change one:

      1. Open the properties dialog for the launcher (right-click->Properties).
      2. Browse to the new location of the t
    • Good someone mentions this. The listview of Nautilus is pretty useless. You can't even drop a lasso over files. I was stunned when I first discovered this. I mean, that's what a filemanager is all about: Selecting files and doing stuff with it.

      cu,
      Lispy

    • Re:Some irritating glitches too... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 08, 2004 @02:29PM (#8219862)
      1. You can easily create or install themes by clicking your way through or drag-n-drop, but there is no apparent way of REMOVING a theme.

      Theme Details -> Go to Theme Folder [file manager opens ~/.themes], and delete what you don't want. Granted it's not as easy as selecting or editing themes, but normal people aren't going to be adding/deleting themes themselves anyway, so it's not important to make it idiot proof. Themes are available as packages and are installed/un-installed through the package manager.

      2. You can't change the location a launcher or shortcut points to once you have created it. That's irritating if you just needed to move the file or rename one folder in a long path and don't want to go through the hassle of creating a new launcher, name it and select icon from a long list again.

      That's not exactly what I would call "a glitch", it's an enhancement, but yes it would be nice to have.

      3. You can drag-n-drop emblems onto icons from the sidebar, but you can't remove them in the same easy way. To do that you need to right-click the icon and go into a totally different dialogue.

      Again... that is not a glitch, it's something that should be worked on. But it's hardly priority considering how often people use the emblem functionality.

      4. View files as a list in Nautilus and there is no way you can right-click on the background to get the context menu in order to for example add a folder. You then have to do it through the top-of-window menu instead.

      This is fixed in 2.5/2.6.

      5. Listview in Nautilus again: you can't drag-n-drop a file from another window without dropping it onto an entry.

      Ditto.


      6. There is no way you can change the permissions or emblems of multiple selected files in one go from Nautilus. You have to address them one by one.

      Huh? Yes you can, in the current stable version (2.4) and beyond: select the files you want to change the permissions/emblems of, right-click -> Properties, change the permissions/emblems to what you want. Done.
    • The folder tree view is broken. Really. It doesn't sync with the file pane. You can't right-click on a folder in the tree to perform actions on it. You can't drag folders around. The only interactivity allowed is on the open/close arrows.

      I don't like KDE much, but I do envy KDE users for having Konqueror. It's a great file manager.

  • Cut and paste are not mentioned. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mrmeval ( 662166 ) <jcmeval@@@yahoo...com> on Sunday February 08, 2004 @01:35PM (#8219521) Journal
    I'm using stock Redhat 9

    I do not understand why cut and paste cannot be corrected. If a program is closed, what was just copied from it disappears from the buffer. Some programs can only do middle mouse button and others it's only via keyboard, some only from the menu some will do it from the right mouse.

    Some of this is the application programmers fault and some is the window manager.

    Other problems, why are programmers allowed to restrict what window functions I am allowed. If I want it to be minimized I want it minimized. I've seen this done on Gaim's away screen and it's very annoying. I would like to disable an application programmers access to these things either permanently or via user settable controls.

  • No simple media player? (Score:5, Informative)

    by TwistedSquare ( 650445 ) on Sunday February 08, 2004 @01:37PM (#8219527) Homepage
    The author seems to take time out from discussing the GUI to mention:

    ...(which is a great, simple, media player - something that doesn't seem to exist on Windows)

    To which I retort: BS Player [bsplayer.org]. And his points about screenshots could easily be combined, I'm not seeing much content in the article to be honest.

  • I'm not so sure about some of those niceties. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by thatguywhoiam ( 524290 ) on Sunday February 08, 2004 @01:40PM (#8219543)
    While the guy has some good points, he has others that I wouldn't necessarily agree with. Taken as a whole I'd say that GNOME had improved in comparison to itself, but its still a mixed bag, like all the other OSes.

    For instance, he said:
    Gnome, and the Nautilus file manager (the equivalent of Windows Explorer or Mac OS Finder) allows you to rename files only by right-clickling and choosing "Rename..." from the context-menu.

    This is not intuitive at all. While most of us would try the right-click eventually, there is no reason to go looking Rename there, except out of habit. If anything Rename deserves its own spot in the Edit menu. He also neglects Mac OS X Panther's 'gear' button, which is a nice approach - click file, then the gear to perform any kind of file manipulation. That is consistent. Right-click is for shortcuts but should never be the sole way of getting to a function. I do also agree with having only the filename before the suffic highlighted - I've noticed some apps do this for you and others don't, on the Mac anyways.

    In Mac OS X, when you take a screenshot, a PDF file is placed on the desktop. PDF is an awkward choice for a file format for a screenshot and if the desktop is obscured by windows, as it often is, then there is little feedback of where your screenshot has gone...

    This is true, although a slight modification of that same keyboard shortcut will capture to the clipboard, and gives you the same deal (and you can re-assign it). The GNOME minipreview thing sounds cool though. Windows would beat everything here if they would finally just rename PrtScrn to 'Screen Capture Button', and added a feedback sound.

    The DVD capture thing is interesting, I haven't tried it yet. Would it not be different depending on video hardware? (I remember Mac ATI cards would do the solid-colour-overlay thing while nVidia cards could capture DVD frames just fine.)

    While browsing font files (TrueType, OpenType, etc.) in Nautilus, the file icons are replaced with a small preview of the font. Very handy when you're browsing for a particular font

    A neat trick, but not even remotely handy. This is no way to browse fonts, looking at just an upper and lower-case A, in a 32x32 (or whatever) size. OS X has this one hands-down. Double-click a font and you get the whole repertoire, with a button that says 'Install Font' below it. It even asks you if you want to install for just this user, or all users.

    Now when I'm browing files, especially image files, on either Windows XP or Mac OS X, I find myself looking for the zoom controls - a good sign that Nautilus does it right.

    Not to be coy but this is only a good sign that you are used to GNOME. :)

    I do think that GNOME is pretty much in WinXP territory as far as usability, and you can take that as you will. Its a good thing, really... if they're starting to focus on things like font support and workflow, they may start to eclipse Redmond.

    Really I want GNOME to take a page from the design of Apple's Safari browser. Make it clean, elegant, simple, powerful. Do not load it with features. Don't copy features, invent better ones. This is how GNOME will find more diverse users. I worry that with all the propellerhead demand for things like (ugh) themes, the simple and elegant approach will often get lost.

    • Right-click to rename is the lessser of two evils as far as I'm concerened. Double-clicking the name to rename a file (like Windows and classic MacOS) is a bit more intuitive, but the annoyance of triggering a rename instead of a file open because your mouse was 3 pixels off more than offsets the benefit.

      "Right-click is for shortcuts but should never be the sole way of getting to a function."
      Too many years using a one-button mouse....

      "OS X has this one hands-down. Double-click a font and you get the whol

  • So (Score:5, Funny)

    by sulli ( 195030 ) * on Sunday February 08, 2004 @01:41PM (#8219561) Journal
    Can I copy and paste between apps now?

  • Windows and Mac (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ninejaguar ( 517729 ) on Sunday February 08, 2004 @01:47PM (#8219595)
    Whether true or not, Gnome and KDE have the appearance of playing catch-up with Windows. I understand that between Windows and the Mac GUI, Windows has the larger market share. But, the Mac interface has always garnered the higher praise for all sort of criteria such as ease of use/utility, eye candy/asthetics...etc. The disparity in the two system's marketshare may have more to do with the fact Apple requires you to buy their hardware to use MacOS, and Microsoft doesn't. In hindsite, I wonder if MacOS would've been comptetive against Windows without Apple's hardware sale requirement.

    It's curious that Gnome and KDE based their GUI design template on Windows and not the Mac. Clearly, they're basing their design decisions on bringing a Free Windows to the masses, not a Free MacOS. This may very well be because the developers were more familiar with Windows as opposed to MacOS, but was it the better decision? Or, is it possible that the distinction between Windows and Mac are no longer as apparent as they were only a few years ago, and the Mac no longer has the lead as a better GUI?

    = 9J =

    • Appearance only (Score:5, Insightful)

      by bluGill ( 862 ) on Sunday February 08, 2004 @02:25PM (#8219845)

      In appearance yes. Of course Windows is playing catch up with Mac by appearance.

      KDE has many features that windows just doesn't have, or has but doesn't get right. (I don't use GNOME, but I assume it is in a similar situation)

      Just in the main browser interface, IE doesn't have pop up blocking, nor is their spell check of web forms. Virtual desktops are still not shiped with windows (despite being a feature of X11 window mangers since I first saw it back in 1993...), and handy to have. Nor is my favorite: focus follows mouse available. Sure you might not like some of them, but they handy to others, and features windows still doesn't have, in some cases more than 10 years after X11 had it.

      KDE/GNOME is playing catch up in some areas true, but in other areas they have gone far beyond windows, and windows isn't even trying to catch up as far as I can tell.

    • Re:Windows and Mac (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Brandybuck ( 704397 )
      It's curious that Gnome and KDE based their GUI design template on Windows and not the Mac. Clearly, they're basing their design decisions on bringing a Free Windows to the masses, not a Free MacOS.

      Big heavy sigh... Gnome is trying to bring Gnome to the masses, and KDE is trying to bring KDE to the masses. Neither is much interested in a free version of the Windows or Mac desktops.

      There is one reason, though, why both KDE and Gnome resemble Windows in behavior and feel: users want them to. I just noticed

  • Eat this KDE! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Lispy ( 136512 ) on Sunday February 08, 2004 @01:53PM (#8219633) Homepage
    Okok, I don't want to start a flamewar here, but I have come to love Gnome lately and I wouldn't trade it with KDE or, beware, Windows.I am using Dropline Gnome for Slackware Linux and I must say that it not only rocks in daily works but still gives me cheers from people that see it the first time when passing my desktop. It just looks cool a-n-d useable. Gnome is very clear and not overloaded with features. What's more, now that gtk+ 2.2 is stable and had all it's debugcode removed it became much faster. The lazy responsetimes I had expierenced a few months ago are now all gone. The whole Desktop feels very snappy and responsive. Partly due to Kernel 2.6 but still, Gnome really has matured. I only hope they fix the last remaining issues:
    - a dialup tool comparable to Kppp
    - a decent CD-Burner (there are some in development, I know...)
    - a powerful file-dialog (it got fixbroken lately but I hope for a complete overhaul)

    cu,
    Lispy

  • lies (Score:4, Informative)

    by minus_273 ( 174041 ) <aaaaa@NOspam.SPAM.yahoo.com> on Sunday February 08, 2004 @02:01PM (#8219681) Journal
    "In Mac OS X, when you take a screenshot, a PDF file is placed on the desktop. PDFis an awkward choice for a file format for a screenshot and if the desktop is obscured"

    As a open source developer who develops Cocoa apps on OSX, i regularly take screenshots of my apps and put them on sourceforge. Im not sure what OS this guy is using, i definetly take my screenshots as TIFF of Jpeg

  • The source of those UI innovations (Score:5, Informative)

    by elflet ( 570757 ) * <<elflet> <at> <nextquestion.net>> on Sunday February 08, 2004 @02:10PM (#8219740)
    The author keeps using Nautilus to show the innovations in Gnome, and those innovations come back to one person -- Andy Hertzfeld. Andy was a member of the original Macintosh team, who wrote much of Quickdraw and several of the initial applications (including MacPaint). Later, he came up with an vastly improved version of the Finder and a version that handled multitasking natively (Switcher).

    Andy co-founded Eazel, and wrote much of Nautlius; all the UI touches mentioned feel like his handiwork.

  • Mouseover audio files (Score:4, Interesting)

    by gyrojoe ( 600717 ) <gyrojoe+slashdot@@@gmail...com> on Sunday February 08, 2004 @02:28PM (#8219856)
    Here's another neat thing in Nautilus that I've never seen anywhere else (Perhaps OS X has it, I've not use it much). When you mouseover an audio file, after a few seconds it will start to play. A bit like an image preview for audio files.

  • My favorite niceity (Score:4, Informative)

    by battery841 ( 34855 ) on Sunday February 08, 2004 @02:51PM (#8219992) Homepage
    I heard about this on IRC and it worked! Go into Nautilus and load a directory in the list view. I think you hit Control F, however I don't remember the keybinding exactly. A small input box will appear at the bottom right of the window. Start typing and it will act as the autosearch in emacs/Mozilla. This works in any ListView in GNOME.

  • what Nautilus? CLI or Emacs! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by axxackall ( 579006 ) on Sunday February 08, 2004 @03:20PM (#8220149) Homepage Journal
    Ironically or not, but I am using Gnome for about 5 years, and all that time I am using bash in CLI as well as (X)Emacs dired mode for all file relate operations I need. I need Gnome only for it's pannels with menus, launchers and applets. What Nautilus? Why is it important? I don't know ... I don't use Nautilus and I don't know why should I use it.

  • Gnome's not so nice GUI... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by kisielk ( 467327 ) on Sunday February 08, 2004 @05:09PM (#8220766)
    Ever tried to use a Gnome app over an SSH tunnel? I have tried running PAN and Gaim from school by SSH'ing in to my home computer, and it's unbearably slow. It can take up to a minute to redraw the headers pane in PAN, because for some reason it slowly draws each header bit by bit.. you can actually see them refreshing slowly.

    As an experiment, I tried running some KDE apps over the same connection, and KNode refreshes its whole window nearly as fast as when I use it on my local machine.

    Now, I'm not writing this to rag on Gnome or its apps, because quite frankly I think PAN is the better news reader, and Gaim is my IM client of choice, it's just that for whatever reason they really suck over the network.

    I hope the Gnome developers don't forget that some people still like to run apps over a remote X connection.

  • That's stability? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jrockway ( 229604 ) * <jon-nospam@jrock.us> on Sunday February 08, 2004 @05:47PM (#8220996) Homepage Journal
    Don't get me wrong, Gnome is easily on par with Windows XP as far as graphics and visual on my laptop (a relatively new P4/2Ghz/1GB-RAM). It's Mac OS X that has taken a leap forward in this area. The PDF and OpenGL based graphics rendering in Mac OS X gives an overall feel of speed, powerful, and stability that makes Windows and Linux feel like they're made of paper mache in comparison.


    I always thought that Tk/Motif apps were the most stable. The uglier the UI, the more stable the app IMO. That said, Gnome2 looks fine to me. I couldn't think of anything I'd want improved (well, how about not doing 20 round-trips to open a menu. That would be nice.)

    IMO, Gnome2 is much nicer than Windows any day, and mostly better than MacOS X (because Debian is about $300 less expensive than MacOS).

  • still sucks (Score:4, Insightful)

    by coaxial ( 28297 ) on Sunday February 08, 2004 @06:28PM (#8221223) Homepage
    This article just highlights that nothing really has changed in the Nautilus/Gnome world.

    Development on how to take 31337 screenshots is given a priority, when screenshots are taken often, if at all. (I think I've taken 1 in the past three years, and that was done with xv's "grab window".) Screenshots simply aren't something worth spending time on.

    Nautilus still sucks. Yea! It defaults to selecting everything before the extention! It STILL FOUR DAMN YEARS LATER doesn't support icon arranging. You either have them all messed up, or flush left in alphabetical order. What the hell? It still seems slow, and doesn't have decent plugins. I'm not a KDE guy, but Konqueror is heads and shoulders above Nautilus.

    Nautilus sucks and needs to be replaced. Hopefully Velocity [sourceforge.net] or Endeavour2 [twu.net] will mature enough to actually replace that dog.

  • Earlier versions better (Score:3, Insightful)

    by leviramsey ( 248057 ) * on Sunday February 08, 2004 @11:10PM (#8222846) Journal

    What's with the change in panels for GNOME 2.4, for instance?

    I used to have a floating panel that was set to only take up as much space as the applet (the workspace switcher) within it took up. I upgraded to GNOME 2.4 and lost floating panels. It's not even like with other GNOME feature removals, where they kept it in the form of a hidden GConf setting that no one really knows a damn thing about (since there's precisely zero documentation as to what keys do what, save for examining the source).

    It's still better than KDE, but some of this crap is really annoying.

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