Nautilus List View as Default

[Allan Caeg]

Nautilus has three views: Icon View, List View, and Compact View. GNOME's default (correct me if I'm wrong) and other distros is the Icon View. Historically, this has been the most conventional view as it is the default for Finder and older versions of Windows Explorer. However, Windows 7 (I just don't know about Vista) has a new default Windows Explorer view. They are using something similar to the List View. I find it more convenient to use that because it shows a lot of information and it makes it easy to sort files and folders because there are columns. 

What do you think about this? Don't you think that the List view is more usable and deserves to be the default option? 

Best Regards,

Allan Caeg

https://launchpad.net/~wersdaluv

http://twitter.com/AllanCaeg

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[Dokuro-2]

for the way it behaves with the mouse in the selecction of multiple
files, i will go with the icon or compact view over the list since the
information that it shoes is looked over by most people, and it does
not leave any open space to click and drag a selection square making
you rely on the shift and control keys.

On Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 8:50 AM, Allan Caeg <allancaeg@...> wrote:

> Nautilus has three views: Icon View, List View, and Compact View. GNOME's
> default (correct me if I'm wrong) and other distros is the Icon View.
> Historically, this has been the most conventional view as it is the default
> for Finder and older versions of Windows Explorer. However, Windows 7 (I
> just don't know about Vista) has a new default Windows Explorer view. They
> are using something similar to the List View. I find it more convenient to
> use that because it shows a lot of information and it makes it easy to sort
> files and folders because there are columns.
> What do you think about this? Don't you think that the List view is more
> usable and deserves to be the default option?
> Best Regards,
> Allan Caeg
> https://launchpad.net/~wersdaluv
> http://twitter.com/AllanCaeg
> _______________________________________________
> Usability mailing list
> Usability@...
> http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/usability
>
>

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[Karl Lattimer-2]

Please read notes at end of email;

On Tue, 2009-10-13 at 10:32 -0430, Dokuro wrote:

> for the way it behaves with the mouse in the selecction of multiple
> files, i will go with the icon or compact view over the list since the
> information that it shoes is looked over by most people, and it does
> not leave any open space to click and drag a selection square making
> you rely on the shift and control keys.
>
> On Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 8:50 AM, Allan Caeg <allancaeg@...> wrote:
> > Nautilus has three views: Icon View, List View, and Compact View. GNOME's
> > default (correct me if I'm wrong) and other distros is the Icon View.
> > Historically, this has been the most conventional view as it is the default
> > for Finder and older versions of Windows Explorer. However, Windows 7 (I
> > just don't know about Vista) has a new default Windows Explorer view. They
> > are using something similar to the List View. I find it more convenient to
> > use that because it shows a lot of information and it makes it easy to sort
> > files and folders because there are columns.
> > What do you think about this? Don't you think that the List view is more
> > usable and deserves to be the default option?

Compact is my preference, however I'd also like to add;

GNOME does not, (at least as far as I'm aware), change defaults in order
to follow microsoft or apple. Changes should be made when there is a
solid reasoning behind them.

Giving you more detail is the antithesis of a reason for making a change
to something on the grounds of usability. Usability is about making
things easier to use - easier to understand and interact with. The icon
view and the compact view both show enough information regarding files
for them to be used as a default, advantage of the larger icon footprint
being one major reason for retaining either of these as the default.

If you would like to change your default view this can be done in
preferences however forcing this change on the wider GNOME user base may
cause an unwanted backlash.

BR,
 K

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[Calum Benson]

On Tue, 2009-10-13 at 10:32 -0430, Dokuro wrote:
> for the way it behaves with the mouse in the selecction of multiple
> files, i will go with the icon or compact view over the list since the
> information that it shoes is looked over by most people, and it does
> not leave any open space to click and drag a selection square making
> you rely on the shift and control keys.

True, that's one long-standing bug that would certainly count against it
becoming the default, I think.

This is another instance where it would be nice to be able to distribute
an instrumented version of nautilus to users during development cycles,
which could report back (with their permission, of course) which view
they were using most of the time, amongst other things.

(Although in reality, people probably use different views for different
types of folder, so in this case the raw data might not be all that
useful on its own.)

Cheeri,
Calum.

--
CALUM BENSON, Interaction Designer     Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum.benson@...            OpenSolaris Desktop Team
http://blogs.sun.com/calum             [phone]

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems

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