This might be of interest to you, it's quite nifty: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1065369
On Fri, Dec 4, 2009 at 14:30, Brent Foor <brentf...@gmail.com> wrote: > As far as a messy desktop goes I'm in the same boat. In fact that is one of > the reasons i love the stack idea. the papers on my desktop ain't evenly > spaced out in a grid i pile related things together. basically I'm mentally > tagging them. I love the idea of being able to lasso a group of files and > have them stack on my desktop i could then tag making it basicly a sexy > looking folder. If i want to see the files in the stack i click on them and > the rest of the desktop darkens and my files explode out to a grid. i can > also search for the tag in the overlay. > > ...at least thats how i imagine the stack idea. > > Foor > > On Fri, Dec 4, 2009 at 12:35 PM, Cosimo Cecchi <cosi...@gnome.org> wrote: > >> On Fri, 2009-12-04 at 10:28 +0100, Alexander Larsson wrote: >> >> > As a start, here is what the gnome-shell design docs say on the desktop: >> >> [cut] >> >> Right, I already read that paragraph, and I do not completely agree with >> it. IRL, the top of my desk is as messy as my desktop, I'm fine with it, >> and I know many people who have even more mess on it, and are fine with >> it too ;) >> I don't want to say that confusion should be a goal, but different >> people develop different mental patterns when it comes to look for >> things, and I think the desktop is a perfectly flexible space for this. >> >> Removing the ease to save files on the desktop seems a bit to me like >> forcing a pattern to people, and a waste of incredibly useful space >> (unless we are going to reintroduce something like Piles, but I'll >> comment on that later on). >> Sure, we could do a lot better than we do now for people who want their >> desktop to be tidy (ensure we never overlap icons would be a good >> start :)), but these are just implementation bugs IMO. >> >> > Yes, its quick to reach, but so is the activities overview (press the >> > windows key or move the mouse to the top-left corner. It all depends on >> > why you want to reach the desktop. If its for something like launching >> > an app/location then doing that via the activities overview is as >> > efficient as the desktop (and its an advantage imho to only have one >> > consistent way to do this). So, this argument is only valid if you're >> > doing something you can't do on the activities overview. >> >> I agree with you for the application case (though I'd like even more a >> gnome-do-like launcher). I'm not so sure about opening documents. Recent >> files and files that are currently being saved on the desktop might >> conceptually overlap, but they do not always do. So, unless we're going >> to have a storage-like place in the overview (which IMO brings to a >> problem, see some next paragraph), this is a big change in the >> interaction model. >> >> > It is very big, but its often covered and its limited in space (and thus >> > doesn't scale). Its also problematic in that its fixed size changes when >> > the resolution changes meaning you might "lose" files when that >> > happens. >> > >> > The main advantage to the desktop is really that its a logical default >> > storage location for starting something and for temporary things that is >> > easy to reach. If we remove the desktop the likely place that things >> > like this would be done is the home directory, but thats not as nice as >> > its full of stuff thats always there, so you can't easily clean it up or >> > get an overview of only the stuff you've temporarily created. >> >> Yes, I agree. >> >> > Ideally it should be as easy to reach these with gnome-shell as the >> > desktop, and if its not we should instead fix it. Using the activities >> > overview its pretty easy to reach a mounted volume as they are listed on >> > the left. >> >> I think this brings up another issue: considering that most of the space >> in the activities overview is taken by the workspaces view, we have to >> deal with a limited free room there. On my Thinkpad X60, which has a >> 1024x768 resolution, the activities view looks quite crowded, and we >> have to carefully consider which things are worth to put in there. >> Having recent documents + applications + search + volumes + a file >> storage place seems too much to me. You could smartly hide/expand some >> items, but this implies more clicks for the user to reach a target. The >> desktop as it is now, instead, seems to nicely fit the purpose of >> showing volumes and working files. >> >> This could be an issue in netbooks as well, where a 1024x600 screen >> resolution seems to be standard. >> >> > However, for the case of a newly mounted volume we should probably >> > integrate with the shell notification system so that plugging in a cd >> > will show you some notification that this is now availible, letting you >> > quickly click on it to open the mounted location. >> >> Agreed. This is orthogonal to the desktop though IMHO. >> >> > I'm always worried about adding non-file things to the nautilus views. A >> > lot of people has historically used gnome-vfs modules + nautilus to >> > create "lists" of things (fonts, themes and whatnot). This is almost >> > always a bad idea. All of the nautilus UI is specialized at showing >> > files and their properties. And the operations available on items expect >> > them to generally act like normal files. Adding other types of objects >> > always leads to strange behaviour due to this. (Not to mention that a >> > custom list dialog could contain the special features needed to make >> > listing the new type of object better.) >> > >> > Additionally I think its kinda unexpected to open the file management >> > application and have its search return a preference dialog. Especially >> > with the new focus on "file management" rather than being a shell. >> > >> > However, it would be cool for instance to have the search results in >> > gnome-shell have a link in the "files" section of the results that >> > opened up a nautilus search. >> > >> > It would also be nice if the search result picked up things like custom >> > icons and emblems from nautilus. And if the files had context menus with >> > things like "open with other...", and "show in file manager" operations. >> >> I agree with you here. >> >> > What do you think of my proposal about piles? >> >> I'm not a big fan of auto-hiding/sliding interfaces, and there's already >> a near hot corner :) >> I'd rather either see them on the desktop itself, like a small file >> view, or in another keystroke-triggered layer over the applications, so >> you can easily DnD to/from them. Also, I have to think more about it, >> but we could associate them with a name and make it real folders on the >> filesystem (with symlinks?), under ~/Desktop, with a default one which >> is ~/Desktop itself. >> >> > > By the way, if we're going to stop drawing the desktop, what would be >> > > drawn on it and who would be responsible for that? >> > >> > If nautilus just stops this then the default will be for >> > gnome-settings-daemon to set the desktop background and for X to render >> > it. However, if gnome-shell instead managed it we could do nice things >> > like having different backgrounds for different workspaces. >> >> I think I did not make myself understood with my last question: what >> would be on the desktop after Nautilus stops drawing it? Would it just >> be empty? >> By the way, there's a patchset for libgnome/Nautilus to handle different >> backgrounds right now :) >> >> Cheers, >> >> Cosimo >> >> _______________________________________________ >> gnome-shell-list mailing list >> gnome-shell-l...@gnome.org >> http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-shell-list >> > > > -- > nautilus-list mailing list > nautilus-list@gnome.org > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/nautilus-list >
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