I think the dash is revolutionary compared to the old way of finding files and applications. It presents the user with a much simpler and more intuitive way to get to what they're looking for. But it's useless to me if I can't really use it to find stuff, or if I can only find a small subset of my home content. Right now it's really nothing more than a novelty, and not very useful for files and folders. I hope that changes in the near future. IMHO, the concept is so far ahead of what MAC and Windows currently offer. It's really unity's biggest selling point., but it has to actually work.
The solution is really quite simple, if you can take your dev hat off for a second and see it from a user's standpoint. Show recent files and folders first, with a button to press to do a deeper search. The button needs to be obvious and visible, not hidden away on the "filter results" menu. In fact, it could be a few buttons, e.g. "one week, one month, 6 months, one year, show all." Much like a browser history. You could put them all in a drop down menu. You could wait to implement everything through Zeitgeist, but why not offer a temporary fix using Linux's built in search functions. Use locate first, and then keep going with find. If locate finds what the user's looking for, the search stops when they click on it. That way, potential users won't just dismiss Unity as beta software and go elsewhere. They may not be willing to give it another try for 12.04. Especially after they spend 1-2k on a Macbook. I have several potential users lined up, but I'm hesitant because of stuff like this. The idea is to wow them with how convenient and intuitive it is, rather than to disappoint and frustrate. -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Zeitgeist Framework Team, which is subscribed to Zeitgeist Data-Sources. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/646724 Title: not all files show up in files-place Status in Unity: Triaged Status in Unity 2D: Triaged Status in Unity Files Lens: Triaged Status in Zeitgeist Framework: Invalid Status in Zeitgeist Data-Sources: Invalid Status in “unity-lens-files” package in Ubuntu: Triaged Status in “unity-place-files” package in Ubuntu: Triaged Status in “zeitgeist” package in Ubuntu: Fix Released Bug description: The Unity interface, with its files-place feature for user access to files/documents etc. is really great. However there is a problem since the search feature relies wholly on zeitgeist (AFAIK), in the zeitgeist is not tracking everything. E.g. in openoffice, I create a new file (or open an existing one) from within openoffice itself. This file does not show up, presumably because openoffice does not (yet) push its activity to zeitgeist. I guess any number of other programs could suffer the same problem. For the average user, this is surely going to be confusing. They will create documents via legitimate means ('New ...' buttons in their applications), and then expect to be able to search for them in the Unity files-place interface. To avoid this confusion I would guess there really needs to be a filesystem watcher on the home dir (or key folders within it) so that zeitgeist is aware of activity caused by non-zeitgeist-aware applications. To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity/+bug/646724/+subscriptions _______________________________________________ Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~zeitgeist Post to : zeitgeist@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~zeitgeist More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
