Gnome’s Spatial Nautilus
After playing with Gnome 2.6 for a day, I have some comments about the new spatial Nautilus:
It loads a lot faster and is more responsive than Nautilus 2.4. I’m unsure if this is a result of the new spatial approach or just optimized code introduced with Gnome 2.6. I guess I’ll have to do some more tinkering to find out.
The constant talk of window ‘clutter’ is really overblown. My ThinkPad’s resolution maxes out at 1024×768, and I’m not annoyed by all the windows that Nautilus opens up. In fact, I find them handy: moving files back and forth is a lot easier. If you really can’t live with them, either minimize them or use a simple shortcut.
The improved Gnome VFS support is really nice (even though the head developer goes to Stanford =). However, it’s not too intuitive: you have to use a menu option to open up a new remote location. A better idea would have been to put a “Create New Connection” icon under Network. Otherwise, it works pretty well, though there are a few bugs: the password window refuses to die if you choose ‘Cancel’ (I’m not sure if this is a Debian specific bug).
Not having a location bar does have its downfalls. I usually disable the display of hidden files and directories; if I didn’t, navigating my home directory would be hell. However, I often place files in hidden directories, especially on remote servers. Consequently, when using the spatial browser, I have to go through a few menu options every time I just want to navigate to these hidden directories. With the browser Nautilus, I could have just appended the name of the directory to the current location.
I’m still in support of the spatial Nautilus, though. I admit that the idea has a few minor downfalls, but I’m willing to live with them; the benefits are too great. Working with files in a GUI has never been easier.
Oh, a person who I TB’ed responded to my earlier post. I understand their point of view, but what’s the point of forward and back buttons when the windows are left open (well, if you didn’t close the parent). Unfortunately, I haven’t had the oppurtunity to try Mac OS X. Maybe I’ll play with an iMac the next time I’m at the OCF.