Directions for GNOME 3.0

Posted Oct 30, 2008 8:52 UTC (Thu) by NAR (subscriber, #1313)
In reply to: Directions for GNOME 3.0 by paulmfoster
Parent article: Directions for GNOME 3.0

Users who can't remember where they put things are simply lacking the discipline of using a filesystem.

I'm afraid that covers about 99% of casual users. Most of them can't use the "find" function as well. I think most of the improvements mentioned in the article are not useful for the poweruser (e.g. it's slow to startup an application from an application menu - I have a shortcut for often-used applications and use a shell to start not so often used applications), but could be useful for that other 99%. Of course, it all depends on how good the implementation will be, but it should be configurable, in order to not get into the way of powerusers.

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Directions for GNOME 3.0

Posted Oct 30, 2008 15:05 UTC (Thu) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (1 responses)

It should end up benefiting the power users..

I know I lose were I place files all the time.

I use 'find' a lot to look for files I've made. The most often used command on my system is going to be 'ls'. I don't think that I am unusual for this.

So that's a big reduction in usability for me. I frequently drop to shell for all sorts of trivial things like that. Slows me down somewhat.

Having the ability to see files grouped by dates would actually be very useful since at work I typically see my time fractured. Over a week's time I may be working on 4 or 5 different things, some tasks taking short amount of time, other tasks taking several months. Often they are not directly related. I try to organize stuff by folders and whatnot, but I forget the names of folders and end up with a lot of clutter in my home directory.

I maybe working on something for few days time and end up getting side tracked for quite a while with a different emergency or new, more important task. Often I will simply lose my place and forget exactly were I left off. Being able to go back and see what files and programs I was using a while ago would help a lot.

Maybe programmers are used to having very focused, long-term tasks, were you are using the same stuff day in and day out, but that's not true for lots of people.

Directions for GNOME 3.0

Posted Nov 4, 2008 9:20 UTC (Tue) by stevem (subscriber, #1512) [Link]

The only time I tend to lose files is when GUI programs bend over backwards to hide where they've saved them to. Firefox is a real pain for this type of behaviour - I tell it to save a download and then I have to go looking for it. Openoffice always drops me back into my home directory when I ask it to save a new file, even if I've started it in the right directory. Painful.