Feature request: browsing filesystem in gnome "computer" menu

[poptones]

-The main problem is that people don't get it.-



Ain't that the truth. And FWIW I don't use the folder trees myself most
of the time - I just click, click, click to get where I want to go...
just like surfng the web. 



And that's the problem. When I'm surfing a site I DON'T WANT a new
window to open on every d at mn click. I mean, how many people do? To a
great many of us this sort of behavior is beyond obnoxious - it's
exceedingly rude from a design standpoint, yet here's the gnome people
telling us "we just need to be educated" as if we're a bunch of
ignorant hicks who are incapable of knowing what we need to do the job.
What if you went to a website that opened a brand new browser window on
every stupid click, then when you wrote the webmaster he replied with
"well, you just don't understand how to use the interface?"



I could actually love the spatial browser if they would allow you to
turn off this "feature" but you can't. You can change the gnome
preference that says "open new window for every click" but either in
spatial or browser mode I can't see a lick of difference between set
and unset; no matter the setting, left clicking a folder in spatial
mode results in a new window opening, and left clicking a folder in
browser mode doesn't. Now, since we already have a button to select
spatial/browser, how can the very presence of this second, apparently
useless setting NOT be a bug?



The other thing missing (and the gnome discussions I have seen on this
point inevitably end with a gnome developer saying "that exposes the
tree, and that's not what spatial's about") is providing navigational
links. 



Now, Netscape has had navigational  buttons since, like, 1994 and I
have never seen a newbie going "what's that for?" You have a button
labelled "back" with an arrow pointing to the left - it's about as
intuitive as it can get. Yet "spatial mode" doesn't provide us this
most basic tool. Instead we have to "learn" to love to drag and select
(from THE TREE they are trying to "hide") via this stupid drop down
menu. It's not more usable, it's just different for the sake of being
different. It's like the gnome corps was suddenly taken over by a bunch
of frustrated webmasters who, in reality, don't understand the first
thing about "usability" they just want to be engineers and change
things. 



It's the exact same mentality that causes every single website to have
drop down menus for states - we're not smart enough to know what state
we live in, it has to be "selected." So instead of typing two
characters and pressing tab again I get to go back to my mouse and
spend ten seconds hunting and selecting my choice from a ridiculously
long menu.



Anyway, I didn't mean that first post to be such a rant and here now
I've done another one. If anyone knows how to make nautilus use spatial
mode and NOT open a new window on every left mouse click, how to instead
make it open a new window on every MIDDLE mouse click (just like
Nautilus, Netscape, Opera... imagine that, huh?), and how to make
navigational buttons appear on the top line alongside the "file edit
view" menu then I would certainly consider you my new best friend and
promise I would never rant about "spatial mode" again - ever.


-- 
poptones