unity-design team mailing list archive

[Dylan McCall <dylanmccall@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 2010-12-16 7:34 AM, "femorandeira" <femorandeira@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>
> On Tue, 14 Dec 2010 14:14:12 +0100, Roberto Guido <bob4job@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
>>
>> I think enforcing "search" against "browsing" could be a good
>> compromise [...]
>>
>> If massively used and integrated in
>> the DE, the user could forget folders and just search what needed from
>> time to time instead of browsing his own folder hierarchy. [...]
>>
>> A Spotlight-like application can completely substitute the file
>> manager
>
>
> Then why are people still using the file browser much more often than
> searching for their documents, even when the filesystem has remain
> basically the same and search tools have kept on improving?
>
>
> Felipe

This happens because a great deal of cruft has made the file browser an
everyday thing instead of a tool for people who care about raw files.
Applications are connected together by files, and with today's file chooser
dialogs we directly expose that to users.

Want to share a photo you organized in Shotwell with one of your IM
contacts?
Too bad: it is going to turn into a "file" at some point, with all the
limitations, generalizations and implementation details that entails.

Because of that, the beautiful abstraction provided by Shotwell ends up
being a detriment because people end up forced to think in "files" whether
they like it or not.

Dylan

(And I have been slowly working on a solution to this; blog post coming
soon, finally, I think)