unity-design team mailing list archive

[Jo-Erlend Schinstad <joerlend.schinstad@xxxxxxxxx>]

I really love Zeitgeist. The last two weeks, I've been working
on some files and folders on an external harddisk. And I was
a little surprised that the favorite folders in the dash weren't
being updated, since I navigated there many times each day,
and far more than those that are presented there. When I
disconnect the disk, the files on that disk is hidden from the
Files and folders lense, and when I connect it, they become
visible. I love that behaviour and I would like that to work well
for folders as well.

Then I discovered that the favorite folders in the dash are
actually Nautilus bookmarks. I've always loved those bookmarks
but now I found that it annoyed me. I'd much prefer the most
frequently used folders from Zeitgeist, but then it occurred
to me that it isn't really necessary to choose. It would be easy
to say that the first five bookmarks in Nautilus should be equal
to the five most frequently used folders from Zeitgeist. The
rest of the bookmarks would be those that are defined in
Nautilus, for instance.

One of the big benefits of this, would be that the most relevant
folders would always be available in Nautilus and in the Dash.
For instance, you have an external harddrives with lots of files
and directories, but you use some of them far more frequently
than all others. Wouldn't it be nice if those folders automatically
became available as favorite folders in the Dash and as bookmarks
in Nautilus? Similarly, when you remove the external disk, then
the bookmarks disappear from Nautilus since the folders they
point to are no longer available. The most frequently used
available folders would be available as bookmarks instead.

In other words: it is safe to assume that you connect an external
disk because you're going to do something with its content. So,
the most frequently used files and folders on external disks should
be given priority ahead of the most frequently used local content.
When the external disk is no longer available, then there is no
point of displaying bookmarks to them at all, since that would
only give you an error in any case.

Perhaps the average connection time of the external data sources
could also play a role in this? Some people use an external disk
just as an extra disk, so it doesn't make sense to give it any higher
priority than the local disks. A disk that doesn't stay connected
for longer periods of time would be more likely to be of more
immediate use to you, so it should get a higher priority to make
it's contents more easily available in the Dash and in Nautilus.
If done correctly, I think it could challenge the auto-open feature
since the content you're after would be so easily accessible.

I think Zeitgeist provides these features as is, so it would only
be a matter of syncing Nautilus against it. That would also make
the Dash automatically display the "correct" favorite folders.

What do you think?

Jo-Erlend Schinstad