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Re: Nautilus' Context Menus Getting Out of Hand

 

Hello,

Thank you for your analysis. Here is some feedback from myself, I hope you'll find it useful.

On 24/06/12 09:35, Jonathan Meek wrote:
*"Open with [default program here]"/"Open With >"
Why do we have these two items? If the user wants to launch with the
default program they can just launch it by normal clicks. The expanded
"open with >" option is all that is really necessary at this point in
time in case a user wants to launch the file/program with a non-default
action.

For me, the "Open with <name>" has been useful to know which application would have been opened by default. Dropping it from the menu is fine for me, but what I do need is the ability to recognize the default application under "Open With >". Making it bold should be fine.

*Cut/Copy
Not much to say here, need to keep an eye on where there is duplication
of effort, however.

*Make Link
I would argue against the need for this item, but can see its
usefulness. I say keep it for now, but keep an eye on how useful it remains.

I personally use the dash to look for my files and folders. But Unity and Gnome Shell are great at showing the files you are looking for. So, in my opinion, there's absolutely no need to create links to make navigation faster.

*Rename
Necessary, but same deal as Cut/Copy.

*"Copy To >"/"Move To >"
These two are a mild convenience that I don't think is worth the wasted
space. Besides, I can't, as a user, define a new place to add to these
categories. And that picture I right-clicked on? No option to send it to
/home/ME/pictures, so these items sort of explain themselves out of the
picture in my eyes. I quick drop to /home or /home/me/Desktop isn't
really worth those two lines. (Also, weird bug I noticed: for some
reason the move to sub menu was unshadowed and caused the right-click
menu to expand. Not sure if just me or what.)

Never used such options and, as you already said, they are too limited to be useful.

*Move to Trash...
I couldn't live without it.

*"Resize Icon"/"Restore Icon's Original Size" [DESKTOP ONLY]
Why do these even exist? Nautilus' desktop is already unruly enough
without having this absolutely useless feature. How many people actually
resize any icons on their desktop? (Another bug: After testing what
Resize did, I went to click the restore option which appeared
insensitive, but allowed me to click it anyway. Will need repro.)

*Revert to Previous Version...
Will someone please tell me why this option is there for me? I do NOT
have Deja Dup set up. Yet it's decided to hook into my menus and ask me
if I want to revert a file that it isn't versioning? I think Deja Dup
needs to have some thinking of when to expose such functions to users
instead of just sticking it in because it is there.

*Compress...
Useful in my eyes. Would love others input on this one.

Very useful for me too. Also, the tool for the compression is really tiny and uncomplicated.

*"Ubuntu One >"
So singularly focused. Are we proposing with this behaviour everyone
should just drop their own items into the menu? If I've a dropbox and U1
account, will my menu be another usless item? OS X, from what I can tell
handles this situation much more gracefully with its "Share..." option.
I think it would be much better to have this and have programs hook into
that instead of populating my menus. Share covers the gamut from social
to cloud.

Personally, I'd prefer to manage all my sharing settings from a generic and centralized 'sharing tool', rather than from Nautilus. (With 'generic' I mean service-independent.) This would give me both more control and more information about what's going on, as I take privacy seriously. However that's probably out of the scope of this thread...

It should be noticed that folders have already a 'Sharing Options' item inside their context menu. But it's very unintuitive: there are no information about where the share will be published, who will see it and how to use it. If I remember correctly, that option creates a Samba share, but I may be wrong.

*Send To...
I'll be honest, i've never used this and upon clicking it to test what
it was, I still have no idea what the hell it is. It can't be too
terribly useful? Input needed.

I was aware of the existence of this option and its effects, however I have really never used it. For me, it's a waste of space.

*Properties
Axe it! Oh, wait, nevermind.

Whew, quite a bit there... What are we looking at now?

Open With >
---------------
Cut
Copy
Move to Trash
---------------
Make Link...
Rename
---------------
Compress...
---------------
Share...
Properties

Fewer submenus, less noise, more usefulness. Of course, with the
"Share..." option requiring more work than less, I doubt that one will
come to fruition, though I do find it much more graceful. I'd appreciate
feedback on those areas my post has been lacking. And before we start in
on the "I use this feature, so it has to stay" think first if we have it
elsewhere, how many others will really use it (hence why Compress is an
iffy option), how hard it is to do elsewhere, versus cluttering the menu
further, etc.






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