Suggestion Next Release

[Dimi Paun]

On Thu, 2008-03-27 at 09:17 -0400, Jesse Keating wrote:
> I have "real" filesystem stuff, I just make proper use of when to
> double click and when to shift-double click.

And you do that because the spacial concept (while interesting), is
broken as a UI metaphor for folders.

Spacial makes a lot of sense for "objects": computer, Network, a disk.
Those have real-world corespondents, and people relate to that. However,
for most people, folders are seen as a _path_ to the object that you
want to work with. (duh, we even call it a "path" ...)

Any sane engineering/UI design/consistency principle that was listed in
this discussion suggests that going with a non-spacial default is the
only reasonable thing to do. Not only would we please a lot more users,
we wouldn't be violating the principle of least surprise, but from the
use cases listed, it seems that even the spacial-proponents would be
just as happy.

Folks, this is not a corner case -- it's the first thing new users bang
their heads on. And it creates a bad impression. It's an interesting
idea, it had 4 years to prove itself, it failed. Listing all sorts of
theoretical reasons why it _should_ be better is just mental
masturbation. 

If you think people like, let's run a poll on Slashdot...

-- 
Dimi Paun <dimi at lattica.com>
Lattica, Inc.