[haiku-development] Interface (was: r21394 ... )

Philippe Houdoin <philippe.houdoin@xxxxxxx> wrote:
 ... 
> AFAIK, OpenTracker's BFilePanel already offer this recent
> files feature. Maybe it's not an obvious enough feature for 
> end-user yet. Maybe it needs to make it more obvious to 
> everyone to use and rely on this recent-files list feature 
> *there*, which would void all needs for Open recent list 
> submenu...

Yeah.. I had almost forgotten about the filepanel menubar. I suppose a 
tabbed file panel is too much of a change for R1, but one could at 
least increase the visibility of the recent documents, in the Open-
panel by making that a menu of its own. 

(BTW, I wouldn't mind a volumes menu in the filepanel, listing the 
currently mounted volumes, with drilldown subs, and the same Mount-
submenu found in Tracker, as the top or bottom item, with a separator 
inbetween.)

To avoid confusion between the File menu, which holds primarily editing 
options, and a menu containing Recent Files, I suggest something like 
this:
[ Edit | Files | Folders | Volumes ]

These would not be that great, IMO
[ File | Files | Folders | Volumes ]
[ File | Recent | Folders | Volumes ] 
[ File | Recent | Favorites | Volumes ]

Or maybe
[ Files | Folders | Volumes | Edit ]

The legacy order
[ File | Edit | ... ]

Tracker windows list most of the editing commands in the File menu, so 
it would create inconsistency within OpenTracker to add a menu called 
Edit in the second position, even though it makes sense in most other 
applications. (*sigh*)

If all else fails, one could move the recent files from under the 
Favorites menu to the File menu. It doesn't increase visibility, but 
it's slightly more logical to list recent files under File than under 
Favorites, the latter being primarily location-oriented. Plus, recent 
files are not necessarily favorite files.

The good thing about tabs is that we don't have to adhere to the 
menubar File, Edit, ... order of things. Just Search, Browse, Recent, 
Favorites, .... Each tab designed for its purpose.

> Being able to search file from BFilePanel is a missing feature,
> indeed. Spotligth have it. We must have it too! 
> ;-)

Honestly, I think search makes sense in the filepanels. It's not 
entirely uncommon to stop browsing in an Open-panel and go search 
instead. 

When saving one might want to find the location where some related 
document is already stored. I can't measure all the times I've saved to 
the desktop and moved the files by hand. Or the times I've dragged a 
file from an open folder into a filepanel to change its current 
directory. 

Tagging and queries on tags (well, attributes), is another good reason 
for a more versatile file panel interface, IMO.

Sorry for the GlassElevator talk. :/

/Jonas.

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