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Bug 147642 - Files should have tooltips
Files should have tooltips
Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX
Product: nautilus
Classification: Core
Component: general
unspecified
Other Linux
: Normal enhancement
: ---
Assigned To: Nautilus Maintainers
Nautilus Maintainers
: 155151 158596 321674 499531 565341 597245 (view as bug list)
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
 
Reported: 2004-07-15 11:37 UTC by Jorn Baayen
Modified: 2012-09-05 23:20 UTC
See Also:
GNOME target: ---
GNOME version: Unversioned Enhancement


Attachments
Patch to give a tooltip for nautilus (24.79 KB, patch)
2008-05-13 14:20 UTC, Long Gao
none Details | Review
Autoreconf and configure script (1.54 KB, application/octet-stream)
2008-05-13 14:26 UTC, Long Gao
  Details
Tooltip patch ported to nautilus-2.22.2 (18.46 KB, patch)
2008-05-20 08:49 UTC, Long Gao
none Details | Review
Tooltip patch for nautilus-2.22.2 (19.16 KB, patch)
2008-05-22 09:09 UTC, Long Gao
none Details | Review
Image tooltip (175.97 KB, image/png)
2008-05-27 08:14 UTC, David Prieto
  Details
Audio tooltip (117.70 KB, image/png)
2008-05-27 08:15 UTC, David Prieto
  Details
Video tooltip (143.09 KB, image/png)
2008-05-27 08:16 UTC, David Prieto
  Details
Simple quick patch to show image preview (19.41 KB, patch)
2008-05-27 13:25 UTC, Long Gao
none Details | Review
Add image preview to list view (19.64 KB, patch)
2008-05-28 01:24 UTC, Long Gao
none Details | Review

Description Jorn Baayen 2004-07-15 11:37:44 UTC
It would be cool if file/folder icons had tooltips. For example, for a folder it
would contain the number of files it contains, and its size, for an ogg file it
would contain artist/album/title + size, etc.
Comment 1 Tom von Schwerdtner 2004-10-12 01:28:52 UTC
+1.  The one thing I like in KDE that GNOME does not have is the rich tooltips.
 For example hovering over an image in Konqueror will give you a larger
thumbnail, which is great if you just want a little more information about the
image.  I know not everyone would like this in GNOME, but I think wider use of
tooltips for nautilus is definately something that should be considered even if
it is only for basic metadata like directory size (of contents) or (as with
#155151 that I just filed) the notes that have been entered into the properties
dialog.
Comment 2 Martin Wehner 2005-01-29 20:37:09 UTC
*** Bug 158596 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 3 Martin Wehner 2005-01-29 20:37:54 UTC
*** Bug 155151 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 4 Martin Wehner 2005-01-29 20:40:22 UTC
Multiple requests, confirming.
Comment 5 Mike Miller 2005-07-08 20:07:55 UTC
Yes, I agree.  

Windows XP does this also, and it is very handy to get less often used
information, without cluttering the window by displaying it for every file.

Support for various user and system set metadata and extended attributes would
be excellent as well.
Comment 6 Christian Neumair 2005-08-01 12:15:00 UTC
My idea would be to have a NautilusTooltipsProvider interface to
libnautilus-extension which can be used to gain information on the currently
displayed file.
Comment 7 Christian Neumair 2005-08-01 12:18:44 UTC
Maybe we could also somehow use the NautilusColumnProvider interface, or
introduce a completely new  key-value based provider framework for metadata
which will be used for the columns and for tooltips.
Comment 8 Sebastien Bacher 2005-11-19 14:13:27 UTC
*** Bug 321674 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 9 Stefano 2005-11-19 14:14:21 UTC
on mouse over will be appear a little + over the icon (or another symbol). 
When you click it we have the tooltip with the notes. This could useful for
desktop icon and for nautilus when it isn't in a browser mode.
Comment 10 Kevin Duffus 2006-03-28 16:56:56 UTC
Has there been any progress on getting this bug/feature request resolved?! I'd love to see this feature implemented.
Comment 11 Kevin Duffus 2006-09-16 19:51:39 UTC
ping
Comment 12 David Prieto 2007-06-02 07:39:54 UTC
That would be a great idea.
Comment 13 Cosimo Cecchi 2008-01-13 13:28:03 UTC
*** Bug 499531 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 14 Cosimo Cecchi 2008-01-13 13:28:40 UTC
Here's a mockup from dup bug #499531

http://bugzilla.gnome.org/attachment.cgi?id=99615
Comment 15 Jakub 'Livio' Rusinek 2008-01-13 13:49:43 UTC
Version should be changed.
Comment 16 Long Gao 2008-05-13 14:20:26 UTC
Created attachment 110855 [details] [review]
Patch to give a tooltip for nautilus

To show tooltips for nautilus files and desktop icon, with information such as file size, date modified, free space of volume, and type so on. One should set gconf /apps/nautilus/icon_view/captions for additional interesting informations. Future development includes disk space used by directories.
Comment 17 Long Gao 2008-05-13 14:26:25 UTC
Created attachment 110856 [details]
Autoreconf and configure script

One should run this script from inside nautilus source tree after having applied the patch, since this patch modified the Makefile.am and need to be autoreconfed.
Comment 18 A. Walton 2008-05-13 14:38:09 UTC
Thanks for your work on this. Some quick points: The patch has a bit of noise that probably can be removed (I'm not sure why the translation was included, nor why you removed some of the code in fm-icon-container.c), but the biggest problem here is that you're using GnomeVFS, which we have removed from Nautilus since 2.21.

http://library.gnome.org/devel/gio/stable/ for the GIO reference manual.
Comment 19 David Prieto 2008-05-13 14:59:15 UTC
Thanks for working on this bug, Long. I hope those issues will get ironed out and this can get into nautilus.
Comment 20 Long Gao 2008-05-13 15:22:29 UTC
Thanks for your review. 

I tried to use as much code as I can from nautilus itself. I found that there is a function nautilus_link_local_get_additional_text can give additional text for a file, so I used it, by eliminating some commenting lines in nautilus-link-desktop-file.c. But this made fm-icon-container.c add the long additional text to nautilus desktop link icon's display name, that is not so good looking. So I decided not to show the additional text for the nautilus desktop link icon.

The translation can be removed. I used Chinese as my native language, so I added it. 

I will try to port the patch on gio.
Comment 21 Long Gao 2008-05-13 15:29:36 UTC
Future improvements will include tooltips showing disk space used by a directory. I can show it now, but I am improving on efficiency by seeking a best opportunity to recompute the NautilusFile's deep counting.
Comment 22 Cosimo Cecchi 2008-05-13 23:40:53 UTC
I'm not sure it's a good idea to expose the directory disk space information in the tooltip. AFAIK, that is one of the things that are slow no matter what, as deep counting disk occupation is an expensive operation. I believe that's why in the list view under the "Size" column we show the number of elements in the directory instead. Maybe we should show that information in the tooltips for folders?
Comment 23 David Prieto 2008-05-14 09:06:46 UTC
Long, could you make the tooltips to show notes for files / folders that have them? That would make notes actually useful.
Comment 24 Long Gao 2008-05-15 12:47:07 UTC
(In reply to comment #23)
> Long, could you make the tooltips to show notes for files / folders that have
> them? That would make notes actually useful.

if you mean the notes that can be edited in the Notes Sidebar, I think the notes can be showed up with the tooltips. It should be allowed to choose what you wanted to be shown in the tooltips though gconf settings.
Comment 25 Long Gao 2008-05-15 13:05:25 UTC
(In reply to comment #22)
> I'm not sure it's a good idea to expose the directory disk space information in
> the tooltip. AFAIK, that is one of the things that are slow no matter what, as
> deep counting disk occupation is an expensive operation. I believe that's why
> in the list view under the "Size" column we show the number of elements in the
> directory instead. Maybe we should show that information in the tooltips for
> folders?

It is an expensive operation to deep count, so it might not be suitable to deep count all directories under "Size" column in a normal content view. But the situation is better for tooltips, since deep counting is only needed for directories you pointed your mouse to.

The next thing I am going to do is to choose a proper opportunity to recompute deep countings, because the directories' content might change. I tried to add a new signal somewhat called "disk_space_changed", like "changed" signal, to NautilsFile, to represent the chances a directory might be added or removed a file, or a file's size is changed.
Comment 26 Long Gao 2008-05-20 08:49:40 UTC
Created attachment 111208 [details] [review]
Tooltip patch ported to nautilus-2.22.2

1. use gio instead of gnome-vfs
2. patch without translation
3. use some code from nautilus-2.22.2
Comment 27 Long Gao 2008-05-22 09:09:22 UTC
Created attachment 111327 [details] [review]
Tooltip patch for nautilus-2.22.2

updated patch for nautilus-2.22.2
Comment 28 Long Gao 2008-05-23 02:52:37 UTC
I am trying to make tooltip a little more powerful,  and I think I should use native nautilus file functions instead of writting my own. I tried nautilus_file_get_string_attribute_q, which seemed to be designed to get many attributes of a nautilus file. 

But as I tried nautilus_file_get_string_attribute_q for attributes like deep_size etc, it just told me that it does not know. Could someone tell me whether this function is to be developed in the future, or I am not using it properly? Thanks!
Comment 29 Christian Neumair 2008-05-26 19:47:51 UTC
Thanks for your efforts Long Gao!

While we appreciate all your hacking efforts, I am not sure whether tooltips are really the right solution for presenting large amounts of metadata.




There seems to be another, very interesting approach:

A media bar on the side would provide a great way to give full file preview, lists metadata, ways to interact with a file etc. .

I really like the following mockup:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/njpatel/2122840167/

Neil J. Patel actually implemented something like this:
http://njpatel.blogspot.com/2007/02/nautilus-metadata-love-at-first-sight.html

It was pointed out though that a horizontal bar on the top or on the bottom of the view will take to much vertical screen space on widescreen displays.


Comment 30 Jakub 'Livio' Rusinek 2008-05-26 19:58:30 UTC
at least:

* name,
* size of file,
* contents and size for directory,
* type of file,
* icon with emblems,
& date

need to be shown in tooltip in my very humble opinion :) .
Comment 31 David Prieto 2008-05-26 20:42:59 UTC
Christian,

How close are we to implementing any of those ideas?

While we get there, I think tooltips is a fine way to show metadata. Not that I wouldn't like what appears on your mockup, but right now we have... nothing.
Comment 32 Christian Neumair 2008-05-26 20:55:33 UTC
I totally agree, tooltips are a useful and feasible feature. I also like Long Gao's basic approach.

However, before throwing code into trunk, a concept has to be written and discussed, describing which file info to show. I agree with Jakub's file info list (comment 30).

However, it may also be nice to get a preview for files which have a thumbnail (on the left hand side of the file info). However, this would require a tooltip widget rather than a text-based approach.
Comment 33 Jakub 'Livio' Rusinek 2008-05-26 22:03:04 UTC
I completely forgot about thumbnails and preview. Tooltips can include audio and video previews, but then they shouldn't hide on mouseout :/ .

Got it!

When you hover file, you see tooltip. Audio and video files, additionaly, have button "preview" inside, which opens modal window with preview (maybe the Totem's web plugin is appropriate?).

Tooltip ASCII mockup:

_________________________________________
|                                        |
| _________                              |
| |       | Name of file.extension       |
| |       | Type of file or "directory"  |
| |_______| Size of file or item count   |
|                                        |
| Date modified                          |
|                                        |
| [Preview]                              | < if multimedia preview possible
|                                        |
| ______________________________________ |
| |                                    | |
| |                                    | |
| |                                    | |
| |                                    | |
| |                                    | |
| |                                    | |
| |                                    | |
| |                                    | |
| |____________________________________| |
|________________________________________|

Preview ASCII mockup:

__________________________________________
|                                        |
| Preview of Name.extension          [x] |
|                                        |
| ______________________________________ |
| |                                    | |
| |                                    | |
| |                                    | |
| |                                    | |
| |                                    | |
| |                                    | |
| |                                    | |
| |                                    | |
| | [Pause] [-<=>--------------------] | |
| |____________________________________| |

Tooltip is hidden on mouseout, preview only when clicking outside it and when clicking [x].

What do you think about these mockups?
Comment 34 Christian Neumair 2008-05-26 22:20:12 UTC
> What do you think about these mockups?

I do not like that you have to press [x] to close the preview tooltip. The tooltip feature should be lightweight and unintrusive.

It should just be hidden as the mouse moves away from the icon. I also wonder whether an embedded video player really makes sense. I think the thumbnail is usually enough for deciding whether to play a file or not.
Comment 35 David Prieto 2008-05-27 07:25:04 UTC
I think a control widget inside a tooltip is over the top. But it's true that audio and video previews could be cool.

-For images, we could show a bigger version of the image, but not so big that it gets in the way. Somewhere between 200% and 250% of the thumbnail size, maybe?

-For audio files, we already have sound previews. We could have the same thing, but with a progress bar like the one that appears on banshee's tray icon tooltip.

-For video, show a preview the same size as images' previews, only in motion and with sound. Since we'll be dealing with movies and other long videos here, can the preview start at some point in the middle? For example, can it start at the point the thumbnail was taken?

-For PDF files, would it be possible to make a slide show of several pages?

Just random ideas, I don't even know if these are possible.
Comment 36 Jakub 'Livio' Rusinek 2008-05-27 07:31:05 UTC
We're brainstorming so much so it seems we will port Finder from Leopard :D .

Definitely, something must be done here. We need little revolution in Nautilus.

PS: GNOME also needs some UI lifting. For example when one buttons is being shown, it should be centered, not aligned to left, etc.
Comment 37 Long Gao 2008-05-27 07:53:19 UTC
(In reply to comment #29)
> 
> I really like the following mockup:
> 
> http://www.flickr.com/photos/njpatel/2122840167/
> 
> Neil J. Patel actually implemented something like this:
> http://njpatel.blogspot.com/2007/02/nautilus-metadata-love-at-first-sight.html

Thanks for your comment !

I like the mockups very much, they are beautiful and innovative. I had thought
of developing a view somewhat like that, which contained powerful embedded
previews for photoes, mp3 songs and even videos. But what I had thought was a
bit more like Windows Explorer's slide view. Users could see the Windows slide
view in a directory full of photoes.

After all, I thought a powerful nautilus should have a file infomation preview
system, for the users' convenience. 

Maybe the preview system should be divieded into two different basic
subsystems, according to their different behaviors. First,  there should be a
LIGHTWEIGHT, quick shortcut to a file's metadata like size, date, type,
contents and size of directories, or even a small icon preview of
pictures(thumbnail maybe), like what Jacub has just pointed out. Users could
preview such basic information in a very short time of a few seconds. Tooltips
I think is quite capable of doing that, and I think the tooltip will help users
by its clear and efficient manner. Second, a HEAVYWEIGHT, powerful embedded
preview system could be used for users to preview a multimedia file in nautilus
without lauching other big applications. I take the Windows Explorer's slide
view as an example.

And I think we could try to provide both of them. Previews for photoes and videos are of couse very cool, we might let users or software vendors to choose(by gconf etc.), for any performance and other considerations. I would feel very honored if I could contribute anything to the file information preview system...:)

And for what we have now, we could start from the LIGHTWEIGHT preview system,
say, the tooltips. We could try to provide one in the next version of nautilus, and let the users test.

Best Regards !
Comment 38 David Prieto 2008-05-27 08:14:28 UTC
Created attachment 111585 [details]
Image tooltip
Comment 39 David Prieto 2008-05-27 08:15:11 UTC
Created attachment 111586 [details]
Audio tooltip
Comment 40 David Prieto 2008-05-27 08:16:06 UTC
Created attachment 111587 [details]
Video tooltip

I've attached three mockups of how media previews on tooltips could look like. Please give me your thoughts.
Comment 41 Jakub 'Livio' Rusinek 2008-05-27 12:20:24 UTC
Very nice, but now we have problem.

Metadate tile or tooltip - what's better. One of those or both?

Or Dolphin-like hover solution?

PS: Neil is always doing innovation :) .
Comment 42 Long Gao 2008-05-27 13:25:41 UTC
Created attachment 111604 [details] [review]
Simple quick patch to show image preview

Very simple quick patch to show preview of images, using thumbnail flags.

TODO: since more and more attributes is to be provided within the tooltips, and different kind of files may have different kind of attributes shown in tooltips, it is time to use gconf to manage which tooltip show which attributes.
Comment 43 Long Gao 2008-05-28 01:24:13 UTC
Created attachment 111644 [details] [review]
Add image preview to list view

A little improvement of supporting list view to preview images.
Comment 44 Long Gao 2008-05-28 01:44:01 UTC
I still had one design problem here. I am not so sure whether the nautilus tooltips need to be designed as a seperated class as  fm list view or icon view does, or just certain fuctions returning the wanted string or pixbuf will do. From the "query-tooltip" nature,  it may be very simple and clear just to provide the tooltip with proper strings or pixbufs in the "query-tooltip" callback function. What's more, the construction and destruction occasions of a "tooltip class" seemed not so obvious. Afford me your opinions, thanks!
Comment 45 Cosimo Cecchi 2008-05-28 08:28:27 UTC
I believe you can define a custom tooltip by having e.g. fm-tooltip.c subclass GtkWindow, instantiating it along with the View and using gtk_widget_set_tooltip_window () on the view inside its initialization.
I think you should use the approach that suits best your needs, i.e. it only makes sense to implement your own class of tooltip only if the GTK+ facilities are not enough.
Comment 46 Long Gao 2008-05-28 09:03:51 UTC
(In reply to comment #45)
> I believe you can define a custom tooltip by having e.g. fm-tooltip.c subclass
> GtkWindow, instantiating it along with the View and using
> gtk_widget_set_tooltip_window () on the view inside its initialization.
> I think you should use the approach that suits best your needs, i.e. it only
> makes sense to implement your own class of tooltip only if the GTK+ facilities
> are not enough.

OK, I thought I should use functions instead of seperate class. At least, there is not obvious need to introduce a new subclass. I might remain the framework of current tooltip structure. Thanks for your advice, Cosimo!
Comment 47 Calum Benson 2008-06-04 11:24:57 UTC
Personally, I'd really prefer this wasn't done using tooltips.  The clue's in the name-- files aren't "tools", they're data :)

My main concern is that in the file manager, you have a lot of 'hotspots' in a comparatively small area, and these tooltips are fairly large to accommodate thumbnails etc.  Thus there's a higher risk of accidental activation than on toolbars (e.g. people often subsconsciously point at items they're looking at on the screen, even though they don't wish to interact), and the consequences are greater-- once shown, a significant part of the window is obscured until the tooltip disappears again.  

Also, once a tooltip appears, moving the pointer to another hotspot causes that object's tooltip to appear immediately-- there is no delay on subsequent tooltip display.  So the user will have to try and find a 'dead spot' in amongst all those file icons to make the tooltips disappear again.  (Or wait for the tooltip to time out and disappear, but I'm not sure that GNOME tooltips even do that.)

Also, while tooltips are somewhat accessible via a keyboard shortcut that turns 'tooltip mode' on and off, this is a rather different use case that wasn't originally envisioned, and might require a rethink of tooltip accessibility.
Comment 48 Jean-François Fortin Tam 2008-06-24 13:55:03 UTC
> I think the thumbnail is usually enough
> for deciding whether to play a file or not.

Regarding the video tooltips, I would like to give my 2 cents. I agree that playing the video in a tooltip would be a bit awkward (and that's totem's job anyway).

What I suggest, however, is that you use "multiple tooltips" for videos. Like a slideshow of various points in the time of that video. So, you could ask gstreamer to grab a frame at 1/4, 1/2, 3/4, and display them for 1 second each, then switching to the next one with a crossfade effect (I'm pretty sure that cairo can do this, right?). Then, loop when done. No sound played for this video preview.
Comment 49 Jakub 'Livio' Rusinek 2008-06-24 14:03:31 UTC
nice idea. let's make nautilus modern like finder :) .
Comment 50 Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt) 2008-06-24 19:31:36 UTC
Why switch between those video frames in a tooltip? Why not switch between them in the icon itself, when mousing over it?
Comment 51 Jean-François Fortin Tam 2008-06-24 23:55:38 UTC
Not a bad idea. I did not think of making the frames "slideshow" in the thumbnail itself. I don't know if this is technically possible.

There is one big problem however: not all people use thumbnails. I have them deactivated because they just are not usable when you have hundreds of media files in a folder. 

And, actually, the way thumbnails just don't work is the exact reason why I want a tooltip. I want to be able to discern the visual difference between 2-3 files at a time, without needing thumbnails to be globally activated.
Comment 52 Johannes H. Jensen 2008-08-03 23:20:05 UTC
(In reply to comment #50)
> Why switch between those video frames in a tooltip? Why not switch between them
> in the icon itself, when mousing over it?

Love it - I believe this is the best solution for video previews. We already have audio previews when hovering over an audio file. Would this be hard to achieve?

Also see http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=390988 - Video preview
Comment 53 Jakub 'Livio' Rusinek 2008-08-03 23:33:27 UTC
I'm not sure if icon is appropriate for video preview.

sometimes I would like to seek in video and hear what's really going on in there.
opening app to preview seems the last thing I want to do to see something... for images it's a bit different, because they mostly need zoom to show us something.

that's why I think something bigger (metadata tile or dolphin's info sidebar) is better.
Comment 54 abraham 2008-10-05 17:15:21 UTC
yes i completly agree, this is very necesary, so we dont have to go to right clic -> properties, to see its size and other things, please gnome make this for gnome 2.26
Comment 56 Jean-François Fortin Tam 2008-10-11 14:17:38 UTC
Well, while you're at it, this could be done by "simply" using the sidebar, in the "Information" pane, which is currently underused just to show the current working directory's properties.

However, this causes a significant problem: it can't work with Single Click mode.
Comment 57 Long Gao 2008-10-22 01:56:05 UTC
(In reply to comment #55)
> Just take a looks at some Neil Patel's ideas to freshen your mind :) .
> 
> http://www.flickr.com/photos/njpatel/391902319/in/set-72157603637351266/
> http://www.flickr.com/photos/njpatel/391902318/in/set-72157603637351266/
> http://www.flickr.com/photos/njpatel/391902317/in/set-72157603637351266/
> http://www.flickr.com/photos/njpatel/391902316/in/set-72157603637351266/
> http://www.flickr.com/photos/njpatel/389348505/in/set-72157603637351266/
> 

It is a good idea to add a new sidebar.But sidebar is different from tooltip in that it is heavy and complicated. It adds one more view to the already complicated multiviewed file browser. Information pane might be a right place to hold  extra information  if a sidebar was used.
Comment 58 A. Walton 2008-12-22 13:19:24 UTC
*** Bug 565341 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 59 Todd Chambery 2008-12-23 02:26:41 UTC
I filed a duplicate bug:

Basically, all I would like to see is the full name, file size, and last mod date in a tooltip.  I like the idea of a larger image preview, but please no random point video playback.

IMO, I don't see a lot of utility for a separate file information pane.  It seems like something that would keep closed to get the space back.  Also, it doesn't work for the Desktop.
Comment 60 A. Walton 2009-10-06 16:22:31 UTC
*** Bug 597245 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 61 Allan Day 2010-06-05 15:43:50 UTC
*** Bug 168642 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 62 William Jon McCann 2012-09-05 23:20:01 UTC
Bug 681801 is about adding an integrated previewer. I think that is a much more interesting approach than using tooltips. For one, it can work with single click mode and touch. And is much less fiddly.