GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 310919
Folders not always on top with 'Sort folders before files'
Last modified: 2008-10-18 14:30:26 UTC
In the list view, if you have the 'Sort folders before files' option turned on, the folders may end up at the bottom of the view depending on the sorting order of the column. For example, click on the 'Name' column header twice : the folders will end up at the bottom. I think the purpose of the 'Sort folders before files' option is to have the folders always showing at the top of the list, where they are the most useful. To move them at the bottom seems hardly ever useful to me.
Created attachment 51486 [details] [review] Proposed patch I've also submitted this patch to the Nautilus mailing list [1] for review. [1] http://mail.gnome.org/archives/nautilus-list/2005-August/msg00235.html
Hmmm, i'm not sure of this behaviour. You sort of expect everything to flip when you reverse the sorting order. What do other implementations do?
I just tried it on MacOS, and right now the behavior is the same as nautilus' (the folders go to the top/bottom of the list). I'm not sure what windows does - I was pretty sure it always presented the folders first, but now I'm not so sure anymore :)
*** Bug 315390 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Alex: The user set "folders before files" in his preferences - "before" shouldn't magically turn into "after" just because the sort order is reversed, IMHO. Also, I can't think of any advantage it has to push folders to the end of the list; it just poses an inconsistency.
CCing usability crew.
Windows XP does the same as MacOS, although I'm not sure there's an explicit "folders before files" setting in XP (there was in Win98 IIRC)-- folders are just always grouped together at the top or bottom of the list (depending on the sort direction of whatever column you've chosen to sort by), but otherwise arranged in the order you've chosen (name, date, etc.) So, I guess the question is whether our functionality is wrong, or the name of the preference is wrong or misleading (perhaps it should be "group folders together" or something?) Another one that's a tough call without a decent sample of users telling us which they'd find more useful :/
Before gnome 2.12 nautilus always kept folders at the top if "folders before files " was set, regardless of what other column sorts were applied. Folders were sorted according to the column view sort but stayed on the top of the list. I find the new behavior odd.
I also find the new behaviour odd. To me it would be more convenient to have the folders at the top, no matter what. It's good that the chosen sort column and direction applies to them too, but they should be always shown at the top of the list before files. To me the new behaviour really is a bug and I wonder why the behaviour has changed. In addition to 2.11/2.12 I've seen this bug also affecting nautilus 2.14.1.
*** Bug 151876 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Updating version. A bug was filed about this in Mandriva bugzilla: http://qa.mandriva.com/show_bug.cgi?id=26120
*** Bug 436757 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
The bug does still occur in nautilus 2.22.x and the proposed patch doesn't apply cleanly anymore... at least without modification. It worked like a charm for me since the behavior has been changed. I guess version should be updated again.
Fixed in trunk: http://svn.gnome.org/viewvc/nautilus?view=revision&revision=14631 Closing.
*** Bug 556490 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***