GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 350962
Filing cabinet icon is not recognizable
Last modified: 2010-05-11 10:51:39 UTC
When we did some user testing at Novell, users had better recognition for the "folder" icon in Nautilus launchers and file windows, instead of the default "filing cabinet" one. The attached patch makes Nautilus use "gnome-fs-directory" as the icon for these items.
Created attachment 70747 [details] [review] nautilus-better-icons-for-launchers-and-windows.diff
Created attachment 110205 [details] [review] nautilus-better-icons-for-launchers-and-windows.patch Same patch, rebased for Nautilus 2.22.2.
Why not "folder" instead of "gnome-fs-directory", per the Icon Naming Specification?
No idea. Is "gnome-fs-directory" not permissible?
I'm not saying it's not permissible, but it seems that we're trying to head that way, and it's somewhat counterproductive to go back here. In fact, it should probably even be NAUTILUS_ICON_FOLDER (per the define in nautilus-icon-names.h), so that we don't have to hunt it down if it needs to change again.
Created attachment 110208 [details] [review] nautilus-better-icons-for-launchers-and-windows.patch Revised patch.
This looks fine for trunk to me (definitely looks better than the filing cabinet icon).
Confirming. I am not sure whether this change is a good idea. Users may use the icon to distinguish browser windows from spatial windows. And if decide to use a folder icon, we should also display special icons for special locations (i.e. computer:///). See nautilus-spatial-window.c how this would work. I am CCing the usability team for some feedback.
I agree with using the location-specific icon. It's strange for the current location to change a browser window's title, but not its icon. The main drawback I can think of is that the icon would change rapidly as you navigate through the hierarchy. I think using the icon to distinguish browser windows is not nearly as useful as using the presence of the toolbar, location bar, and/or side pane to recognize those windows. (Though as full disclosure, we're considering removing the Window List in Ubuntu, which would make a window's overall appearance more important for recognition than either its icon or its title.) Konqueror's icon is location-specific, regardless of whether it's displaying a filesystem item or a Web page. Epiphany's and Firefox's icons are static. Mac OS X Finder's browser icon is location-specific, though that's unsurprising because the icon is a draggable proxy for the current location. I'm unable to test Windows Explorer's behavior at the moment.
FWIW, I opened bug 581584 to try to change the metaphor in the icon theme.
This is OBSOLETE now that bug #613733 is fixed. Closing, feel free to reopen if I missed something.