GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 44772
double-clicking file name should start renaming (not open file)
Last modified: 2009-07-24 04:03:24 UTC
When view as icons is selected would like different actions for double clicking on the icon and double clicking on the name. Example: ######## ##ICON## ######## filename When I double click on the icon it opens the file, when I double click on the "filename" it gives me properties, permissions, allows me to rename the file. ------- Additional Comments From don@eazel.com 2000-12-20 13:41:59 ---- Arlo, I certainly agree that we need to make inline editing easier. What do you want to do here? ------- Additional Comments From arlo@workthatmouse.com 2000-12-20 13:52:50 ---- I would very much like to implement something along the lines of what Be and Mac OS have, and that is: 1) Single click on the title of an icon 2) If the user doesn't move the mouse for one second, don't go into edit mode, but if the mouse hasn't moved (with perhaps a two or three pixel slop factor) by the time that second is up, go into edit mode. 3) If the mouse is moved in that time frame, instantly switch to edit mode. The second of waiting will allow the user to perform a double click on the file if that's what (s)he intended. Sullivan has given me feedback that this behavior confused users, but in all my time doing user tests, I've never once noticed a problem with this method. Pavel recounts the same lack of issues at Be as well. ------- Additional Comments From pavel@eazel.com 2000-12-20 21:38:34 ---- We should probably also not start a rename when single-clicking a label with Shift or Control. The Mac-style click to edit was in fact mildly controversial on BeOS and we did get some negative feedback about it being to easy to start a rename when when they intended to select the file. The percentage of users who disliked it was small but vocal. ------- Additional Comments From sullivan@eazel.com 2000-12-21 08:56:22 ---- The Mac-style mechanism has also gotten a fair amount of flack from Mac users, which I have heard personally on numerous occasions. The two main complaints I can remember are (1) people think they have to click and wiggle the mouse to start renaming, which they find annoying (in fact, this is one of many ways to start the renaming, but people notice this one and think it's the only way, never noticing the others); (2) people who click on the name just to select the icon get annoyed when the name becomes editable -- this doesn't seem like it should be a big annoyance, but for some reason it seems to be. It still might be better to adopt the Mac design than to have no gesture for renaming, as is currently the case. But the Mac design is not without flaws. One variation that came up in discussion is to behave *exactly* like the Mac design but change the visual feedback slightly by instantly switching to "edit text mode" on the first mouse-down. This has the benefit of making it more obvious how to rename, but the disadvantage of making double-click-on-name-to-open look flashy and confusing. It's not clear to me if this is an overall loss or gain; probably some people would feel strongly each way. We checked out Windows and found that their design is different, with its own problems. They also use click-on-name to start renaming, but only if the icon is already selected. If multiple icons are selected, and you click on the name of one of them, the other icons become deselected (this is not how the Mac or Nautilus work -- clicking on a selected icon does not alter the selection in any way on the Mac or Nautilu). So on Windows to start renaming mode you have to click to select, wait or move to not do a double-click, then click again to start renaming. We also discussed having a Control-key shortcut for starting renaming mode, but decided against it for now since we think we might implement some gesture in the future and we didn't want to sacrifice a precious control key for all time for this operation. Also, we realized that you can currently rename entirely from the keyboard in a roundabout way -- select icon, Control-I to bring up Properties window, type new name, Control-W to close Properties window. ------- Additional Comments From don@eazel.com 2000-12-21 13:11:21 ---- Excellent summary, John! I agree that we should not do anything about this for 1.0, with the hope that most users can get by with the menu command and "ctrl-i" for now. I also agree that although the Mac implementation is probably flawed, we can't seem to come up with a better one. I would love to try _some_ Mac-like implementation post-1.0 and get some user testing on it. Having any implementation in the code would be useful because we could play with it easily. That doesn't mean it gets turned on for 1.0.1 or any specific release, but if we don't start at least experimenting, we'll never solve this problem. How long would it take to implement something like the Mac style? And do we need to implement it twice: once for the icon view and once for the list view? ------- Additional Comments From sullivan@eazel.com 2000-12-21 14:04:42 ---- Implementing Mac-style behavior in the icon view should be pretty straightforward. I would think it could probably be done in a day or so. Right now, there's no in-place renaming in list view at all, so that would have to be implemented before we could make a gesture for it. The gesture part itself should be about the same amount of work as in icon view, but implementing in-place renaming in list view is much trickier. I'm sure there's some hope that we would not even attempt that until that glorious future day when list view and icon view share most of their underlying code (in which case there would be very little or no additional work required to make the gesture work in list view). ------- Additional Comments From don@eazel.com 2000-12-22 12:07:43 ---- Yeah, we should probably wait for that "glorious future day" before attemping either an experiment or a real implementation in the list view. :( John, do you want to try this post-1.? Or is Pavel more the adventurous type? ;) ------- Additional Comments From sullivan@eazel.com 2000-12-22 13:02:56 ---- I don't think it matters much right now whether it's assigned to me or Pavel. I'm happy to take it, and I'm sure Pavel would be too. ------- Bug moved to this database by unknown@bugzilla.gnome.org 2001-09-09 20:45 ------- The original reporter (hdelator@utep.edu) of this bug does not have an account here. Reassigning to the exporter, unknown@bugzilla.gnome.org.
Changing to "old" target milestone for all bugs laying around with no milestone set.
Personally i'm really against using mouse clicking etc for renaming in either the icon or list view. It makes renaming (which is somewhat of a dangerous operation) to easy to do accidentally. I personally feel that by including a rename option in the context menu, we have provided an excellent fast easy way to do rename, that prevents the user from accidentally beginning a rename operation while making renaming still pretty fast and easy when needed.
Counter-argument: while it's a fairly dangerous thing to do, it's something that millions of Windows & Mac users will expect to work after migration.
The argument that windows or mac does something therefore we should is a non argument imho. The argument should be this is the correct way to do it. Both windows and mac do the click to rename feature wrong. Especially when using windows i'm always accidentally starting rename (this is true of the nautilus list view as well).
This seems to me to be sorta-kinda fixed (renaming is very easy in nautilus 2). OTOH, there is an interesting conflict here with bug 83552.
*** Bug 89978 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Windows users generally curse the rename feature. ATM nautilus has very good rename behavior. You have to use the context menu to rename something. I think that we should close this bug.
So what's the verdict on this one? I can't make my mind up on whether it's good or bad.
Has anyone complained about this since click-to-rename was disabled in Nautilus? If not, I tend to agree with WONTFIXing it too, even though I'd like to see a usable click-to-rename implementation at some point. (I just don't know what that will look like...)
*** Bug 122555 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
I agree that this should be WONTFIX'd. Notice that bug 83552 (a request to disable the feature that this bug report asks for) has been marked as fixed with this feature disabled. My personal opinion, if it matters: Opening a file is a much more common action than renaming. Thus launching seems like a far better UI choice for double-clicking than renaming. Combine this with the fact that renaming is potentially dangerous (as mentioned above), and it seems clear to me that click-to-rename is a bad choice. The only case where I can think that click-to-rename would be useful is when a user has to rename a *lot* of files. This occurs for me, for example, when I'm downloading pictures from a digital camera and they are all automatically named IMGxxxx.JPG. If I were to try to rename them all in nautilus, the the extra work to right click and select an option instead of double-clicking would seem painful by comparison. However, do we want to create this dangerous feature for this smaller use case? It seems like the digital camera program or something else should be fixed (to enable easy renaming while obtaining the files) rather than implementing a workaround in nautilus. Nautilus just seems like the wrong place to fix the GTKam program's behavior.
[From bug 122555:] > Also, Alt-click has been taken by Metacity. Granted, metacity has > been moving towards using Super-click instead, but it still defaults > to grabbing Alt-click if there is no super key (i.e. the windows logo > key). Thus, it would probably have to be a different keybinding. AFAIK Alt-click only has a meaning in Metacity when moving windows (and this is a setting which can be changed to Ctrl or, as you say, Super). This is about Alt-clicking on icon titles. I sorely miss the ability to quick-rename that OS/2's WPS offered me. :-(
Simply closing this bug won't fix the problem that not having click to rename is severe usability issue. The HIG says GNOME apps should provide direct manipulation whenever possible. And there's nothing more direct about editing a file name than clicking on it in some way. People who don't like such a feature should be given the possibility of disabling it. I for one greatly miss this feature in nautilus.
I think a single-click on the name of a SELECTED file should trigger a rename. Click once to select the file, THEN single-click the name to start editing it. This way, double clicking to launch a file isn't affected - you could even double click the label to launch a file without triggering a rename. This is a bug that has spanned YEARS. Wow.
Gabriel: So essential you propose what John Sullivan referred to as the windows behavior in his comment, i.e. you select a file and wait until the double-click timeout is over and click once again afterwards to start a rename operation?
I think out current behavior is pretty much perfect: Double-click always activates items (i.e. opens/launches them). More advanced commands (properties/rename) are available through the keyboard (F2, shift+F2, alt+enter). Do you really need this proposed alternative behavior?
comment #13. "direct" manipulation is provided for by "Edit, Rename", and also the Properties dialog. Solution: Blame Microsoft. There is usability and then there is familarity and this is definately a case of people liking what they already know. Users have certain expectations and generally I like to go with them but I do not believe we can have it both ways and the more simple and straighforward answers is what Gnome is supposed to be all about. There are so few complaints about this I do not think changing the default behaviour is an option. If you are feeling generous the most I think you could reasonably be expected to do is provide a cracktastic option for this legacy behaviour as the code is already there isn't it?
No updates, closing.
Created attachment 82999 [details] [review] nautilus-ctrl-doubleclick-rename.patch After having read this[1] blog post (it is in italian, the author asks for a quick mouse rename method) I started coding this patch and only *then* I learnt about the F2 shortcut key :/. With this patch rename can be started by ctrl + double-clicking a file. I'm attaching the patch here, so I can delete the file from my hard disk, but I think that using F2 is quicker. BTW, the patch doesn't work when in list view :) [1] - http://www.aldolat.it/?p=186
Created attachment 121123 [details] [review] nautilus-BUGZILLA-click-rename.patch here is a little patch built on top of the previous one that adds click to rename. When you select an icon and then click on its name, you fall in rename mode. This is incomplete for sure as it only works in icon view, based on 2.20 (so outdated de facto) but I don't want it to be loosed for everyone maybe someone will find it useful outside of what we do at my company.
*** Bug 564353 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
From reading the comments it appears that at one time it was possible to rename by clicking on a filename. Could this behavior be made a boolean option in GConf (either under /apps/nautilus/preferences, or maybe just /apps/nautilus/icon_view, considering Bug 83552)? I'm not saying it should be the default behavior, but if I could at least go into the Configuration Editor to change it for someone I am introducing to Linux, it would be one less source of frustration when transitioning from Windows, Mac, or even "IBM's Workplace Shell" (Bug 122555). One might argue that teaching them to press "F2" would be easier, but I feel that particular keystroke may be something easily forgotten for whom the Windows behavior has been ingrained for 10-15 years. On that note, it might aid learning to also display "F2" to the right of the "Rename..." option in the right-click menu. Note also that some Linux distributions, depending on their target audience, may appreciate the option to make it the default behavior. Or a network administrator may opt to change the default for his particular deployment.
Click-to-rename is the most frustrating feature in Windows , especially in highly sensitive laptop touchpads, since a late touch[for movement] triggers a tap and activates a rename. People are also forgetting that rename is /not an action which is done frequently/ , but in laptops this could be triggered very easily, everyday. Pls dont bring this feature, and if done, allow it to be easily disabled.