GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 765264
Nautilus always selects the first item in the directory
Last modified: 2016-04-27 10:04:18 UTC
Created attachment 326336 [details] illustration When starting Nautilus or when changing the directory, the first item in that directory is always selected. I've noticed this since version 3.20.0. This happens with files and folders, in all views at all sizes. I have attached a small webm video that illustrates it.
is what we want for fast keyboard navigation no?
Well... I think fast keyboard navigation is great, but it should not be Nautilus' focus. I could traverse my files quicker using ls and cd than using Nautilus' keybinds. I think GUI applications Nautilus should use the graphical aspect to an advantage by displaying things neatly, like eg. using thumbnails. This 'feature' very much distracts from that. By marking an (almost random) item, the program is actively doing something important, without any user input! I think the default behavior (AFAIK) in any file manager (including previous Nautilus versions) is to *activate* the first item instead of selecting it. That provides plenty of keyboard accessibility without disrupting the graphical aspect. Shortly said, I think this is bad UX. I understand your reasoning but with all due respect, I think you will get many more bug reports about this when other distros upgrade to GNOME 3.20
So seems in previous versions the first item was not selected, and only was selected when finished a search (?). Indeed there is no point on selecting the first item when navigating, since it's a random one as you said. Only when searching would make sense, but it would be better to not select it and instead activate the first item on enter if no selection. This is a regression from fixing https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=762595
Created attachment 326701 [details] [review] files-view: select first item only when searching Since 2fa597e we select the first item even if the view didn't load all the files. But we were selecting the first item unconditionally. However, it only makes sense to select the first item on the view if the view is searching, not otherwise. This patch makes files view to select the first item only if the view is searching, as we had previously.
Attachment 326701 [details] pushed as 020e405 - files-view: select first item only when searching
Any chance of backporting to 3.20.x? It's really annoying.
(In reply to Piotr Drąg from comment #6) > Any chance of backporting to 3.20.x? It's really annoying. Yes, it will be in the 3.20.1 release I'm planing for today or tomorrow (will go through all the fixes done in master and backport them).
Great, thank you!