GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 82463
Remove "new window" from File manager context menu's
Last modified: 2004-12-22 21:47:04 UTC
In the unselected state of the fm context menus there is the option for a new window. I think this should be removed since it doesn't do work on the current directory and doesn't even open up the fm to the current directory. I question the usefulness of having a new window option that opens nautilus to $home (no matter where the user is in the directory structure). I think having the open in a new window feature(for folders, items and and launchers in the current directory) is actually more useful since it does work on the current directory(nautilus does have this already). Seems like if a user wants to open a new window than using the file menu in fm view or applications => home folder for the desktop is just better, no need to clog up the context menu with this. Galeon doesn't have new window in the context menu, and this is actually what lead me to make this recommendation.
I use this feature all the time.
andersca, on bugs like this i'm never quite sure i'm right, so i appreciate the comments. Good consistent ui design is hard so this is just an idea i've been throwing around, and I may be completely wrong....
Maybe you should cc trained usability people so that they can contribute to a useful discussion, instead of just ranting to a bunch of usability-unschooled maintainers, Dave :) FWIW, I also find this useful, though not terribly so and I probably wouldn't miss it much (esp. since things are all standardizing on ctl+n finally.)
Just to be clear, based on the theory of OO UI design, context menus should provide menu items that perform some sort of action on the selected item, in this case the selected window. However new window doesn't do any "work" on the current directory so it violates this principle. This is my motivation for wanting to remove this. The same hold true for new terminal in the desktop context menu.
I'd go along with Dave's suggestion... and a quick check on Windoze Explorer confirms it does the same. "Open in New Window" is fine for a selected icon(s)' context menu, but when there's nothing selected, "New Window" is somewhat of out of place IMHO. Actually I'm not convinced it makes a lot of sense on the desktop context menu either, as there's no indication of what's going to be in the new window when it opens. (Again, Windoze XP doesn't give you this option either, not that I'm advocating we just copy Windoze for everything of course...)
Created attachment 10846 [details] [review] patch
We've pretty much decided to keep the New Window menu item for right now. Dropping the priority and moving the milestone.
I on this one, the "New Window" option always seems out of place in the context menu. Everywhere but the desktop it is redundant becuase there's File->New Window. Even on the desktop there would still be Ctrl+N.
Bug #87330 discusses the contect-menu re-ordering
fixed in the spatial branch.