> I can't help but wonder why the action of dragging a user-mounted >
> volume to
> the trash doesn't just umount the volume,

There is wide agreement that that is unintuitive on the Macintosh.

However, the user should see 1 dialog rather than 2.

106071 is a dup with this description :

"On MacOS moving a volume to the trashcan ejects
them. I'd like that feature..."

*** Bug 106071 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Okay, I've been giving this some though, particularly in response to
Murray's comments.

I know that dragging a user mounted drive to the trash can is
unituitive, so I can understand some reluctance in implementing this.

However, it's also ironic that instead of umounting the drive like
people probably expected you get a dialog telling you you can't do it
this way and that you have to do it another way.

Given that the error message implies that you're trying to eject the
drive, wouldn't it just be simpler to do just eject the disk instead
of telling the user that they have to eject the disk another way?  The
user doesn't care that the action is unintuitive, they just want their
disk to pop out of the drive.

Maybe we need to follow Apple's lead on this and change the trash icon
to an eject icon to make it more intuitive.

I don't see how it's "unintuitive" to unmount a volume by deleting it or
dragging it to the Trash. I think it makes sense.

Either that or the error dialog could directly offer to unmount the volume:

"<Error> You can't put a mounted volume in the Trash. Would you like to unmount
the volume? [No, don't unmount] [Yes, Unmount]".

*** Bug 143909 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

I think dragging a volume to the trash bin can be interpreted in two ways:

1) It unmounts/ejects the volume, and
2) It erases all the data on the volume

If the user should be presented a dialog, I think she should be able to choose
between those two, combined with a checkbox "don't ask this again".

I disagree.  If people drag a mounted volume icon (a picture of a disk, NFS
share, etc) from their desktop to the trash, it should simply unmount the
volume.  If they wish to delete the contents of the volume, then they can open
the folder and delete the contents that way.

If GNOME is looking at being able to remove items from the panel by doing this,
then why not mounts.

Rodd, I both agree and disagree with you.

> If they wish to delete the contents of the volume, then they can
> open the folder and delete the contents that way.

Just because people can erase a volume by opening it and deleting the content
doesn't mean that should be the only way to do it. If I follow the logic of your
post, this whole discussion is useless because people can unmount a volume by
using the context menu, which, by your reasoning, should be enough. This means
that either this bug is now closed, or your point is void. I think we all prefer
the latter.

> If GNOME is looking at being able to remove items from the panel by doing
> this, then why not mounts.

I agree with you here.

Actually, I think it's dangerous to allow a total delete of a mounted  volume by
dragging it to the trash.  There's a lot of difference between a the effects of
a  umount and a rm -rf.  It's not hard to imagine a scenario where my three year
old  son drags a mounted volume to the trash and deletes the lot.  If he has to
open the volume and then drag the contents to trash he's much less likely to do
a lot of damage.

Imagine the damage that you could do if someone stuffs up with permissions and
you drag a server's worth of home directories to the trash. ;-[  But if all that
happens is the the mount is umounted then no biggy.

> It's not hard to imagine a scenario where my three year old son
> drags a mounted volume to the trash and deletes the lot.

I agree to the fullest here. I hadn't thought of it. No deletion or erasure then ;-)

*** Bug 139143 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

I think the main problem is, that user can't unmount volume without clicking
right click on it. Right click isn't intuitive and user-friendly. Moving to
trash is not very bad idea until it is a way to choose between erase and unmount.
Gnome developers should give more features to customize default behaviour for
users. Users aren't dumb and should have a right to customize. Lets users not
developers decide what is more comfortable for them - maybe some users will
choose unmounting, some erasing, some don't use this feature at all and I think
all these ways will be comfortable and user-friendly.
Also, the problem is with compatibility with older gnome versions - starting
from GNOME 0.x to 2.4 there was a possibility to mount/unmount volumes with
right click on the desktop. Now there are no this possibility. This is very bad,
because users had this possibility for about 5 years. Removing this feature
without any chances to customize (enable mounting/unmounting with right click on
the desktop) in preferences is very bad idea because of this users' habit.

*** Bug 145129 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

*** Bug 147265 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

There is an interesting comment at
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/comments/timf?anchor=a_computer_being_too_smart
(from bug #147265).

*** Bug 47285 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Also on macs with a single mouse button, it is currently impossible to unmount a
CD (the only way is by opening the context menu with a keyboard shortcut, which
is even more undiscoverable). The "unmount" option is not even present in the
file menu of the "Computer" window...

The way I see it is:
user drags a volume to the trash.
GNOME tells you thats not how you unmount a volume.
The end.

If GNOME is 100% certian that the user is trying to unmount a volume, why not 
just unmount the volume. 

Any one read "The Human Interface"?

According to bug 154283, this feature will not get implemented in nautilus. Ever.

Well, in that bug no real arguments are discussed except "we don't want it". I
think it's bullshit.

If a system knows for sure the user wants some action to be performed, the
action should be performed. Period.

I would like to add a comment that I expect a real response to:

Why doesn't the error instead present:

"You cannot delete desktop icons for mounted devices.  Please select an option:
a) Don't show desktop icons for this device anymore
b) Unmount this device
c) Cancel"

This seems both intuitive and helpful, and not rude, which a user interface
should definately not be.  My UI shouldn't insult me, even if I do something stupid.

*** Bug 170501 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Okay, I've been watching this long enough, and feel the need to make a comment.

Logical Theory:
The interface should be kept as simple as possible, there shouldn't be buttons
and gegaws in places where buttons, gegaws, widgets and resizable-cross
application dockable-toolbars don't need to be. For this reason, there should
only be one correct way to eject a volume.

Optionally, you can add an applet to a pannel that makes it a teeny bit simpler.

Reality:
There is more than one way to delete a file in gnome, in fact, off the top of my
head, I can think of three. Right click, delete, drag to trash, and file>
delete. Now, how would you react, if you dragged a file to the trash (a very
common operation), and the trashcan either did nothing, or prompted you to right
click on the file and press delete?

You'd be a bit irritated.

There are very, very few things I could possibly mean when I drag a file to the
trash, but aside from the obvious "move to .Trash", I could also mean "delete
using /usr/sbin/shred" or "delete by moving the file to /dev/null" or "delete
now, permanantly, without prompting". Except, the de-facto standard is, that I
want to move the file to the trash, so this is what's done.

Solution:

Keep the Right-click, eject menu, as is common to windows. Add the alternate,
non-intrusive, easily implemented, unlikely to add any real bloat option (and
well-known [albeit frustrating to new users when it's the ONLY option] method of
ejecting the drive).

I just had dicussion with Seb about this, and I still don't understand why this
behaviour still exists. Basically, the computer is insulting the user and I
suspect a common reaction to this would be for the user to say "Screw it" and
rip the usb drive out, which is far worse.

I think at this stage we can agree the error dialog is anappropriate.  
I'd like to just give users what they want but make sure to provide other ways
to eject things so we are not forced to advertise this as the main way of doing
it.  
Alternatively if you really do not want to give users what they are asking for I
think instead you could change the drag and drop behaviour so that there is a
clear visual indication they are not allowed drop the file there and if they do
bounce it back to where it came from.   


The Eject functionality definately needs to be accessible from somewhere else
other than the context menu, as pointed out earlier by the One button mouse user.  
I don't like the idea of adding a permanent Nautilus menu item for ejecting
things and I like the idea of dynamically adding menu items even less.  I think
the Properties dialog might be a good place to provide access to this kind of
highly context specific functionality.  How about it?  

For what it is worth i never unmount my USB drives, never ever.  I always make
sure file transfers are complete (which is I believe the only reason for the
warnings anyway) and usually remove the disk as I log out (and usually after I
log out, but a reminder at log out about any mounted disks might help people
like me who unintentionally leave CDs in the drive).  

Of course, we could do what OS X does and the minute someone starts to drag a
'mounted drive' turn the trash can into an eject object.

Or have they got a patent on this?

Rodd could you post a small screenshot or two illustrating this behaviour?  I
don't use Macs very often and am not familiar with it.  

We are not lawyers.  Just code it.  
I think we need a something like --no-patents configure option so that
developers can be allowed to do what they do best otherwise we will be allowing
American Patent law to cripple Free Software development everywhere.  

Ah, I'm no mac user either and wouldn't know how to take a screen shot on mac to
save myself.

Basically, what I remember happening is that when you grap a mounted drive on
the desktop, the trash icon turns to a eject icon so that you know you can't
trash the drive, but safely unmount it instead.

Is this enough information?

FYI, a patch was proposed and rejected in bug 154283.

What's wrong with the feature ? 

Created attachment 49085 [details]
Regular trashcan icon on OSX dock

Created attachment 49086 [details]
Trashcan changing to Eject icon as a volume icon is dragged towards it

Calum: Alex thinks this is stupid [1], so I don't think this feature will ever
be be included.

[1] http://mail.gnome.org/archives/nautilus-list/2005-July/msg00159.html

I've tried to be polite but the dialog is pure *crack* 

Give the user what they want or do not.  

The dialog is just insulting.  It tells the users we know exactly what you want
but we are going to waste your time telling you we wont do it.  

Alan, well said.

+1

+ 1, I agree with Alan.

I also agree what Alan says, we know that the user wants to unmount the drive
(and the user is probably from OS X), so the least we could do is to just do
what the user wants (unmount the drive).

It's like those annoying meaningless dialogs you see popping up on some
operating systems ("are you really sure you want to do blablabla"), it's useless.

is ignoring an action a good user experience? Alex statued than he's not going
to change to eject a volume with a drag and drop to the trash, so the choice is
between doing nothing and just ignoring the user action, which gives the feeling
the action is broken, or displaying a message of what is going on ... you guys
prefer to just ignore the user action?

Sebastien: It is quiet obvious that the comments are meant to convince Alex. But
since this kind of decision is not democratic, even +G_MAXINT won't help here.

...but what I still don't get is why we "educate" users, i.e. what the advantage
of the current solution over just unmounting is: If the feature is - which
according to Alex is the case - not discoverable, no user will ever use it,
except for former Mac users, which expect that unmounting works. I could point
you to a radio interview where an usability expert from openusability.org over
and over praises this feature (Sven from GIMP sitting next to her). Anyway, it's
up to Alex.

The problem is that usually, it ends up as "please provide a patch". In that
case, it even a patch that has been rejected for the sole reason the maintainer
do not like it.

Fundamental question: is Nautilus developped for the sole maintainer use, or for
the whole use base ? In case 1, fine, it is your call Alex. In case 2, then you
should listen to users, and when a patch is offered, not reject it.

As an AbiWord maintainer, I can say that some feature decisions have been
painful, but we ended up doing doing because this is "What users want".

Hi,

 I see at least 2 big problems with nautilus.

 First (and I think main) problem is, that in nautilus often there are no place
for users opinion, if users opinion is different from Alex Larson oppinion.
Nautilus got a lot of bugreports, where users say "this is not user-friendly,
please change this" or "nautilus really needs this useful feature, please add
this", but lots such bugs are closed as wontfix and even patches from other
developers are not accepted (look for example bugs #165266 , #142553 , #99921 ,
#144481 , #119991 , #307013, #305266 , #302044) :(
Could such way we name open source way? I think no, at least this is not good
for community-based projects, like GNOME. Alex is dictator, but, I think, he
should be democratic president if GNOME and Nautilus are community (not redhat's
or alex) projects.
Because of this problem there are other projects for replacing nautilus in
GNOME, look for example at velocity project:
http://velocity.gnomeuser.org/index.php?page=2 - velocity goals are same like
nautilus goals in eazel times (version 1.x)...

 Second problem is, that nautilus developers often doesn't care about
compatibility with older version of nautilus, not talking about compatibility
with other similar software.
For example nautilus default behaviour always was non-spatial (was
navigational), but when nautilus developers decided to implement a spatial mode
(in nautilus 2.6) it was set to default, even in upgrades, when user used
nautilus in navigational mode and there was no posibility for most users to turn
off irritating (for most old mode users) spatial mode. Some from nautilus
developers told, that there are posibility to turn off spatial mode with
gconf-editor, but I know no user (my job is Linux and other free Desktop
software, like OpenOffice support), which know what is gconf-editor and how to
work with it. After nautilus 2.6 was released I got a lots of support cals -
lots of users asked "Why after upgrade to version 2.6 GNOME started to behave
completelly different than all previous 2.4 versions?", "How to downgrade GNOME,
I can't work with hundreds of windows".
Another example is dragging files with right mouse button - in some nautilus
version this ability just dissapers without any notice how to copy/move/create
link, when user tries to do this with right mouse button.
One more example is access to removable and other drives (mouting/unmouting) -
in all nautilus versions until nautilus 2.5 there was only one way to access
removable ant other user-mountable driver(partitions) - there was "Discs"
submenu in desktop context menu. After nautilus 2.6 was released this submenu
simply dissapeared without any usable help for existing users how to access
removable and other drives (look at bug #137304 and lots of duplicates). Even in
development version (2.5) users noticed this bug and reported: "Discs menu gone
from desktop context menu - I can't mount discs from nautilus desktop menu
anymore. On nautilus 2.4 mounting any disc is 2 clicks away, on 2.5 is burried I
don't know where." :( But, it seems, nautilus developers don't care about
existing users experience and decided simply remove the way, which all users
used 4 years :((

Talking about this bug (umount problem) I think the main problem is, that now is
only one way to unmount volume - right click on it and select "Unmount" from
context menu. But right click isn't intuitive and lots of simple users never use
right click. Please read comments #13 and #22 from this bug. I think at least
dialog "You cannot delete desktop icons for mounted devices.  Do you wan't to
unmount (eject) this device?" with 2 buttons "Cancel" and "Eject (Umount)"
should replace current Error message.

Btw, I'm nor Mac OS, nor Windows user (I used Mac OS 9 only few days about 3-4
years ago), I'm Linux user since 1999, but I'm really missing on unmounting
feature without right click. I saw, that Windows XP has ability to umount
removable usb storage drives (disks, etc) without right click - user inserts usb
drive, copies some files into it and when files are really written from memory
cache to usb drive, then small icon, with tooltip "Safetely remove drive",
appeares in notification area (in bottom right, near the clock). When user click
on this icon then list of drives to unmount appears and user can click on needed
to unmount drive. This is more user-friendly than current GNOME behaviour.

On your rant, I think your aggro is only partially comprehensible. Let's break
this down a bit:

> lots such bugs are closed as wontfix and even patches from other
> developers are not accepted (look for example bugs
> bug 165266, bug 142553, bug 99921, bug 144481, bug 119991, bug 307013, bug
305266, bug 302044

Most of these were actually closed for good reasons. Changing the note sidepane
when hovering is a cracky idea, for instance. Others were closed although we can
do something about it. I've reopened those.

> For example nautilus default behaviour always was non-spatial (was
> navigational), but when nautilus developers decided to implement a spatial mode
> (in nautilus 2.6) it was set to default, even in upgrades, when user used
> nautilus in navigational mode and there was no posibility for most users to turn
> off irritating (for most old mode users) spatial mode.

> Another example is dragging files with right mouse button - in some nautilus
> version this ability just dissapers without any notice how to copy/move/create
> link, when user tries to do this with right mouse button.

It disappeared for good reasons (cf. bug 144481). Sometimes users just have to
find out what changed on their own or read the release notes. We just don't have
the ressources to integrate a "what changed" tour in every minor. Would be a
nice idea.

> One more example is access to removable and other drives (mouting/unmouting)
> in all nautilus versions until nautilus 2.5 there was only one way to access
> removable ant other user-mountable driver(partitions) - there was "Discs"
> submenu in desktop context menu.

in my opinion the concept we now have is way more obvious. Changes sometimes
hurt. If we kept what we had in 2.0 because we fear UI changes we'd still be
stuck with a buggy and unusable file manager.

>Talking about this bug (umount problem) I think the main problem is, that now is
> only one way to unmount volume - right click on it and select "Unmount" from
> context menu.

We've all made our suggestions. Almost all of us agree that if we already KNOW
what the user is trying to do it is totally CRACK to tell him how to achieve
this, just forcing him to do 3 more mouse clicks if it could be done directly.

Anyway, it's really Alex's decission.
From comment 42:
> this is "What users want".

> For example nautilus default behaviour always was non-spatial (was
> navigational), but when nautilus developers decided to implement a spatial mode
> (in nautilus 2.6) it was set to default, even in upgrades, when user used
> nautilus in navigational mode and there was no posibility for most users to turn
> off irritating (for most old mode users) spatial mode.

Yes, this was a huge mistake. The people who were in charge explicitly regretted
this wrong decision.

Such rants usual have not other effect that discouraging the maintainers to work
on the code, that has already be stated by many people. Whatever you do some
users are not happy, that's really not funny. Go somewhere else for that please,
bugzilla is not the right place.

Tweaked summary to make report bug easier to find.  

Created attachment 50086 [details] [review]
Patch against HEAD to unmount/eject when dragging to trash

Here is a patch that applies to HEAD nautilus to just eject or unmount volumes
when they are dragged to the trash icon on the desktop.

Rodney: I've provided a similar patch which was rejected by Alex (cf. comment 34).

http://www.gopetition.co.uk/online/6908.html

Just for fun.

Just for your information, [1] contains the original patch which also changes
some other rejected (for good reasons) bits. Also, mine sucks because it doesn't
special-case the ejection case.

[1] http://mail.gnome.org/archives/nautilus-list/2005-July/msg00150.html 

Why not put a message dialog "Uh... you're not supposed to delete a volume ;
perha ps you wanted to eject?" ; with two choices: Cancel and Eject?

That way the user is both warned that what (s)he asked isn't really logical, but
has what (s)he want.

I know that nobody cares about what I'm thinking, but anyway...

I think that the "drag to the trash to eject" is just as non-intuitive as the
"click on start to shutdown" from windows.
Besides the "cool-it-s-just-like-a-mac" behaviour, I don't see any reason to
implement this. It's just.. well.. so awful !

Please, we are not all mac groupies !

Take an average newbie and try to explain him that the trash delete a file but
eject a device !   The same action on the same location does two differents
things !!!!  It's so awful !

I think that the dialog must be :
- "This files cannot be erased" (just like when you have no rights on the file)
for non-erasable medias.
- "Are you sure you want to format this device ? All datas on this device will
be lost."  for writable medias.

But please, don't take bad things in Mac.  Or I begin a petition to rename
"applications" menu in "start" menu.


Snark : I like your idea of the dialog. Why not stronger ? "Have you see an
apple ? No ?  So this is not a macintosh dummy !"  ;-)

Snark: Why put a dialog up for the user to confirm what they obviously want to
do with it?

Lionel: It is not cool because Mac does it. It will however, allow Mac users to
transition to the environment more easily. If you don't like it, then don't use
it. It's not going to affect you, because you don't use it anyway. And it does
the same action on both files and devices. The only difference is that it does
not keep an icon inside the trash to re-mount the device. Why would you expect
it to do something different? When you drag a file to the trash, it does not
erase the contents of the file, leaving 0 byte files around. It doesn't empty
the file. It removes it. Likewise, it would remove the device from the system.
In order to regain access to the device, you would have to insert or mount it
again. In order to regain access to a file, you have to create it again. It's
not really logically any different. It's not a bad thing from Mac. It is how Mac
works for ejecting devices. There's no real usability reason to not support it.

0) My € 0.02 on today's most popular bug.

1) I'm inclined to think that drag and drop to eject/unmount is rather
non-intuitive.

2) However, even if it's decided to keep disallowing "drag and drop to trash to
eject CD" (and friends) there seems to be no need to do anything at all. Drag
and drop the "Computer" or "User's Home" icons doesn't do anything either. So
there might not be needed a dialog here at all. The message seems to be clear
enough without dialog: that action is not possible.

3) But couldn't we just add a little "sub-icon" to the icons for removable
media? A small eject button (say: in the lower left corner) for CD's and DVD's
and something hinting on unmounting (for things like USB drivers etc; maybe
something looking like the offline/online buttons in Evolution). Clicking that
"sub-icon" will eject that CD/DVD or unmount that volume, etc.

I am a big fan of having some sort of simpler motion to unmount volumes... As a
user with a laptop having only one USB port, and one who tries to use gnome-vfs
to mount files from his desktop fairly regularly, it would be very nice to have
a more fluid motion to perform a common task.  I don't disagree that 'dragging
to trash' is unintuitive, but considering the only two things I really want to
do with those icons are either open or unmount (and one requires 2-Clicking, and
one requires right-clicking, following the menu down, and finding unmount) it
would be nice to speed up the process.

Additionally, I can trash talks macs as much as the next guy, but I think some
of the 'trash is unintuitive' comments have less weight now that the icon
changes after you start dragging an icon.  This from somebody who's never owned
a mac, nor intends to.

I wish I could find the website called something like "Macintosh big mistakes",
but I can't find it now.

About the trashcan it said something like:

Having just written a long essay and saved it on the floppy disk. Not knowing
how to get the disk out, putting your entire essay in the trashcan is no way
near in your interest, or a risk your are willing to take.

The website suggested an eject icon in the toolbar when a removable media was
inserted.

So way not make a Gnome Panel applet like the Notification Area, but with eject
icons for CD's, DVD's, Cameras, etc. ?

And dragging to the trashcan should have no effect at all.

The current implementation is in violation of the GNOME HIG guidelines under
Chapter 10 User Input, Mouse Interaction:

  * Do not depend on input from the middle or right mouse buttons. As well as
being physically more difficult to click, some pointing devices and many
assistive technology devices only support or emulate the left mouse button. Some
assistive technologies may noteven emulate the mouse at all, but generate
keyboard events instead.

Well, I think the current implementation is working quite well (even mac users
can open the context menu without the right mouse button, just press Shift-F10),
but the Drag'n'Drop thing would be great. Maybe we could go the OS X way to
change the trash icon for an eject icon once one starts to drag a volume.

When I drag an erasable medium (like a CD-RW) to the Trash I expect its contents
to be trashed (since I can understand my disc won't disappear at all from my
drive). Making CD-ROMs behave differently than CD-RWs makes no sense so the
current behavior is sort-of okay (We could skip the message asking to delete it
if we can figure out that is impossible too).

To comply with the HIG as stated in #58, I feel like dragging to the Trash is to
unintuitive anyway so there should be at least one other way to unmount things
easily.

What about using dragging to the trashcan for formatting ?  This seems so much
more the "right thing" to do on that action.  Also, formatting some media (like
USB pen) isn't an easy to do task right now.

> I think the current implementation is working quite well

I dont think this is working well at all.  
There is another bug report about Eject using single button mouse on the Mac.   
Shift F10 or even Ctrl+Click are workarounds and still fail to make things more
easily discoverable.  A more direct way to eject is needed, even if it is not
necessarily the Trash to Eject method suggested here.  I wish there was a
suitable place to put an Eject menu item someone under Computer/Places or
something like that.  

> What about using dragging to the trashcan for formatting ?

There is was different bug report already requesting that.  It is a worse
suggestion than using Trash to Eject because not only is it non-intuitive,
undiscoverable but it is also inconsistent and defies user expectations (and
would probably require another dialog asking annoying questions).  

Please consider an eject icon in the "Notification Area Applet".

I think it is as intuitive as it can get.

I don't see why everyone complains that dragging to Trash does something
different, and then actively suggests that it SHOULD do something different,
than dragging normal files to Trash. Dragging a file to Trash does NOT "format"
the file, and leave empty 0 byte files behind. Why should it do that for
volumes? Dragging a folder does delete all of the files in the folder, but
volumes aren't folders.

As for the suggestions for the "notification area applet" stuff, there is
already a disk mounts panel applet. Why should there be yet another one for
shoving in the notification area?

THe current situation does not work well for Mac users at all. We don't do
Control+Click, or Click+Hold to pop up the menu. And, Mac users do not tend to
do that anyway.

And, the current behavior does not depend on the mouse. In fact, that little bit
out of the HIG is pretty much totally ignorable, in terms of a11y. In terms of
discoverability though, it makes some sense. GTK+ itself allows you to access
the right-click menu without a mouse. However, that does not make it
discoverable or intuitive. Not that dragging volumes to trash is either, but it
is what some percentage of our userbase expects.

As someone else said, my opinion on this probably doesn't matter that much, but
here goes.

I think both the way the old Macs handled this and the new way that Macs handle
this is broken.  That's not to say it isn't convenient, especially once you
understand the nuances of what is going on.  The problem is that it doesn't make
any sense until you "get it".  Why would you want to put your USB stick or your
CD in the trash?  For OSX, Why does the trash magically change to an eject
button?  What would make you think that it would be a good idea to do in the
first place to even make the eject icon appear?

Having said that, I can see why people want it.  It's a fast and relatively
simple way to accomplish what you want.  It just doesn't make any sense.

So far, I like the idea of having something like a panel applet show an "Eject"
or "Disconnect" button or text whenever a CD or umountable device is highlighted
best.  I actually think it would really neat to have an area on the desktop that
is devoted to showing metadata about the currently selected item and provide
functionality related to it (like ejecting it), but that might be getting ahead
of ourselves.  For now perhaps the applet.

Nite_Hawk



Nite_Hawk

Okay, this is my bug.  I filed it and as such I'm going to take a few liberties
with it.  If people don't like that then complain. ;-]

I really like the idea of having a eject icon in the notification area (or
somewhere on the panel)  In fact, given that there's some talk of making the
panel one big notification area, this seems like a great place to handle this. 
The trash icon can now be placed on the panel (and hopefully some time soon, it
won't have to be on the desktop).

I'm going to back calls for an icon on the panel that appears when you
click-n-hold umountable media, with a few changes.

The icon should be visible all the time and should be greyed out unless a
umountable drive icon is clicked-n-held (by the I mean, in a state where it can
be dragged).  In this case, the icon should pulse, throb, jump or whatever to
indicate that the folder in question can be unmounted and that this would be the
place to drag it to do this.

This option seems very intuitive to me.

As for the dialog that appears when you drag a folder to the trash.  Well either
highlight the 'eject feature' if active, prompt for the eject feature to be
added if it's not on the panel or ignore the attempt all together.

This icon would however need to become a default on the gnome desktop to make it
accessible.

A similar (non default) feature could be added that would allow users to format
devices.

I aggree, that GNOME needs an icon (in notification area), that helps to eject
(umount) mounted media more intuitive and easier by default. It would be very
nice to have this usability improvement ASAP. Is this feature too late for 2.12
or not?

An what if we'd modify the trash-applet to behave like the OS X trash in the panel?

Either that or just have a separate "unmount" applet that you could drag things
onto (or click).  I'd be against using the notification area though--
notification icons aren't normally drag targets, they should never be 'greyed
out', and usually the only thing they should do if you click them is pop up a
menu or open a window (depending on which button you use).

I see two possible solusions:

(a) Drag and Drop. One eject icon in the Notification Area that ejects anything
that is dragged to it. E.g. disk, cd, dvd, memory stick, etc.

(b) No drag and drop. The Notification Area gets a "CD eject" icon when a CD is
inserted etc.

Which method are we talking about?

Not to start a flamewar, but a new applet is 

1/ confusing for the user
2/ not going into the direction of running GNOME in less hardware resources.

Hubert,

While I'm not usually into add stuff for the sake of adding stuff, I think this
applet adds usability to gnome that it doesn't already have.  It would solve the
problem of people wanting to use the Trash to umount filesystems.

I also don't think it's that confusing for the users.  Having an icon on the
panel show that you can umount by draging the mounted filesystem to this icon
solves a lot of issues with regard to mounting.  The applet could also be
designed so that if you click it, it would show all the umountable filesystems
and the user could select the file system from the list (instead of dragging and
dropping).

As pointed out in the discussion of this, Gnome is not currently HIG for this
since you need to use the context menus to umount filesystems.  This makes it
awkward for our one toed mouse user amoungst others.

At the moment, we've got this system where you can mount media simply by putting
it in a drive, or plugging it into a USB socket, or whatever.  The system
detects the media and mounts it.  That's some serious overhead, but I wouldn't
want to go back to the dark old days of having to mount media after insterting
it.  Sadly, to umount the media, you have to go back to those dark old days,
fishing around in context menus.  While the context menu works, it's not exactly
intuitive.

Gnome needs something that allows the user to umount any device with the same
simplicity that they mounted it with, and adding a icon to the panel to achieve
this would be minimal overhead in comparison to the auto-mounting we've already got.

I actually agree that the trash isn't the right place to be dragging media to
umount it (it's unclear what action this might have on the files) but it's
pretty  clear that users want to be able to drag it to somewhere.

Calum,

My print icon in the notification area greys out when the printing is finished.
 I love that, because it saves me having to check to see if a long document it
printed.  In the same way, having a greyed out icon in the notification area
that comes to life when umounting is possible seems very intuitive.  Maybe just
having soming pop into the notification area would be enough, but it would limit
being able to umount devices from the icon.

Or maybe we shouldn't think about it greying out.

Maybe what should happen is when you insert media (or mount something in
computer) the icon appears in the notification area.  It's active in the sense
that you can click on it to see any umountable devices (if you've mounted other
things since) and then click on the device to umount it.  If you start dragging
a umountable device, the notification area icon would start doing a little
'drag-here-to-umount-the-device' dance to let users no that this is possible. 
If a second device is mounted, then the icon should do a little flicker or
something to say that it's been added to the list.

This would be consistent with notification area icons and wouldn't involve
greying out.  It would also serve to make the user aware that the icon in the
notication area has something to do with the media they just mounted, and the
icon should be able to make it pretty clear (along with the tool tip) that this
is where you can umount stuff.

This seems pretty intuitive to me and I think it would really enhance this area
of gnome.

well, an applet would be overkill for that I maintain.

There are a lot of solutions.

-Drag to Trash. believe it or not. like it or not. It works on Mac since 1984,
and nobody seems to complain, but a few person here. The fact that the trash
icon change shape helps.
-add a menu item to Nautilus, at least in the "computer" window. This one is
trivial as we already have the contextual menu
-Add an eject button in the "Computer" window, if a volume that can be ejected
is selected

These last 2 might not work on Ubuntu, but after all they alter the behaviour,
so it is not GNOME's problem.

-the idea of adding a little eject gadget to the icon is not bad, but might not
be the solution as it can be confusing because you can select clicking the icon.
Might be "dangerous". Not my favourite.

-add a little gadget on the "Favorite" next to the media, since they are in
here, now that Nautilus integrate it. MacOS X does that, and it is convenient.

Created attachment 50306 [details]
mockup to show a way to do unmount

This is a mockup that show where to put the little eject button. At least that
one would make sense. MacOS X does that too.

Okay, that's a nice idea, but gnome uses the spacial mode for file management.

How about a mock up explaining how you think Gnome should handle umounts in
spacial mode?

Rodd: What about adding this functionality to the panel "Places" menu?

Created attachment 50318 [details]
Eject in Places menu (mockup)

I made a mockup of an eject button in the places menu. Obviously, such a button
would be beside every removablr storage device entry.

Created attachment 50319 [details]
Eject in Places menu (mockup)

I made a mockup of an eject button in the places menu. Obviously, such a button
would be beside every removable storage device entry.

To #78 Julian.

You can't have a button on a menu entry.

That would require the entire GTK toolkit to be reworked, so pressing ont he
left side og the menu "opens" and the right side of the menu "ejects".

The "Places menu" is note suited to an eject entry. Look at the other entries in
that menu.

Besides having an Eject in "Places" is just as bad, if not worse, than having to
right click.

Created attachment 50345 [details]
A mock up of a CD Eject button in the Notification Area.

Manny, I think Martin is right.  While it might be nice to include eject
functionality in the Places menu, it's only one step better than having to right
click the icon.  (Well actually, it's two steps better, because places is always
visible, where as the icon could well be covered with applications)

I'm still tending toward using the notification area, however, I'm not sure
you'd want to have an icon for each mount.  How about an icon that shows you can
eject, and which when left clicked shows a list of mounts that can be umounted.

I'll attach (my turn at) a mock-up to show you what I'm thinking.

Created attachment 50361 [details]
Sample of how an eject button could be implemented in the notification area.

The users could either click on the icon (and get a list of umountable media)
or drag a umountable folder to the icon.

To #83 Rodd.

That is not a bad idea at all, thought I see advantages and disadvantages in
both your method and my method.

One eject icon for every media:
+ One click eject.
+ The user sees a new icon in the Notification Areal when a media is inserted,
and will from that, relate this eject icon to the media just inserted.
- The icons can be hard to make out what they picture. Atleast in my muck up.

One eject icon for all media:
+ Clear indication that this icon ejects something.
- Two clicks are required.
- The user doesn't see a change when a new media is inserted.

Martin,

One other disadvantage to the icon per media idea is that people with lots of
media would end up with a very full notification area.  In my last job, I had
about 10 mounts and while I didn't always use them all, I would often find at
the end of the day that I had.  That's a lot of icons to have in the
notification area.

Also, another problem (as I'm thinking about it) is how would you tell the
difference between two diffent USB keys, or 2 CD's?  I guess you could use tool
tips, but tool tips can be a little slow.

On the single icon side of the equation, you could easily have the icon jiggle,
dance, or throb to show that it's been updated with the new mount.

What about network mounts? I use a lot of those throughout the day (and kind of
wish they wouldn't stay on my desktop, but that's another bug).

It would probably not be appropriate to have a notification icon for each
network mount because of that. Seeing as how network mounts don't go away unless
the user explicitly removes them, there'd be a bolted-in notification icon.

Perhaps the places or destkop submenu would make more sense? It probably
wouldn't require a patch against GTK+ either.

Also, the trash-eject error is just awful. Either:
1) Just eject.
2) Die. (Do nothing)

It's about as bad as the damn paperclip correcting you mid sentice about
gramamr. "I see you don't know how to type in english, you should type in
espanol instead."

To #85 Rodd.

I see your points regarding "One eject per media". It is likely that you can
convince me to support "One eject for all media", but that depends on Gnome's
taget group; power users or regular users?

Regular users have at most 3 media mounts at a time would I assume(I only have
1). And they would therefore be better off with the "One eject per media"
solution, using tooltips as you described for indication.

Power users have many media mounts, and "One eject for all media" would properly
be a better/faster solution for them. But I would clame that power users have
corresponding larger monitors than regular users, and therefore have the
horizontal space required.

By using the last argument, the "One eject per media" have that advantage, that
it will work for both power users and regular users.

For me it basically boils down to, what taget group Gnome is for.

Here is some *working* code ive had for about a year and a half now to do DnD
Eject using nautilus. Patches extend eel and nautilus so that draging any
volume/device to the trash from any location (computer:, desktop:, etc) will
eject the device using gnome-vfs.

Ive been using this code personally all this time, so you can consider it well
tested.

Created attachment 50390 [details]
nautilus DND eject against CVS HEAD 20050808

nautilus DND eject against CVS HEAD 20050808
has patch for eel HEAD too.

Rodd:

> My print icon in the notification area greys out when the printing is finished.
> I love that, because it saves me having to check to see if a long document it
> printed. 

Showing the status of a print job is good use of the notification area, but I
would maintain that the icon shouldn't grey out :) I would say it should appear
when you start printing, and perhaps acquire a 'tick' emblem or something for
some period of time (or perhaps until you click it) after printing is complete,
and then just silently disappear again.

In other words, the notification area is a place to inform the user of events
that have happened or are happening, not a place where they can choose what to
do next (except, perhaps, in direct response to one of those events).  So I'm
still not convinced that the notification area, in its current form, would be
the place for an unmount gizmo.

FWIW, OSX also just has a "File->Eject <volumename>" menu item on every spatial
window in which you're looking at the contents of a folder on a mounted volume.
 That would at least get around the non-HIGness of the current right-click-only
solution...

Calum,

You're probably right about the printer icon.  I'm not sure why it greys out
instead of disappearing after the print jobs are finished, but disappearing
might be just as appropriate.  Someone might need to ask the eggcups guys the
why of that.

As for:

> OSX also just has a "File->Eject <volumename>" menu item on every spatial
> window in which you're looking at the contents of a folder on a mounted
> volume. That would at least get around the non-HIGness of the current 
> right-click-only solution...

While this would be a nice start, I would like to think we can do better than
Apple and OS X (because we can).

While I think the current behaviour or telling people you can't umount dragging
to the trash is busted, I also think dragging to the trash to umount is busted.
 I was willing to put up with the behaviour because some people think this is
appropriate (and it's better then saying, I know what you want to do, but you
can't) but dragging a folder to the trash is ambiguous and makes you wonder if
the folder will be deleted, or umounted (because Mac users expect this) and
that's not great UI.

Changing the trash icon to reflect a mount is better, but not a lot.  It's
unexpected behaviour.  Something that does one thing suddenly does another
thing, but only if you do the right things to find it out.  It's all a bit trial
and error.

Having something in the menus is a nice start (getting back to you recent
comment), but why not have some nice graphical way to show that having mounted
something so easily, it's equally easy to umount it?

Having an icon appear (or throb if already there) in the notifacation area is a
simple and obvious way to show the user that they've mounted something and this
is how you might umount it.  If there's only a single umount, then you wouldn't
need the list, the button would suffice, and when there is more than one device,
then the list could appear making it clear what you are umounting.

The more I think about this, this really needs to be in the notification area
because it only needs to be visible when something is able to be umounted by the
user.  It's what the notification area was designed for.

Just so we're clear here, I'm totally in favour of trying to do better than OSX
too, and I agree the "don't do that, do this" alert is a nasty piece of work :)
   The menu suggestion was just an idea for getting past the HIG non-conformity,
so we can focus on more novel solutions. (Of which, sadly, I really have none at
the moment.)

The notification area idea still doesn't sit quite right with me, though... it
sort of works as far as an icon appearing there when you mount a volume
(although it's even arguable whether notifcation icons should be used to notify
the user of something they've just explicitly done themeselves).  But after
that, it's neither going to notify you of anything else (unless you mount
another volume, which again you presumably know you've done anyway), nor monitor
the status of anything for you-- and for a notification icon, that's generally a
sign that it should think about not being there any more.

That said, the HIG guidelines for notification icons are very poor right now,
and need properly finishing, so if there's enough momentum for them to be used
for this sort of thing, we can always consider that when we do so.  Provided we
can define exactly what "this sort of thing" really means :)

Hmm, Looking at #83 (I was looking at #81 before), this seems like it'd make sense.

Calum: If you think about it, the notificaion area includes things that are
happening NOW. If it excluded network mounts and non-user mounts, then all of
the mounts listed would be "currently attached" and something the user should be
aware of NOW, since removable media isn't non-user. (So that they're concious of
it.) Perhaps some feedback (a blink or something simpler) to let them know of
new inserted media?

Network mounts would still need to be addressed, and the trash would be a good
way to do that, because you're actually "Deleting" their information, not
"Unmounting" them. Of course, by that logic, it'd make sense to eject that way too.

This would be a lot better than OS X and prevent newer users from being too
confused, killing 4 birds with two stones so to speak.

> If you think about it, the notificaion area includes things that are
> happening NOW.

Yours might, mine doesn't :)  Neither should it, by the HIG's current
definition, except to monitor things that are constantly changing without the
user's intervention (network connection, battery charging etc.)  Other than
that, the notification area exists to tell you about events that have already
happened.  (Printing finished, mail received, updates available, download
completed, whatever.)

But anyway, I don't want to bog things down with a debate about the philosophy
of the notification area, so I'll shut up now and let the rest of the discussion
run its course... if it turns out there's a clear usability reason why the
notification area is the best place for this feature, then I'm sure the HIG team
will accommodate it somewhow :)

Calum: The problem is that we have no way of adding/removing applets dynamically
at the moment. The eject button is only interesting if any media is in some of
your drives. Therefore, the notification area seems to be the onliest place we
can put this without a completely new applet system.

Giving the idea of an eject option in the menu some more thought...

While it would be useful if you have a spacial window (or windows) open on the
desktop you're on wehn you want to eject the disk, there are plenty of times
when you want to eject and this isn't the case.

Having an icon on the panel (in the notification area, for example) is going to
garantee that regardless of what your desktop looks like (windows everywhere
covering the desktop, including the icon for the mount), or no windows open for
the mount, that you can still simply umount the device.

The solution I'm proposal gives you access to ejecting the driver regardless of
where you're at and it's simple.  You never have to open windows, or access the
desktop to do it, which doesn't mean that these systems couldn't also be
included, just that they have limitations.

(Yeah, I'm spruiking my own idea, but the more I think about it, the more I
begin to really like it as it seems to answer more and more questions).

Okay, so unless I'm reading it wrong Rodd, you're in favor of putting an icon in
the notification area? This seems to be a consensus now.

So far we have the pros:
* Dynamic, there when you need it, not when you don't.
* Always reachable (Good for "I need this workstation logout-quick" moments)
* More obvious than Mac OS (X or 9).

And cons:
* Breaks HIG about notification area a little. (See more)

There's worse offences to the notification area than this though. In paticular
Redhat's security thing, and the gaim icons.

As for it displaying things happening now, I was refering to the interaction
guidelines in the HIG about the notification applet. But yes, it does break
quite a few of the "Shoulds and Probablies" in that page.

However, note under the "Icon appearance" section:

* Only core GNOME programs may perpetually display an icon in the status area.
* Non-core programs for which a perpetual icon may be useful must default to not
perpetually showing the icon. Users may select to enable a perpetual icon for
the application as a preference.

So we may be within our rights to do this. Also, consider that this is specific,
as other file managers might have better/worse eject methods. For those, there
is the mount/unmount applet (which probably needs improvement).

Also of concern to me is still eject-to-trash and network mounts. My reasoning
for that (FWIW) is stated above.

Hello,

I think this whole bug report is crack. The discussion centres around how to get
media unmounted, when the real question is "How do I get my media out of the
machine?". Now there may be a call for providing a convenient software "eject"
facility if the actual physical eject button is difficult to reach, but in the
general case I think that the eject on the drive itself is the best way to eject
your media. When it comes to USB drives or card readers I think the solution is
simpler again. The user should be able pull their media out directly. I think
the mindset here is focused on how the technology currently works rather than
how the user works.

In my opinion the correct response to this bug is as follows:
1) Mount all removable media sync
Your user will hopefully notice that their write operation isn't finished yet
before pulling out the drive.
2) Gracefully handle unmount of media after it has been removed whenever there
is nothing to flush and no write operation occuring
3) Warn, and allow graceful re-insertion of media that still has write
operations pending
4) For CD-ROMs, don't even bother locking the eject button. Just let the user
press it when they want to get their media out. Let the applications deal with
having their media ripped out prematurely, and make sure they do so in an
appropriate way.

The only reason macs needed the trashcan-as-eject model in the first place is
because they didn't have an eject button on their drives. Someone obviously
thought this was a good idea at the time, but PCs do have the butttons. Someone
obvously decided more buttons are better. So why does the software have to get
involved at all? When there's a real physical button sitting there, why clutter
the graphical user interface?

Benjamin.

#99

Not really, the underlying mounting methods are a distribution/kernel level
issue, this has nothing to do with how nautilus should cope with it.

And FWIW, macs do have eject buttons on their CD-Rom drives on most of the
blueish G4's. They don't work for the same core reasons.

Though polling the physical eject button isn't a bad idea, this might not even
be possible either, since most CD-Rom drives don't exactly send anything like
ACPI events for this.

For those wanting a new panel applet or notification icon, have you tried out
the existing disk mounter applet?  The version in Gnome >= 2.10 detects mounted
volumes in the same way as Nautilus, and makes it easy to unmount/eject the
volume or open it in the file manager.

Some thoughts. As #99 pointed out, the fundamental problem is getting stuff into
and out of the computer (on and off the desktop for you tech geeks).

One UI model I could like is to have a window like
http://home.wanadoo.nl/sbm/2005_02_01_mmblogarchive.html#110898103967146210
(I've seen other examples but couldn't find them now). I.e. you drag the mouse
pointer to the edge of the screen(the right I think), as a result this "outside"
window slides in, either covering the desktop (in which case it shouldn't have a
border along the screen edge) or shrinks/displaces the desktop. To mount a drive
simply drag it from this window to the desktop and, similarily, put it back when
you are done.

I think this qualifies as an intuitive use of mount/umount.

*** Bug 321058 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

I think an icon should be added to the notification area when a user inserts a
usb disk (possibly not CDs as the physical eject button seems to be supported as
a method of unmount, IIRC), and right-clicking it has unmount as an option. As
much as I hate to say it this is how it is done in in Windows (ME, at least),
and will help Windows users in grasping the whole unmount concept, which many
often don't understand. Plus it's nice to be able to always see whether media is
inserted/mounted without cluttering the desktop with icons which often overlay
each other, and having to open Places > Computer. I think that one icon per disk
would be good (as opposed to Windows, which show an eject icon, and a list of
devices when clicked), because it enables a quick and easy was for the user to
see a list of inserted media.

*** Bug 324685 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Next old bug and nothing done... What about "ping!"?

Ping from Ubuntu
<https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nautilus/+bug/44413>

Is there a patch from Ubuntu? One that adds the requested features? The only patch I can find here is the rejected one for the trash eject.

Sven! Please visit the link above before asking questions.

*** Bug 523980 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

*** Bug 391525 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

I have proposal.

When device is dragged on trash, it would change icon to some new "unmount" icon and label to "Unmount" or "Eject".

What do you think? Untuitive and yet innovative :) .

It's an interesting idea, but I see two problems:

* According to HIG changing icons is to be avoided.
* The idea of putting something important in the trash, as discussed in this bug.

But you gave me an idea =)

What if a special Eject Icon appears on the desktop when 1 or more devices is connected?

Either the user could drag the device onto the Eject Icon to unmount, or click on it and get a list of possible (and not possible) devices to unmount.

(In reply to comment #112)
> I have proposal.
> 
> When device is dragged on trash, it would change icon to some new "unmount"
> icon and label to "Unmount" or "Eject".
> 
> What do you think? Untuitive and yet innovative :) .

That's what MacOS X has been doing for quite a while.

(In reply to comment #113)
> It's an interesting idea, but I see two problems:
> 
> * According to HIG changing icons is to be avoided.

G = Guideline. If you solve a problem by not following one, go ahead. That how things evolve.

no, don't touch my desktop... better idea might be tray icon but you might say "don't touch my tray" as I do now...

that's big issue. we need fresh idea.

What if an icon appeared in the notification area when media is mounted?  You could drag the media to this to umount it, and you could also right click the icon and see what media is mounted, umount that media (and possibly open that media too).

tray = notification area

sorry, but that's what the tray is there for, to add applets on the fly that are situaion dependent.  You're attitude is at odds with what the tray is all about.

At first it sound like a good idea to add such icon. It would be much more visible way of unmounting media. 

However there is a risk that the notification area gets too crowded. Various applications add things here and you could very easily end up havin 10 different icons for various things. I have seen such things on windows.

So, I would say that it is much more important that we make it possible to unmount a volumen the Mac way by dragging it to the Trash, or at least remove the annoying dialog someting like "To unmount use the right menu button". Dialogs like this should NOT appear in a usable system. NOT EVER. It indicates that we anticipated what the user would like to do, but we don't give a damn" This is outright rude. The GUI should help the user perform a task, not teach him to use it the way we want. Not to mention how unhelpful this dialog is to people with just one mouse button.

When that is fixed, by all means add a tray icon, but make sure it can be turned off with a gconf key that leaves it configurable to sysadmins and advanced users.

Just a friendly reminder that the purpose of Bugzilla is to fix bugs. It isn't good for long discussions, those are best handled via the mailing list. This bugreport is for one specific suggestion. A tray icon would be another bugreport. Comments about a dialog are again another bugreport (IIRC WONTFIX).

*** Bug 559004 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

This is obsolete now, as essentially the shell takes care of showing a message tray icon while there are removable devices connected [1], which in similar in spirit to the point of many commenters in this report.

[1] http://blogs.gnome.org/cosimoc/2011/06/23/hotplug-hotness/