GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 602008
search takes too many clicks
Last modified: 2011-09-30 12:37:04 UTC
Nautilus requires me to click a Search button and then type into what was the address bar. Browsers have long since abandoned the dual-purpose bar. Windows 7 Explorer likewise adopts the Browser-style search input in the toolbar. The Explorer method is easier. For starts, I didn't even see the big Search button in Nautilus at first. It's not something users are expecting to have to look for. It's different than a web browser, and for little apparent reason. Second, the extra click is pointless when we have other UI designs that don't need the Search button click. If a user needs to search frequently, it's just a waste of time to have to click a button to get to a search field instead of just having the search field visible. Especially when you can make any typed key automatically go to the search field, and remove the need to use the mouse or unknown key combinations (not everyone immediately thinks of ctrl-f... even frequent browser users don't know about it because it's not right there in their face like the search bar is) to get to search.
Nautilus is not a browser...
It's a file browser, actually. Whether or not it is a Web browser is absolutely freaking irrelevant in all ways to this bug report. What is relevant is that people sometimes actually have to search for files, and it's a pain in the ass to do with Nautilus, and it has a different search interface from the one most people are most familiar with for absolutely no logically sound reason. If the sole reason it is a pain in the ass is because some developer thinks that making it easier would violate an arbitrary rule that Nautilus shouldn't use common, well-known, and widely used search interfaces just to make absolutely damn sure that nobody confuses Nautilus with a Web browser, I will be sorely disappointed and be led to quite strongly question what the hell the purpose of Nautilus even is if it isn't to make file browsing, searching, and management as easy, obvious, and convenient as is possible.
Nautilus user interface has been simplified for 3.0 and "Search" button is still in the main toolbar. You enter text, and hit "Enter", and the search will start by using the current folder by default. Having searching on the fly here does not make sense if you have a huge file system with lots of files. For searching on the fly for filenames in the current folder you can simply type-ahead and you will get a small field in the lower right corner. You can navigate between the matches by using the arrow keys. So what exact changes would you like to see, compared to the current Nautilus 3.0 interface?
Closing this bug report as no further information has been provided. Please feel free to reopen this bug if you can provide the information asked for. Thanks!