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Bug 163687 - Eject info bar
Eject info bar
Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX
Product: nautilus
Classification: Core
Component: general
unspecified
Other All
: Normal enhancement
: ---
Assigned To: Nautilus Maintainers
Nautilus Maintainers
: 336392 457957 (view as bug list)
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
 
Reported: 2005-01-11 15:45 UTC by Reed Hedges
Modified: 2012-08-13 23:27 UTC
See Also:
GNOME target: ---
GNOME version: Unversioned Enhancement


Attachments
mockup (57.33 KB, image/gif)
2008-04-21 17:11 UTC, Martin Jürgens
Details

Description Reed Hedges 2005-01-11 15:45:58 UTC
Whenever any file or directory on a device the user previously mounted is
selected or viewed in Nautilus (both in normal filesystem browser, or by
selecting it in th e"Computer" view), an eject button should appear in the
toolbar.  It is not obvious to most non-experienced users that removable devices
need to be unmounted, especially floppy disks and ZIP disks.
Comment 1 Sebastien Bacher 2005-01-11 16:11:28 UTC
the drivemount applet in gnome-applet do this, not sure that nautilus should
have a similar feature.
Comment 2 Murray Cumming 2005-12-02 15:47:11 UTC
If the drive mount applet is meant to be _the_ way to do this, then maybe it
should be on the panel by default.
Comment 3 Reed Hedges 2005-12-02 16:33:17 UTC
The reason why I think Nautilus should have the "unmount+eject" button this: 
Gnome will typically automount removable devices, causing them to automatically
appear in Nautilus.  But since the user did not use any "mount" command, they
have no idea that they must use an "unmount" command to successfully remove the
device.  The result is a CD-ROM completely stuck in the drive, from the user's
point of view! Or worse, a corrupted floppy disk.  

By having an "Eject" button automatically appear in the toolbar when you select
a removable device in Natuilus, it becomes obvious to the user what he must to
to get his removable device back :)

Comment 4 Christian Neumair 2006-02-25 22:27:54 UTC
Sounds like an excellent idea, not feasible for 2.14, though, since we're feature frozen. Milestoning to 2.16.
Comment 5 Reed Hedges 2006-02-27 14:09:15 UTC
Great.  

To be clear, in my first comment I meant that the button appear under two conditions:

1. You select a removable drive
2. You are viewing the contents of the removable drive or a subdirectory (you are "inside" the drive)
Comment 6 Jonas De Vuyst 2006-04-02 19:16:49 UTC
Instead of having a toolbar button, which wouldn't be visible in spatial mode, it might be better to implement this in the same manner as the Write to Disc button in CD/DVD Creator.
Comment 7 Reed Hedges 2006-05-10 16:35:15 UTC
I never addressed the comment about the panel applet -- yes this works in many cases, but I don't think you can *rely* on it always being there. What if the user has decided they don't want it (especially if it takes up lots of space showing many devices), or they don't want a panel at all? Or they have autohide on the panel and so forget that there is a button there to eject the device? 

Jonas, how does CD/DVD Creator do it? Does it create a sort of new toolbar for the button? Does the button sort of "float" in the main window?
Comment 8 Christian Neumair 2006-05-10 18:40:18 UTC
We can solve this by either adding a toolbar button, or by adding an extra bar widget (cf. the empty trash button in trash:///, or the burn button in burn:///) to folders that refer to drives or volumes.

Architecturally, it is more simple to just add all of the "Self Mount Volume", "Self Unmount Volume", "Self Eject Volume" and Self Format Volume" actions to the toolbar, i.e. in src/file-manager/nautilus-directory-view-ui.xml. I'm not really sure though, after all we offer this in the "File" menu already since Nautilus 2.15, and it is not really a common action, is it?
Comment 9 Reed Hedges 2006-05-10 20:44:29 UTC
The idea is to do something visible which makes the user aware of the need for the need to unmount (or "eject" some other non-jargon term) before being able to remove the device.

Also, I'm working with 2.12 here, no experience with later versions to see if anything changed regarding this (and can't comment on how to implement this, never really looked too deeply into the code, sorry).
Comment 10 Jonas De Vuyst 2006-05-14 17:48:21 UTC
Reed: there are good screenshots of the sort of button I was referring to at http://pages.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~weckerl/nautilus_patch.html
Comment 11 Frej Soya 2006-09-14 20:46:22 UTC
What about a an icon left to the label, like the finder in mac osx? 
Comment 12 Frej Soya 2006-09-14 20:47:04 UTC
What about a an icon right of the label, like the finder in mac osx? 
Comment 13 Cosimo Cecchi 2008-01-12 11:17:02 UTC
*** Bug 336392 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 14 Cosimo Cecchi 2008-01-12 11:17:29 UTC
*** Bug 457957 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 15 Martin Jürgens 2008-01-12 11:34:06 UTC
This is exactly the idea that I have had, see bug 457957 where I created a mockup.

I think that it really should be implented with a blue bar, like with the Trash as it makes everything more consistent.

> The result is a CD-ROM completely stuck in the drive, from the user's
point of view!

I have never experienced this. When I press the open button on my DVD drive, GNOME automatically unmounts it and ejects it after.
Comment 16 Reed Hedges 2008-01-14 14:05:24 UTC
>> The result is a CD-ROM completely stuck in the drive, from the user's
>> point of view!

> I have never experienced this. When I press the open button on my DVD drive,
> GNOME automatically unmounts it and ejects it after.

My point is that not all users will think of this, or might find the GUI button easier or more convenient.  

And it's not just CD-ROM drives, but other removable media, network mounts, etc.  And, most importantly, devices that can be physically ejected or disconnected (floppies, tapes, USB drives) before buffered data is written by being unmounted and flushed-- users who are not familiar with mounting and unmounting Unix devices won't know that it's a good idea to unmount it first.

Another aspect is what to do if the mounted device is in use; then the unmount would fail.  Having the failure message ("can't eject device...") appear as a reply to clicking a GUI button might be clearer to some users.
Comment 17 Martin Jürgens 2008-04-21 17:11:07 UTC
Created attachment 109637 [details]
mockup

here's the mockup. I'll try to catch someone who has implented it for Trash / CD/DVD / GPHOTO to do it for GNOME
Comment 18 Martin Jürgens 2008-04-21 18:17:19 UTC
Some things regarding my mockup and facts:

- That blue bar is used widely, so this would be a consistent way.
- The main aspect is not about enabling the user to eject the volume using even another way
- The main aspect is about informing users that if they just plug their USB dongle out, there may be serious data loss on it
- It does not have to be displayed using CD-Roms / DVDs because they are unmounted when the button on the drive is pressed
- It should only be display on removable media, because otherwise there are more than one blue bars just because of the new autorun feature in GNOME 2.22

Maybe we'd have to discuss it more deeply on the mailinglist, but I'd really welcome this feature. if someone wants to review my patch, I'd try to create a patch (but I am really not experienced with hacking). 

Objections?
Comment 19 Martin Jürgens 2008-04-22 13:05:04 UTC
Well it is targeted to 2.16.x. Maybe it should be retargeted as it has been deferred? 
Comment 20 Mateusz Barucha 2008-12-25 16:49:58 UTC
There is another mockup at: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LittleDetails?action=AttachFile&do=get&target=removablemedia2.png

Since it is now easy to unmount from the side panel, it would be a very nice complement, since a lot of people disables the panel :)
Comment 21 Allan Day 2010-05-27 16:28:01 UTC
Renaming for clarity.
Comment 22 William Jon McCann 2012-08-13 23:27:27 UTC
We have eject on the sidebar for all mounted media. We also show removable media in the message tray. I don't think we need to offer an infobar on every directory under that mount point.