GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 593793
Show recently-used folders
Last modified: 2011-09-06 17:34:31 UTC
When working with multiple applications and we need to open/save some files from/to a organized place, every file dialog must be directed to the right place. If there was a "Recent Used Folders" item (like "Recent Used Files", it would be less painfull.
Why don't you simply use bookmarks for that? Afterall that's what they are for.
Because doing that will create a bookmark nightmare! The places that I'm talking about isn't always the same. Your suggestion would be good if your work take longer to finish, but if it is a simple, not very often executed work, I believe that bookmarks will become more hard to manage than find the folder yourself. In that cases, a simple look at a "Recent Used Folders" would do the job. One good side effect is, for example, that will become easy to find the folder you have worked with programs that you need to run several times in sequence, and those programs dont remember the folder you have used last time. File Roler is a example. Anyway, it would be a nice feature that most users will find it interesting.
Sorry for the misspelled title.
This is something which I've felt the need for for a long time. It has the very same use-case as the "Recent Documents" menu-item -- to go back to something you were recently at. Bookmarks make no sense for a possibly temporary folder which you were using -- and usually the times you need a "Recent Folders" list is when you didn't know beforehand that you'd need to go back to that folder -- so, it is unlikely that you'd even think to bookmark it unless you have a policy of bookmarking every folder you visit, which quickly makes a mess of bookmarks. So, I would think the most logical (or consistent) implementation of recent-folders would be to store the N (user-definable) most recent folders which you've visited in Nautilus, and to be able to open them back up via a "Recent Folders" menu item which is next to the "Recent Files" menu item (in the "Places" menu). I guess that it shouldn't be so hard to implement, since it would be almost identical to the code which handles the "Recent Files" menu item.
*** Bug 625256 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
See also bug #587681 for a nice patch to add a "Go to file's location" command on the files shown in the recent-files list.
*** Bug 548467 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
The duplicate bug #548467 is especially interesting, as it is about not having a way to show recently-used folders when you are in SELECT_FOLDER mode.
These duplicate bugs are all about to show the folders where the recently used files are, instead of showing the files itself. But if you just select a folder to put files into it (as in fileroller), this folder will not get listed in the recently used folders, because you haven't selected any file. I think that the most complete solution is to show in recently used folder... the folders that you have recently used... Maybe not folders that you just take a look, but certanly the folders that you have used for something, like save or open a file, for example.
The obvious thing to do for the "open" modes is to just show recent folders in "Recent files". For the "save" modes, right now they display an easy-to-miss combobox under "Save in folder": Name: [_____________________] Save in folder: [Blah \/] We should show this instead: Name: [_____________________] Save in: [Project1 ] [Foo bar ] [Vacation photos ] [Homework ] [Other... ] i.e. a list with recent folders that you *definitely* see, not a little combobox that gets lost in the clutter.
I've put better mockups and the rationale for this here: http://live.gnome.org/DocumentCentricGnome/Help%20the%20user%20choose%20a%20place%20to%20put%20a%20new%20file
Please, please, please do not forget to add "currently open folders (in nautilus only, or through an API over dbus)".
(In reply to comment #12) > Please, please, please do not forget to add "currently open folders (in > nautilus only, or through an API over dbus)". Nice idea! This will nicely tie together both file-display mechanisms. If we make Nautilus add visited folders to recently-used.xbel, then there will be no need to add a new D-Bus API for this. I've just filed bug #653253 for Nautilus about this.
This is in place now for Save mode, so I'll close this bug. For the part about Open mode, see bug #658380.