GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 695027
Reintroduce the compact view done right
Last modified: 2021-06-18 15:50:43 UTC
Compact view was removed from nautilus in #676842. The rationale behind removing the compact view were: 1) pretty similar to the icon view 2) horrible horizontal scrolling. Though it is similar to the icon view, the main difference is that the compact view can shows more items in the same space. This is a big difference in many situations for a certain group of users. I think we should find a way to offer a mode for this need. My suggestion is using a output similar to ls -x with a lateral small icon (like in the list view) and using vertical scroll when the available space is not enough.
*** Bug 695438 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
I'd prefer it if the original implementation was restored (with horizontal scrolling). Why change it if it was working fine?
Serrano: horizontal scroll is a weird animal in desktop applications. One way to make easy an UI is through consistency in the whole UI. Take for instance the mouse wheel, which is the most common device to interact with the UI, rotating the mouse wheel should never scroll horizontally because doing so is disorienting and unexpected.
(In reply to comment #0) > Though it is similar to the icon view, the main difference is that the compact > view can shows more items in the same space. Icon view can show more items in the same space by zooming out. > This is a big difference in many situations for a certain group of users. > I think we should find a way to offer a mode for this need. Can you provide a example use case?
>Icon view can show more items in the same space by zooming out. Yes, but readibility is worse because the file names is stripped into several lines. I attach a comparison >Can you provide a example use case? Browse directories with lots of files in a readable way. https://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2012-June/msg00082.html
Created attachment 238419 [details] icon view
Created attachment 238420 [details] simulated new compact view
(In reply to comment #5) > Yes, but readibility is worse because the file names is stripped into several > lines. I attach a comparison I agree. It should be fixed to improve readability at small sizes. At the smallest size there is no file name at all, only tiny icons... For reference, Microsoft Windows 7 Explorer moves the label (file name) to the right of the icon when zoomed out; if it exceeds the column width, it is ellapsed, and the full name is shown on over/focus. The result is close to your proposal, except that ls -x doesn't set a fixed column width limit. If the name of a file is too long, ls -x shows a single column (which is the same as list view and goes against the goal of showing more files in the same space), so I think that Explorer's solution would work better here.
Yes, too long file names distort the column distribution. Put a limit to the longest filenames can be good measure to produce a more even column width. Though I think compact view can be very similar to the icon view, I think it deserves of its own. Icon view is focused in the icon, compact view is focused in the filename.
I was shocked when I updated to Nautilus / GNOME 3.6 and saw that my beloved compact view AND the F3 split feature was removed! WTF!? Compact view was my default view because it displayed a lot of items and it allowed easily to select a group of items via the mouse (draw a rectangle over the items). The total opposite is the list view, because it shows much less items but instead all the other info as type, last modified, owner, etc.. The problem is, that I really don't want to know that every time I use nautilus. Maximal in 1% of all cases... But even worse: Have you ever tried to select more than one item in the list view? You have always to use the shift key, which is pretty stupid (on a desktop computer / laptop). The icon view is -- as the list view -- not really an alternative to the compact view because it (again) shows not as much items on the same space and it cuts the names ugly. Further it breaks the names in lines, what makes it hard to read longer filenames. And finally, in icon view it's hard to find files. When I have a folder that contains approximately 20 items (5 items per line, 4 lines), I have to search one to three lines from left to right and than from top to bottom. Well, that is disturbing! In the comments of this blog post http://www.muktware.com/3821/nautilus-get-major-make-over-gnome-36 the users pretty well describe how and why they use Nautilus / GNOME. I also use(d) GNOME because of Nautilus because of compact view and the F3 feature. Working with Nautilus was highly productive because I found what I was looking for very fast and file operations were done quickly (such as move, delete, copy one or _more_ items). The implementation before was -- at least for me -- just perfect! So please, please, undo this!
I also miss the compact view and would love to see it come back. I believe that horizontal scrolling is appropriate for the compact view. The compact view contains filenames stacked vertically so that you can easily scan for the filename you want, and horizontal scrolling makes sense because you want to show each column of filenames in its entirety. If scrolling were vertical then at the top of the window you'd only see the top part of each column, which wouldn't be useful. Presumably that's why Thunar (the XFCE file manager) and Konqueror (the KDE file manager) scroll horizontally in their compact views, and why the Mac OS Finder also scrolls horizontally when you set it to display labels beside icons. In other words, I think the compact view was fine before we took it away. If we can't agree on what it should look like, I'd like to see Nautilus enhanced so that extensions can implement custom view types, and then we could have a compact view extension for those of us who want this. I'd rather have this in Nautilus core than as an extension, but I'd rather have it available as an extension than not at all.
I too would like to see compact list view reinstated. I admire the effort of the Gnome developers to prune functionality that is conceptually overlapping other functionality. As a developer I do the same. The thing is, that I think the compact list is not conceptually overlapping the other views to a high degree. It is a concept of it's own. The fact it needs horizontal scrolling kinda proves that. I am a little amazed by the apparent distaste of the developers for horizontal scrolling. Ok, it is different, but not uniquely so. The bottom line is: if people want to use it: let them. Somebody somewhere pointed out that the file managers of all popular operating systems do have a version of compact list view. There must be a reason. So guys: design guidelines are great, and have brought Gnome a long way, but don't overdo it! It's not about the principles, but about good software. Good luck!
I haven't commented on a bug here or submitted code in ages, but I finally got around to updating to the latest GNOME (on Ubuntu, which was previously using an older Nautilus build) after mostly staying away from development packages and imagine my surprise. I have development folders with tons of files, and they are now quite unreadable. If there was text beside icons, with everything in neat rows and no line breaks that would help quite a lot. As it is now I have a lot of wasted space between files (a LOT of padding), and I have to do quite a bit more scrolling. And if I zoom out it has this weird cluttered look and it's hard to tell what anything is (might work better if the text also became smaller). What's need something in between list-view and the current icon-view. Broken into similar columns as per list view (sizeable, or with ellipses that disappear when you click or mouse over an item) with text on the side and a nice compact padding, but otherwise the same organization as icon-view. That would be the happy medium. Note though that for file browsing I actually prefer horizontal scrolling/organization, even though I hate it for document reading. But it's a different animal.
Horizontal scrolling is a must-have feature with compact mode. Your monitor is significantly wider than it is tall and it only makes sense when viewing 2-4 columns of files/directories that you would scroll horizontally as to see the next set of alphabetically sorted files/directories. You can easily look at the top of the columns to see if you've reached your destination where your file may be located. If you scroll vertically you completely lose this feature. It really should not be decided to be vertical just because most everything else scrolls vertically and you're trying to make it consistent. Instead you should make your decision on what is most useful and for some 20 years now horizontal scrolling has proven more useful in this view mode time and time again. My mind is seriously blown that this is even up for debate.
(In reply to comment #3) > Serrano: horizontal scroll is a weird animal in desktop applications. One way > to make easy an UI is through consistency in the whole UI. Take for instance > the mouse wheel, which is the most common device to interact with the UI, > rotating the mouse wheel should never scroll horizontally because doing so is > disorienting and unexpected. At least one other core GNOME application contains a view in which the mouse wheel scrolls horizontally: the Image Gallery pane in Image Viewer (Eye of GNOME). In my opinion it works fine there.
It's also used in the Shell itself for sliders (such as Volume).
I also was very upset to see the compact view removed. This is definitely a regression, not a feature.
I use the Gnome environment since 2005 and did not understand the reason for removing this feature. Typically the systems are refined and improved. This feature causes a fault to the Gnome project? Well, I found Nemo (https://github.com/GNOME/nemo) and returned to use this view.
GNOME is going to shut down bugzilla.gnome.org in favor of gitlab.gnome.org. As part of that, we are mass-closing older open tickets in bugzilla.gnome.org which have not seen updates for a longer time (resources are unfortunately quite limited so not every ticket can get handled). If you can still reproduce the situation described in this ticket in a recent and supported software version of Files (nautilus), then please follow https://wiki.gnome.org/GettingInTouch/BugReportingGuidelines and create a new ticket at https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/nautilus/-/issues/ Thank you for your understanding and your help.