GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 83105
Nautilus provides no spatial directory information when not using the location bar
Last modified: 2004-12-22 21:47:04 UTC
Nautilus provides no spatial directory information when not using the location bar. This makes the preference of not using the location bar bad since it is not an equally good preference eg. the usefulness of nautilus is reduced. Since we don't want to force users to use the location bar we need to find a way to provide spatial info. possible ideas: 1. Complete path in the location bar (Seth already decided this was a bad idea) 2. Window path pop-ups in the window manager ala mac os9. see bug 82567, cool yet sort of hidden feature that would require extending the wm spec. 3. Right click/ pull down menu on the up arrow. This would be nice but is not perfect since users can conceivably use nautilus without the toolbar we need to make this an equally good preference. I'm honestly not sure what the best solution is.
CCing calum...
Not sure exactly what kind of "spatial directory info" you mean, but I already suggested one possibility in #82107-- put the full path in the title bar. There are issues then with what gets shown in the windowlist applet and window-cycling popup, as you end up with a lot of entries that look the same if they're truncated, so maybe we could do something cleverer like still put the current directory first: cb114949 (/export/home/cb11494) or something... I dunno, just a thought. The status bar is another area you could use for this sort of information. It sounds like you're thinking more of a navigation tool than a "where am I" tool, though... could you maybe clarify?
I'm thinking more of where am i tool. I did propose a while ago adding the full path to the window border, Statusbar is a good idea though, and perhaps that is the solution put the whole path in the status bar. I actually like it... What do es mac os do???
Not sure off-hand what MacOS does, perhaps Glynn can power up his iBook and tell us :) I do know Windoze Explorer gives you the option of showing the full path in the title bar, but doesn't do so by default.
I don't like the windows idea at all. This should definately just work and not need a preference. The status bar idea is really good though.
Just for the record, OSX doesn't seem to show this information anywhere as far as I can see. (It doesn't really need it in its list or browser views of course, but it has the same problem as nautilus in its icon view.)
sorry guys, i suck. i'll check soon! ;)
theres a little path navigator in the status bar of spatial windows (still wish this was in the window decorations of all documents but...) so marking fixed.