Ticket #143 (Open)Tue Jun 26 12:48:00 UTC 2007

Please don’t do this.

It means a filer window has to have a certain width for a toolbar to be useful so a user has to use the menus when the window is small and can use the toolbar when big – ugly.

It also clutters the screen with toolbars. I want my screen to be filled with what matters, the contents of the windows not toolbars.

This goes against the lightweight filer windows we have now which can be resized to any size without affecting how the user uses them.

They should not be made optional either. Using the filer should be a common experience so that you have familiarity when moving between machines.

Filer windows don’t need a toolbar. The lightweight filer windows we have now is one of RISC OS’s assets.

It would be much better to change the way the contents of filer windows in “Full info” and “Small icons” view modes are arranged. It would be more convenient if the files were arranged in columns, rather than in rows.

So we’d have:

file1 file6
file2 file7
file3 file8
file4 file9
file5

instead of:

file1 file2
file3 file4
file5 file6
file7 file8
file9

Because it’s far easier and more natural to read down a series of columns than zig-zagging across rows.

Also, improving neumerical sorting would be nice, so that 10 comes after 9, rather than between 1 and 2.

Gah, it mucked up the formatting of my file arrangement demo. Nevermind, I expect people can tell what I mean.

Can I second the request NOT to do this. I consider one of the greatest strengths of RISC OS to be its lack of toolbars – they are almost always unnecessary because the pop-up menu can provide quicker access to the same functionality but without wasting screen space. This is particularly true of the Filer where many windows may be open and even more space would be wasted. I’m afraid I’m not convinced by the necessity to change the default file arrangement either. Filer’s UI is not broken, it doesn’t need fixing.

P.S. Sorry if this sounds overly negative – I just re-read it and though perhaps that it does. It’s just that I see the negative effects of toolbars all the time in KDE and though they work reasonably well on OS X the functionality would IMHO be better implemented by a mouse menu button á la RISC OS.

s/á/à – I’ll shut up now :-)