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GNOME has no thumbnails in the file picker and my toilets are blocked

jayfax.neocities.org

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Re: GNOME has no thumbnails in the file picker and my toilets are blocked

#551

Post by rodgerd »

uncledave wrote: post #137
jancsika wrote: post #114

Somebody in Gnome did an awesome thing and I want to know who it was: If I open my laptop after being logged in, I can just start typing my password and the login manager does the right thing: "Hey, he's probably typing a password. Let's throw it into the password widget and see what happens..." I'm on an XPS running Ubuntu 20.04. Who implemented that feature? It's a great ergonomic feature and improves the UX of log…

The scary thing is we’ve moved on from there on other platforms because those problems were solved forever ago. I sit at my Mac desktop, press any key on my keyboard to wake the machine or tap the touchpad and I’m logged in. Being impressed with the very small changes is a symptom that there are lots of small problems. The most important change for me is I rarely if ever have to enter a password now while at the same…

Same. Folks in a Linux bubble don't seem to appreciate that the idea of a password login is, frankly, quaint at this point. You're getting downvoted, of course, but that's just reality: on Windows and MacOS (and iOS and Android, of course), MFA and biometrics are the norm.

Re: GNOME has no thumbnails in the file picker and my toilets are blocked

#552

Post by scotty79 »

fartcannon wrote: post #490
formerly_proven wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Picking directories has been pretty broken forever as well. Say you start in ~/Downloads/foo and want to store the file in ~/Downloads, then navigating up will have "foo" selected, with usually no blank space to un-select (so you'd need to do ctrl+click or something to that tune); clicking "Save" (or whatever) will then descend into that directory instead of saving, so just using the mouse, or not using any shortcuts…

Window's UI is not really an upgrade though. All the fake roots (why the heck is the Desktop the root) and the forced broken navigation therein, the removal of up so you have to navigate everything like webpages, treating some folders like databases and others with duplicate names like standard folders, hiding extensions, and the 'My Computer' naming madness. KDE is the best desktop experience available.

There's "Up one folder" button and keyboard shortcut in Windows. Button is placed next to weblike Back and Forward buttons. It works according to path displayed next to it and you can even click the elements of the path to go up as many levels up as you want with single click.

I agree that KDE still feels better though.

Re: GNOME has no thumbnails in the file picker and my toilets are blocked

#553

Post by jhy »

I read this post this morning and felt pretty smug in my choice to use Windows.

But when I went to share a photo this evening, I found that the Chrome file picker in Windows is actually much worse! Not only does it not show previews for thumbnails, it doesn't even show the image in the detail pane. It just shows the registered application icon. So, you get a sea of big blue (E) Internet Explorer icons.

Not sure if this is a Chrome or a Windows thing, or if there's a setting for it. But as a user, I clicked about a bunch and couldn't find a way to see the actual images.

https://i.imgur.com/NYHCDZw.png

Re: GNOME has no thumbnails in the file picker and my toilets are blocked

#554

Post by j1elo »

snvzz wrote: post #27

There's more serious reasons this file picker is broken. Here's a trivial to reproduce and obvious issue that's been there for several years now: 1. Open a directory that loads slowly (e.g. one with thousands of files on a smb3 mount) 2. While the list is loading, select a file (but do not open it) 3. Wait for the whole list to load Once the list finishes loading, the file on the very top of the list gets automatical…

It's stuff like this that makes so hard to onboard new non-techie users. The proverbial mom or grandma, whose knowledge about the "filesystem" and "directory hierarchies" is already pretty weak, would probably spend 30 minutes or more with this exercise in frustration, before giving up and/or grabbing the phone to ask for help.

When you're past the stage of first impressions, it's a death by a thousand cuts.

Windows is not better in lots of these details, but at least users already know its tricks due to Microsoft's years of desktop dominance. I'd argue the effort of changing platforms should be about improving the experience, not about swapping a list of UX issues with a set of different ones, otherwise the change isn't really worth it for most users.

EDIT: oops I meant to write this comment as a reply to the sibling that talks about how difficult it is to select a parent directory in the file picker dialog (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25721368)

Re: GNOME has no thumbnails in the file picker and my toilets are blocked

#555

Post by oefrha »

silon42 wrote: post #544
oefrha wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> CMD - tab forced me to think ahead of time if I want to change to the last application or the last window of the same application. I.e. switching between two Safari instances takes a different key combination than switching between Safari and IntelliJ. That’s a feature, not a bug. I personally hate having to tab through a million browser windows to find the application I need, or having to tab through unrelated app…

It's not a feature for anyone used to standard alt+tab (and ctrl+tab). Often I wish switching between tabs was on first level too. I don't appreciate the Mac/Gnome way.

“Standard” is just your habit built on another operating system. macOS has a fundamentally different application and window model, which is also why there’s a consistent application menu bar across all applications and windows, not what each app decides to invent or not invent for itself within the window.

Re: GNOME has no thumbnails in the file picker and my toilets are blocked

#556

Post by db48x »

wander_homer wrote: post #545
db48x wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can count the number of times I've used anything like that on the fingers of one hand.

And our university staff and students have to upload numerous files per week in that way and since you claimed they're doing it wrong I'd like to hear your alternative to that.

I'd be pretty annoyed if my school or employer forced me to work so suboptimally. Still, a POST is a POST, whether it comes from a web browser or curl. Or from Emacs.

Re: GNOME has no thumbnails in the file picker and my toilets are blocked

#558

Post by teekert »

swebs wrote: post #78
teekert wrote: post #11

Omg, this is insane, I now realize I automatically memorize the first 3 and last 3 parts of filenames I need in the picker... For screenshots I read the date very carefully and fear the day I upload a wrong one. I was going to the toilet with a plunger, not even realizing it. Btw, if you work on MacOS (which has been a while for me now), you get very used to hitting space everywhere to get previews. What a feature!

I just don't even use the picker. Most sites support just dragging the image from Nautilus.

Yup, also a workaround I use very often.

Re: GNOME has no thumbnails in the file picker and my toilets are blocked

#560

Post by j1elo »

benlivengood wrote: post #247
snvzz wrote: post #27

There's more serious reasons this file picker is broken. Here's a trivial to reproduce and obvious issue that's been there for several years now: 1. Open a directory that loads slowly (e.g. one with thousands of files on a smb3 mount) 2. While the list is loading, select a file (but do not open it) 3. Wait for the whole list to load Once the list finishes loading, the file on the very top of the list gets automatical…

GUIs should effectively be finite state machines and people expect them to operate that way. People understand latency and get used to it; it happened on mainframes and other terminal applications and people memorize the state machine and can tab and type through an interface at high throughput anyway. One of the most frustrating experiences is related to the OP; reflow in browsers as new elements load making it impo…

The reflow issues as incredible in the Twitter mobile web, at least for me on Firefox for Android. When you go back from seeing a tweet's replies to the main timeline, it might take up to 5 seconds (or even more) to load some UI elements and reach a steady state. It even scrolls to a different point than where you were before!
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