One Hundred Papercuts

Nautilus File Selection should allow same behavior in all file views

Bug #385839 reported by Djassper
14
This bug affects 2 people
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
One Hundred Papercuts
Invalid
Undecided
Unassigned

Bug Description

When Nautilus is in Compact or Icons View, the user can select files by click&draging (drawing) a rectangle over the files. Thats nice, quick and easy.

But when Nautilus is in list View, which is much more informative, the user cannot select files by drawing a rectangle any more, which is very frustrating.

Frustrating for "advanced users" who prefer the list view representation.
Frustrating for "newbie users" who where told by "advanced users" they could simply select files by drawing a selection over them ... and wonder why it sometimes "fail" (in list view mode)

I suggest a simple work around :

When nautilus is in list view, the left mouse button should still select a file when clicking on its name and column, but should start drawing a selection rectangle when the move is initiated from another column ...

Revision history for this message
Sebastien Bacher (seb128) wrote :

The bug is a duplicate and not an easy fix so probably not an hundredpapercut bug

Revision history for this message
David Siegel (djsiegel-deactivatedaccount) wrote :

This is a new feature, not a trivial usability fix, so it is not considered a paper cut.

Changed in hundredpapercuts:
status: New → Invalid
Revision history for this message
richardbrown (rgsbrown) wrote :

I'm not sure I understand how you distinguish between a usability fix and a feature.

List View doesn't behave the way the rest of the views do, it's annoying, no other operating system I'm aware of behaves that way and its going to be one of the first thing that bothers anyone new to Linux. I cant imagine a better place to start removing annoyances than in the file manager.

Revision history for this message
David Siegel (djsiegel-deactivatedaccount) wrote :

Implementing the rectangular select in list view would involve writing and testing new code. I agree that it would be a great fix to make, and it affects usability greatly, but it requires new code, which is what I mean by it being a new feature. It's not a feature that you would advertise if you were selling Ubuntu, but it is a feature nonetheless.

Revision history for this message
wonder75 (wonder75) wrote :

This must be the most annoying Nautilus bug for me. The big problem with it is, that you can't do operations to multiple files in List-mode without using the keyboard, which basicly sucks. I am wondering about this since i've been using Ubuntu. In fact i even switched to Dolphin because this "feature" got on my nerves THAT much.

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