Comments on: 1st thing to do after installing Fedora

By: Heni

Heni — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 09:58:05 +0000

I agree, first thing I do. Which mean I never played around with spatial mode, but,
reading from the comments about the middle-click-open feature it sounds I can be easy to work with. But since I use a touchpad (laptop), spatial-mode still remains an issue for me and I’ll stick to browser-mode for now.

By: Sexy Sexy Penguins » Meme: First thing I do after installing (insert your distro here)

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 07:54:41 +0000

[...] meme comes from Valent Turkovic’s blog post a few days ago, so I thought I’d share [...]

By: Leif

Leif — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 17:08:52 +0000

i’ve always felt more comfortable with browser mode and the location bar, but now knowing some of the spatial mode shortcuts mentiond above i’ll give it a whirl for a bit

By: bochecha

bochecha — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 21:48:32 +0000

I also don’t like the spatial mode and switch to browser mode each time.

But I have to admit it: a lot of people like it.

So changing the default to please some users will only make others be unhappy. Is it worth it ? I don’t think so.

The wise decision seems to be to simply stick to upstream and let users choose what they want.

By: Andy Price

Andy Price — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 17:31:35 +0000

I do the same, albeit through the nautilus preferences so I don’t have to remember which gconf key to toggle.

By: Scott Williams

Scott Williams — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 17:31:02 +0000

I totally agree. I can’t understand for the life of me why we haven’t made Explorer the default for Nautilus yet. too late to make that change for Fedora 10?

By: Paul W. Frields

Paul W. Frields — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 17:19:11 +0000

I leave spatial mode on. Furthermore, did you know about the Ctrl+Shift+W shortcut, which closes all the open parents of the folder you’re in? Did you know that if you hold down Shift while you double-click something, you can change folders, closing one window while another opens? Did you know that it’s possible to arrange all the windows in a way that makes a very usable workspace for your personal needs, and then assign a shortcut key to open the workspace that way, with the windows arranged as you like?

By: Casey Dahlin

Casey Dahlin — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 17:12:52 +0000

You don’t have to do that with gconf. There’s an option right in the nautilus preferences to turn browser mode on.

But yes, spatial sucks.

By: Carl van Tonder

Carl van Tonder — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 17:03:27 +0000

I used browser mode on Ubuntu but when I switched to Fedora the default moved to spatial and so did I. I guess for me, spatial mode really represents the improvements that a GUI can make over the terminal; whilst a terminal (and browser mode) are locked to a single directory, spatial mode allows you to open as many folders as you like and maintain total control over which windows you have open.

A small part of me was also always worried that browser mode was a stepping-stone to a tabbed browser mode, which eventually did come about and is a powerful reason not to go back to it. Tabbed browsing in general breaks important desktop metaphors, and the deficiency is not in the SDI (single document interface) but in window management.

If epiphany properly shared resources and didn’t take 5 seconds to open a new window I would drop tabs entirely, and wait for the GNOME applets to catch up to the fact that this isn’t 1995 and people are likely to have moer than 5 windows open.

I guess the most important thing about spatial mode is the metaphor, and it’s one I really like. Personal preference — at least mostly.

By: Tomasz

Tomasz — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 16:27:08 +0000

I use spatial and love it. The trick is, when descending in hierarchy, use middle-click to simultanously open folder and close parent. It may work as ctrl+left click or alt+left, I’m not sure. Also, there is keyboard shortcut to close all parent dirs.