Posts: 1370 from 2003/2/15
From: Central Europe
Quote:
jPV wrote:
Well, it would make program dirs, system partition etc quite mess. The purpose of icon only mode is that user sees only the files which are meant to be accessed. It could cause confusion if all files would be shown, for example in the system partition where (clueless) users really shouldn't mess around that much. It actually is a good feature still and improves the normal user experience compared to other systems which just show all the mess.
What other desktop operating systems do that, though? Microsoft Windows and Apple macOS do not. For instance, Windows differentiates between normal files, hidden files and protected files. (The latter category is specifically for operating system files that are likely to cause issues if altered.) By default, Windows hides both "hidden" and "protected" files.
Quote:
But maybe if it would be default mode for USB drive icons, that would be good I guess.
I think it makes sense to aim for even smarter and more universal solutions than this.
For example, Ambient could be extended to show ...
Code:
There are X hidden files in this folder.
<button>Show all files</button>
whenever someone views a folder that contains absolutely no icon files (which is common for resources originating from non-MorphOS systems, such as digital cameras, etc).
This should make life a lot easier for new users trying out the OS without distracting experienced users. (Plus, you could always add an option to disable it entirely, of course.)
In fact, one might even go one step further and trigger Ambient to show files that have certain mimetypes, specifically media files such as known image, video and music types, even if they have no icon but this idea might require more extensive considerations.
Quote:
I also think that if user doesn't find this feature, he's been quite rushed to test the system. At least I would imagine that if someone doesn't see the files, he'd start looking the options, and cycle buttons on the right hand side are pretty visible. And when you play around with them the "All Files" option is quite guessable.
Most Mac or Windows users have never had to look for any hidden files on these systems so it can be a stretch to expect them to intrinsically know they have to do so on other systems.
Besides extending Ambient, as usual, it should be very helpful if experienced users extended the MorphOS Library with more beginner tutorials that explain the basics of file management as well as where to change window decorations and other UI-related settings.
It can be very informative to see what users like Ozfer struggle with as it can be challenging to get into the mindset of newcomers if you are an oldtimer who works with MorphOS every day.
