Update Nautilus right click menus

[John Lea]

The Nautilus right click menus have grown very messy. Update the Nautilus right click menu structure along the lines shown in the attached design.

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

I am deeply disappointed that you're proposing to add a "Take This File And" submenu without including a "Shove It" item.

Seriously, though, this design needs a lot of work. For example:

- The "Preview" item doesn't exist currently. What would it do, specifically?

- Why are you adding a copy of the default "Open" action, "Open With" > "Whatever (default)", immediately below the original?

- How are the items in the "Take This File And" menu conceptually different from the items at the top level? In other words, how would someone be able to predict whether an item was in the "Take This File And" submenu? It looks like it could have been called "Miscellaneous".

- The "Print" item doesn't exist currently, and implementing it would be a few months work -- introducing an API for applications to launch directly to their Print dialog, then implementing and evangelizing that API for popular applications. Why not do this as a standalone project?

- How would someone be able to tell whether the "Share" and "Publish" items were related to Ubuntu One, Dropbox, or something else like WebDAV?

- If you're renaming "Make Link" to "Create Alias" in the shortcut menus, does that mean it should be renamed in the "Edit" menu too? (And is "alias" noticably more understandable than "link"? Why not "shortcut"?)

- Are the "Resize Icon" and "Restore Icon's Original Size" items intentionally removed? If so, that's fine by me, but what would happen to someone upgrading from a version of Ubuntu where they had resized some of their desktop icons?

[John Lea (johnlea)]

MPT, to answer your questions:

- 'Preview' would preview the file in Gloobus. If Gloobus or another previewer is not used this item can be removed.

- 'Open' opens the file in the default application. 'Open with' lets the user choose an alternative application with which to open the file. This functionality is currently in Nautilus, and the proposed menu structure is only a minor update.

- The 'Take this file and' menu allows the user to perform actions other than 'open' on a file. Applications will be able to plug into this menu, and providing an appropriate space into which applications can add actions. This option will save a lot of clutter that would otherwise appear at the top level menu.

- Re. the print option, if this is very difficult to do I agree it would sensible to spin it off into a standalone project. This feature should not block the rest of the menu reorganisation described in this bug.

- Good point, these items should be updated to 'Share with Ubuntu One' and 'Publish with Ubuntu One'

- The wording 'Make Alias' is used in OSX and 'Create Shortcut' is used in Windows. We should use consistent terminology that is familiar to users of other operating systems where possible to help new users transition to Ubuntu. The wording "Create alias" aims to give a degree of familiarity to users of both Windows and OSX.

- Re. zoom in and zoom out controls (is this what you were referring to when talking about icon size?), these controls will remain in both the Nautilus interface top tool bar and also in the application menu, so I see no need for them also to be replicated in the right click menu.

[Vish (vish)]

Could we also fix the sidebar order along with this? Nautilus 3.0 sidebar has weird ordering: Bug #792871

[John Lea (johnlea)]

Vish, good idea, I agree with the change re. sidebar ordering.

[Jonathan Meek (shroudedcloud)]

https://lists.launchpad.net/unity-design/msg09741.html <My input on the subject. I agree with the renaming of "Make Link" however in addition to the culling I suggest.

[Adolfo Jayme Barrientos (fitojb)]

Was this ever proposed to upstream? Is this still desired?

[Jonathan Meek (shroudedcloud)]

I don't know about firsthand, but I did submit my proposal to an upstream mailing list around the time of my unity design post. As far as I'm aware there were never any replies.