thunar swaps behavior of forward / back (next / previous) buttons

[Forest]

Binary package hint: thunar

After navigating into a subfolder, and then to the parent folder, Thunar swaps the meaning of the forward and back commands. Keying in the "back" command does nothing, while keying in the "forward" command takes me back to the previously visited folder.

I think Thunar is attempting to be smart here, by recognizing the parent folder as the previously visited folder, and effectively replacing my "up" command with a "back" command. Sadly, this well-intended misfeature only ends up breaking UI consistency and throwing a wrench in my mental stack of visited folders.

When I press alt+left (or the back button) I expect it to "go to the previous visited folder", just like the help text says it will, always. In practice, it might go to the previously visited folder, or it might not, depending on what the previously visited folder happened to be.

One situation where this comes up a lot:

I navigate to a subfolder in Thunar, do some file management, and leave the window open while doing something else for a while. When I return to the Thunar window, perhaps minutes or hours later, I see what folder it's displaying and decide to take a look in its parent folder. When I'm done there, and want to go back where I just was, I press the back button, only to find that it does nothing.

Adding to the confusion, I see that the back button is disabled, while the forward button is now (surprisingly) enabled. I press the forward button, and it takes me back to my previously visited folder! This inconsistency is even more mystifying when the toolbar is hidden, as it often is for those of us who prefer keyboard shortcuts to reaching for the mouse.

Alternatively, if I remembered which folder I had come from, I could get there by aiming with the mouse or fiddling with the arrow and enter keys. What a hassle.

Every time this happens, I spend a few seconds wondering why Thunar failed to follow my command, and when I remember this special case behavior, I feel like Thunar has tricked me.

Lessons that I'm still re-learning after six months of using Thunar:

1. The back button doesn't always go back in history.
2. The forward button sometimes goes back in history.
3. The back and forward buttons do not behave like those in my web browser or
any other app I use.
4. The only way to predict when the back & forward buttons will work as expected is to memorize the commands I happened to use to reach current folder. Even if that was hours ago.

system details:
xubuntu hardy
thunar-0.9.0-4ubuntu2

[Gauvain Pocentek (gpocentek)]

Did you do file operations in the folder opened in thunar befor going back to use it? Like removing the folder to recreate it, or similar actions?

[Forest (foresto)]

If I understand your question correctly, the answer is no. I do not have to modify my previously visited folder in any way to trigger Thunar's aberrant behavior.

[Gauvain Pocentek (gpocentek)]

I have not been able to reproduce the problem here, but I might need to keep thunar running during a longer time.

[Forest (foresto)]

That's odd, because this is very consistent behavior.
Try this:

- open thunar to a folder that has some subfolders
- enter a subfolder
- press the "up" button (or its keyboard equivalent)
- try pressing the "back" button (or its keyboard equivalent) to navigate back to the subfolder
- notice that it doesn't work

[Gauvain Pocentek (gpocentek)]

OK!
I can reproduce with the detailled steps, it's an odd behaviour indeed.

[Forest (foresto)]

I found the part of Thunar's code that causes this. It's pretty clear that the author was trying to be clever, but has instead created confusing behavior. Here's a patch against thunar-0.9.0 (extracted from the deb source).

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package thunar - 0.9.99.1-0ubuntu1

---------------
thunar (0.9.99.1-0ubuntu1) jaunty; urgency=low

  * Merge from Debian pkg-xfce UNRELEASED (r2643), remaining Ubuntu changes:
    - debian/control:
      + use our Vcs-* fields.
      + build depends on gtk-doc-tools.
      + thunar-data: conflicts/replaces thunar-doc, libthunar-vfs-1-dev
        (<= 0.9.0-3ubuntu1).
    - debian/patches:
      + 06_fix-menu-icons.patch: correctly displays themed icons even if there's
        a dot in the middle of the filename (see Xfce #3614).
      + xubuntu-fix-desktop-files.patch: various fixes to desktop files:
        . make thunar and thunar-bulk-rename appear under Accessories not System
        . make destop-file-validate happy (remove 'Encoding' and 'Application;')
        . add 'OnlyShowIn="XFCE;"' to Thunar-folder-handler.desktop so that
          GNOME defaults to Nautilus and not Thunar.
  * Bugs fixed by this new release:
    - "Querying Thunar /proc directory causes hang" (LP: #162448)
    - "Thunar does not respond after second window is opened" (LP: #163587)
    - "Thunar does not show if drive is mounted" (LP: #181117)
    - "xfce desktop does not respect freedesktop desktop settings" (LP: #220318)
    - "thunar swaps behavior of forward / back (next / previous) buttons"
      (LP: #234217)
    - "Xubuntu 8.04 X64 Thunar randomly freezes - hidden files/tree view"
      (LP: #293839)
    - "Opening multiple instances of thunar causes system freeze" (LP: #317920)
  * debian/patches/02_fix-font-thumbnailer-desktop-file.patch: add missing keys
    in the font thumbnailer's desktop file (LP: #318290).

 -- Lionel Le Folgoc <email address hidden> Fri, 30 Jan 2009 14:47:35 +0100