Regression: Missing backgrounds and emblems in Nautilus 3.2.0/Ubuntu 11.10

[Klaus Rennecke]

The entire emblems UI in nautilus as described in http://library.gnome.org/users/user-guide/stable/nautilus-emblems.html.en linked from the Ubuntu user guide is missing since upgrading to oneiric. One post in the forum thread http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=11382967 states that the feature is not present in the version of nautilus used for oneiric. From a user perspective, this is a severe regressin, especially if she had organized her files using emblems before.

[Klaus Rennecke (kre)]

May be related to #859104 since it affects libnautilus-extension1 too.

[dobey (dobey)]

I think bug #859104 is a completely separate issue, and this one does not effect libnautilus-extension. The API to programmatically add emblems to files is still in Nautilus. However, without gobject-introspection support for libnautilus-extension, it would be very difficult to write extensions in Python.

I don't think this bug is going to be fixed upstream. The fact that the emblems UI ever existed in Nautilus has been considered a bug for a very long time. The solution would be to provide a tagging system and reasonable UI for using it, integrated with tracker, and allowing users to set arbitrary tags on their files. The concept of "emblems" should be reserved for use only in a programmatic way, for differentiation of system details on files; such as readonly, unreadable, symlink, and synchronization services like Ubuntu One.

[Dmitry Shachnev (mitya57)]

This functionality was removed in upstream Nautilus 3.0, and there are no plans to restore it.

The guide you are pointing to seems to be not updated for 3.x yet.

[philinux (philcb)]

@Dmitry,

Any idea why this very useful feature was removed I dislike the white background.

And why are there no plans to restore it?

[manny (estelar57)]

this bug needs to be linked with upstream.

[Klaus Rennecke (kre)]

As far as I can tell after some more looking around, this is an intentional feature removal in upstream, and no bug entry exists there. There was a notice to the mailing list http://mail.gnome.org/archives/nautilus-list/2010-July/msg00023.html and its corresponding commit http://git.gnome.org/browse/nautilus/commit/?id=915e5523947fe049e06f9bd8574760f6765e8ad7

For the time being, a similar functionality as emblems can be achieved by changing the complete icon of a file or folder: In the properties dialog, on the Basic tab, click the icon (it looks like a button for a reason...) and navigate to an icon of your choice.

[James83 (giacomopennella)]

Bad thing, bad thing...
from the C64 epoch, before I was born, the new versions of every software or Os can bring changes in the way the features are given to the hungry users, but can not remove ANY feature, because the hungry and foolish users want to go forward and not back!!!
Where is my backgrounds in browsing my folders? And what about the emblems that remained set and that I can not change???
Bad thing, bad thing...

[TimH (biotim)]

Yes, quite strange that they would remove the emblems functionality. The emblems that I have set previously still appear, and there are still the usual emblems on the "Music" and "Pictures" folders, etc. Clearly the functionality is still there under the hood, it's just the settings tab that's missing.

[gunwald (gunwald)]

I am sure that is one of these »emblems are to complicated for the user« things. To remove this feature is pretty silly, because it was very useful to be able to mark some folder in a simple way. Especially if you have to browse many folders. Now I have many folders with emblems not being able to change them any more. Every day with Gnome 3 is a day in which you explore some missing features!

[gunwald (gunwald)]

I can confirm that bug. It occurs on my machine on every cube rotation event. It is really annoying bug! I tried with fglrx and radeon, both the same problem.

[Johan (oortjies)]

I do have the same problem and as said it is annoying not to be able to do it, also my old files still have these emblems present. I hope this will be resolved as this is a neat feature to have specialy when you have a lot of files.

[Laurent Dinclaux (dreadlox)]

Is there any command to set nautilus background color manually ? The white hurts my eyes....

[Romano Giannetti (romano-giannetti)]

Sad.

This simplification rush is getting crazy.

[Alex Solanos (hakermania)]

This feature was a nice one :/

[Romano Giannetti (romano-giannetti)]

I tried to open a wishlist request, but I was "shot down" in a hurry :)

see https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=665735

[Dmitry Shachnev (mitya57)]

There is a script that restores emblems functionality:
http://www.webupd8.org/2011/12/how-to-manually-add-emblems-in-nautilus.html

[Laurent Dinclaux (dreadlox)]

What about nautilus file list background ? How can I change it to my so loved cobalt color ? Any trick will do it.

I haven't found anything related in Gconf ...