Right now, there is a lot of overlap between starred and bookmarked items. They’re mostly the same, but not quite. This leads to (IMO) pointless duplication, such as here:
By doing this, this confusing overlap between starred and bookmarked items would disappear because there wouldn’t be starred items anymore. There would only be bookmarked items, and bookmarked folders.
IIUC, "Starred" folders would be useful if your bookmark list in sidebar gets longer and you want to divide it between the real-estate in the sidebar and the "Starred" folder. So, it’s basically the following.
Sidebar bookmarks (primary/smaller list)
Starred bookmarks (secondary/bigger list)
As a user of nautilus, I use sidebar bookmarks primarily, while maintaining the list at around ~10, constantly pruning based on the needs. So that way, I’ve never used "Starred" folder feature of nautilus.
As a user of nautilus , I use sidebar bookmarks primarily, while maintaining the list at around ~10, constantly pruning based on the needs.
Me too.
So that way, I’ve never used "Starred" folder feature of nautilus.
Me neither. I mean, I have toyed with it. I have temporarily starred a file if I was going to use it a lot for some time, but that’s it.
IIUC, "Starred" folders would be useful if your bookmark list in sidebar gets longer and you want to divide it between the real-estate in the sidebar and the "Starred" folder.
Is that worth having a whole second bookmarking system, though? Taking into account that bookmarks can be reordered and the more usual ones can be placed at the top, where they’re easily reachable?
To provide a counterpoint - I personally use both the Starred and Bookmarks features and for quite different purposes.
In Starred, I keep files and folders (mostly folders) that I only occasionally access - but when I do need to, it’s very handy to have a way to access them across the system. It’s useful to have a separate area for these, but I wouldn’t want them to occupy the sidebar at all times.
Meanwhile, Bookmarks I use for folders that I continuously access on a daily basis - here it’s very useful to keep them in the sidebar.
Not to say that is the right or wrong way to make use of the features, just wanted to share the perspective of a user who does find the separation helpful
Since bookmarked folders can be rearranged across the sidebar, would it work for you to place the first kind (bookmarked folders that you access on a daily basis) at the top of the Bookmarks section, so they’re immediately visible, and the second kind (the ones you only occasionally access) at the bottom of the Bookmarks section, so that they become visible after scrolling a bit?
That would work less well in my particular use case. Even if placed towards the bottom of the bookmarks, it would still clutter up the readability of the sidebar and more importantly require more scrolling to reach the mounted drives list.
That being said, I do agree that there ought to be some design approach that does not necessitate two very similar systems. And to be fair, it would be trivial in my case, for instance, for me to just bookmark my own “Starred” folder that contains symlinks to any such rarely accessed folders - so in that sense I think my particular use of the feature might be less relevant.
Optimizing for the majority of users, I agree with your general point that finding a good way to combine these features into one would be a usability improvement.
Hi, this was discussed among developers (and maybe even some designers IIRC?) and there seemed general consensus that having both mechanisms seems redundant. However, I don’t think anyone is currently actively planning to tackle the issue.
The point that Sid brought up is still unresolved, as in how exactly to treat starred folders. Whether to make the entry in the sidebar directly connected to the folder being starred or whether the entry can be removed without unstarring (or maybe some other completely different approach).
Hi, thanks for replying. Was that a private conversation, or can I read it somewhere?
Since I’m proposing “star” be renamed to “bookmark”, from my point of view there should be no “folder being starred” at all.
There should only be folders being bookmarked, which should go to their own entry on the sidebar, and files being bookmarked, which should go to the “Bookmarks” entry on the sidebar, as shown on the mockups.
It was in the public Nautilus matrix channel, but I don’t know if backlog is available for newly joined people.
I feel that the idea was rather to turn bookmarks into starring, but as I said, it’s not fleshed out. “Bookmarking” files seems odd to me, if using the literal meaning. I can see the metaphor working with folders=pages, but then files can’t also be pages.
Thanks, I’ll take a look. Do you have any idea how long ago that might have been?
So that would be basically the same thing I propose, except instead of calling everything “bookmarks” they would be calling everything “starred files” and “starred folders”?
Because I’d be completely fine with that, I don’t really care about the name.
Combining “bookmarked folders” and “starred folders” into “pinned folders”, which would be located exclusively on the sidebar. So, yeah, that’s pretty much what I suggested but with a different name.
Renaming “starred files” to “pinned files”, which would be located inside their own entry on the sidebar. And that’s also basically the same thing I suggested, but with a different name.
By the way, I love the name he chose. I think we should use that.
The main difference is that Kramo also proposed to merge “pinned files” and “recent files” into a single sidebar entry, which I imagine would contain:
Pinned items, ordered by recency.
Unpinned files, also ordered by recency.
I also love that idea, but I think it’s a separate one and should be discussed independently. So, we have two separate (but related) ideas we can discuss:
Merge “starred folders” and “bookmarked folders” into “pinned folders”.
Merge “starred files” and “recent files” into… “pinned and recent files” I guess?
