Just annotations of little "how to's", so I know I can find how to do something I've already done when I need to do it again, in case I don't remember anymore, which is not unlikely. Hopefully they can be useful to others, but I can't guarantee that it will work, or that it won't even make things worse.
More important than visual "dark modes," DEs and programs should have a "detailed/compact design" setting/flavor that can be set immediately
When start some random file manager in its default GUI settings, I almost shriek in despair. It seems it's always over-padded design, with huge icons everywhere, with menus always hidden somewhere.
I like detailed lists of files most of the time. This concept is just brilliant, you have all the info you can need in a neatly organized design, can quickly order the listing clicking on some attribute-label at the top and so forth. A great addition over the years were the instant-filter fields in some file managers.
Other designs just make things emptier, with less info, and less functionality. I wonder why they seem to be most popular, they don't even seem to be the most effective design for one who'd for some reason prioritize "clean" aesthetics over functionality.
And then there are those designs that hide things like the path field for no reason, forcing one to navigate with icons/buttons or to type the whole path rather than just part of it, that would be a possibility depending on the circumstance. Sometimes it could be made to appear if you knew the magic key combination somehow, and, that you have to remember from now on. But then apparently it could never be set by default, and I believe it just no longer exists at all nowadays, it's just click-navigation or typing the entire path. Not to mention "open with" dialogs that seem to ignore that there's the $PATH environment variable, forcing one to needlessly go to /usr/bin or wherever to find the executable, rather than just typing its name.
Not to mention not showing file extensions by default. I would kind of understand this kind of decision from the mindset of MS windows or OSX developers, to whom perhaps it's better that the user know as little as possible, interacts with a very minimal set of defaults. But I'd imagine that for GNU/Linux the "target demographic," while not being necessarily h4xx0® 2099 power-users, would be expected to be fine with some handy command-line-ish things being present in the GUIs, when relevant, as they often are.
God, I hope the future of file managers don't be something like a "infinite scroll" list with huge icons over the entire system, with no clear directory tree organization, rather everything is perhaps on a "feed" sort by date of modification or access, just because some "genius" designer decided the old ways were too démodé. Maybe even the file names somewhere around the huge icon will be too démodé someday, and everyone should interact only with the icons, no more text. Sillier than Doom-like 3D file managers, but I'm afraid it's not that far from an actual possibility. More clicks mean a more "engaging" OS/UI, some may think.
I like detailed lists of files most of the time. This concept is just brilliant, you have all the info you can need in a neatly organized design, can quickly order the listing clicking on some attribute-label at the top and so forth. A great addition over the years were the instant-filter fields in some file managers.
Other designs just make things emptier, with less info, and less functionality. I wonder why they seem to be most popular, they don't even seem to be the most effective design for one who'd for some reason prioritize "clean" aesthetics over functionality.
And then there are those designs that hide things like the path field for no reason, forcing one to navigate with icons/buttons or to type the whole path rather than just part of it, that would be a possibility depending on the circumstance. Sometimes it could be made to appear if you knew the magic key combination somehow, and, that you have to remember from now on. But then apparently it could never be set by default, and I believe it just no longer exists at all nowadays, it's just click-navigation or typing the entire path. Not to mention "open with" dialogs that seem to ignore that there's the $PATH environment variable, forcing one to needlessly go to /usr/bin or wherever to find the executable, rather than just typing its name.
Not to mention not showing file extensions by default. I would kind of understand this kind of decision from the mindset of MS windows or OSX developers, to whom perhaps it's better that the user know as little as possible, interacts with a very minimal set of defaults. But I'd imagine that for GNU/Linux the "target demographic," while not being necessarily h4xx0® 2099 power-users, would be expected to be fine with some handy command-line-ish things being present in the GUIs, when relevant, as they often are.
God, I hope the future of file managers don't be something like a "infinite scroll" list with huge icons over the entire system, with no clear directory tree organization, rather everything is perhaps on a "feed" sort by date of modification or access, just because some "genius" designer decided the old ways were too démodé. Maybe even the file names somewhere around the huge icon will be too démodé someday, and everyone should interact only with the icons, no more text. Sillier than Doom-like 3D file managers, but I'm afraid it's not that far from an actual possibility. More clicks mean a more "engaging" OS/UI, some may think.
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