MenTaLguY ricercò:
The new file dialog is a lot better to use. It needs only a little bit of pratice to get used, but is a lot simpler, in particular using it with the mouse.
Research has shown that most users keep their files in rather broad, flat hierarchies.
Semi-flat. As in ~/images, ~/music, ~/documents, etc.
Scroll-and-click by itself is neither a simple nor an efficient approach for them.
Yes, but the solution is select-as-you-type (as in nautilus), not the text entry.
What users really need is a simple (live) substring or prefix search to winnow the list and reduce hunt-and-scroll.
I think that using the nautilus behaviour of select-as-you-type would be sufficient and consistent with the other user experiences.
One possibility would be to use the entry field for that role -- explicit (fully typed) filenames or paths would become simple degenerate cases. (on the other hand, entries disappearing as they typed might be disconcerting)
I don't think that re-enabling the text entry is a good idea...
The decision to hide the text entry (it is still here, just press Ctrl-L as in a web browser) was taken to hide the complexities and the differences of the underlying OS from the user.
From a UI perspective, that is a failure. How is the user supposed to know Ctrl+L does this?
The UI will fail not when you can use a program for the first time, but when you cannot use it after someone has told you how to use it.
Ctrl-L is already used in nautilus (useful with the new spatial mode) and in the web browser (epiphany but also tested with mozilla).
I've been using thi file dialog for a while and, apart some minor annoyances as the lack of select-as-you-type, I find it quite comfortable.
I now it can appear strange at first sight, but it is not so terrible to use... :)
Most of the Inkscape developers are pretty hardcore. If _we_ were totally unaware of the text entry hidden by Ctrl+L (how were we to know? where is it documented?), there's a serious problem. And we're the target audience for that shortcut.
Well, I've read about during the development process. But I've already used it in mozilla and epiphany before. And also in nautilus, when I've upgraded to GNOME 2.6
There needs to be a visual "affordance". For example, Mac OS X's open dialog also hides part of its UI from the naive user, but it provides an expander widget -- a standard visual metaphor both indicating that there is more hidden UI, and providing a _visible_ means of revealing it.
This could be a good idea, but with the expander my use didn't change: I press Ctrl-L to get the text entry, which is now in the expanded part of the dialog, instead of a popup window.
IMO, at least adding an expander widget to the dialog would be a reasonable compromise. Pets and small children will not be scarred for life if they click it out of curiousity. The text entry widget is not Janet Jackson's boob.
:D