Dude where is my folder?
By Jzarecta. Saturday, 14. April 2007, 10:57:25
On this post I want to talk about the way directories are meant to be worked. I remember a date when the computer was taken from the cultural levels, the computer was made as an office environment. The use of file-driven computer as well as directories and users. However nowadays computers are not only for work or office, and people use computers on diferent scopes.
Children will interact with the computer on a different way than adults. Through games they learn how to use the machine as opposed of a specific program. They understand the computer as a concept and not as a tool.
Adults think of the computer as an appliance just like the micrwave, freezer, or telephone or rather as a complementary tool for their work.
This difference can lead to a different experience for their rest of their life. Linking the computer with work can be a kiss of death for many users.
So what all these has to do with the folders and files, well, a folder is most tightly related to work than to entertainment. So a child that will learn to use a conceptual machine will probably also view the files and folders as a more modular way than regular office workers that actually deal with real life documents.
Files will come to become more like data than actual documents, the relevance of the folder name will be of less impact for a conceptual user than an office user and flexibility and diverstity will come at a faster rate.
This means that conceptual users will be more able to display an organization less strict and more modular in order to achieve the workflow they make on their own mind.
In linux for example, the concept of folders are well define, folders are files and files are files, that means that everything is pretty much subject to interpretation. A file that link to different files will portrait to the user that it has files inside. However at the same time, users can't store folders outside of their My Documents folder or HOME.
Users can't put files anywhere else except with special persmissions. This make the file structure more strict on one side but within the restriction is also more modular.
The explanation is that there is a different between where you can put files and once you are in a valid location what you can do with it. Files in linux are no difference than windows, however the tools to look for files can make it less strict than windows.
Files are easily searchable in linux which makes folders a bit less useful. Browsing through a whole list might be a very daunting task in windows while on linux is very simple and trivial. This make the Linux structure a bit less piramidal and more about flat.
Users are free to rebuild their windows folder structure, but once they learn the new file managment tools they might adopt the flexibility that linux filters bring.
Here is a example of how we only want the list of files to belong to an OpenDocument document. Even if we have music, pictures, shell scripts etc. We will only list the Opendocument files.
Here we can not only list the files but also only show the ones with the Birthday word on the name of the file. This is kind of a double filter, the first is to only get the OpenDocument data and the next will display only the OpenDocuments with the word Birthday on it.
In this example we easily went through a very big list and get the information that we needed.
End users might not get this because they are not used to having a command line, even windows power users might be through off by the idea of learning commands. However linux also have file managers, the only issue so far is that they are build to emulate the window file management which make it more limited.
However in file managers like Gnome's Nautilus, you can easily select a file and time the name of the file and it will automatically get to the file in question.
For the conceptual user, the use of this environment will dramatically change the way to look at folder and files but at the same time will make him more able to apply more flat views of data, less structured but more flexible.
Children will interact with the computer on a different way than adults. Through games they learn how to use the machine as opposed of a specific program. They understand the computer as a concept and not as a tool.
Adults think of the computer as an appliance just like the micrwave, freezer, or telephone or rather as a complementary tool for their work.
This difference can lead to a different experience for their rest of their life. Linking the computer with work can be a kiss of death for many users.
So what all these has to do with the folders and files, well, a folder is most tightly related to work than to entertainment. So a child that will learn to use a conceptual machine will probably also view the files and folders as a more modular way than regular office workers that actually deal with real life documents.
Files will come to become more like data than actual documents, the relevance of the folder name will be of less impact for a conceptual user than an office user and flexibility and diverstity will come at a faster rate.
This means that conceptual users will be more able to display an organization less strict and more modular in order to achieve the workflow they make on their own mind.
In linux for example, the concept of folders are well define, folders are files and files are files, that means that everything is pretty much subject to interpretation. A file that link to different files will portrait to the user that it has files inside. However at the same time, users can't store folders outside of their My Documents folder or HOME.
Users can't put files anywhere else except with special persmissions. This make the file structure more strict on one side but within the restriction is also more modular.
The explanation is that there is a different between where you can put files and once you are in a valid location what you can do with it. Files in linux are no difference than windows, however the tools to look for files can make it less strict than windows.
Files are easily searchable in linux which makes folders a bit less useful. Browsing through a whole list might be a very daunting task in windows while on linux is very simple and trivial. This make the Linux structure a bit less piramidal and more about flat.
Users are free to rebuild their windows folder structure, but once they learn the new file managment tools they might adopt the flexibility that linux filters bring.
$ ls *.odt
Here is a example of how we only want the list of files to belong to an OpenDocument document. Even if we have music, pictures, shell scripts etc. We will only list the Opendocument files.
$ ls *.odt | grep Birthday
Here we can not only list the files but also only show the ones with the Birthday word on the name of the file. This is kind of a double filter, the first is to only get the OpenDocument data and the next will display only the OpenDocuments with the word Birthday on it.
In this example we easily went through a very big list and get the information that we needed.
End users might not get this because they are not used to having a command line, even windows power users might be through off by the idea of learning commands. However linux also have file managers, the only issue so far is that they are build to emulate the window file management which make it more limited.
However in file managers like Gnome's Nautilus, you can easily select a file and time the name of the file and it will automatically get to the file in question.
For the conceptual user, the use of this environment will dramatically change the way to look at folder and files but at the same time will make him more able to apply more flat views of data, less structured but more flexible.
