The Death of Folders? 607
saintlupus writes "There's an interesting article on Wired about the interface changes in Tiger being a precursor to the demise of the classic folder-browsing Finder." From the article: "Users type search queries more or less as they did pre-Tiger, but 'the quality, scope and presentation of the results are significantly better, so users get good benefits without having to change their behavior.'"
Figures. (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm sorry, but I like to categorize things. I like to know where they are, in this logical space. If this loses a document, can you dig it out? Or did it just never exist?
Removable media (Score:5, Interesting)
Having said that, how can this apply to removable media? I would like to see a feature on the next MacOS that automatically indexes removable storage.
Let's say I burn a CD of some data. The finder should keep track of which files I burned to that CD, long after I erased the actual files from my hard drive. That way, I can perform spotlight searchs on my data, even if it really isn't present on my local drive.
Find the file that you want and the machine prompts you to insert the proper CD.
Not broken (Score:5, Interesting)
And what about file systems? I know that modern file systems like NTFS are much better at optimizing file storage for large drives with millions of discrete files, but are all of the modern ones ready to handle a drive with millions of files all at root?
f-spot and pictures and tags (Score:1, Interesting)
With the tagging system (you highlight and tag photos with tags like family, favorites, Mexico Trip etc) it was so easy to navigate through the huge collection without knowing where any of the pictures lived within the file hierarchy.
Something similar for navigating the whole system would be amazing: thumbnails of documents, meta information... the sample really made the possibilities come alive.
How about it? Can we take the f-spot engine and create a file browser with tags?
No Folders? No thanks? (Score:5, Interesting)
That plus there is still a large group of folks in the business world for whom computers are still fairly recent (the managers and partners who have been working since the 70's and 80's). Granted their numbers are starting to thin, but there are still a great many folks, in relatively high positions, who like the folder system because it replicates a filing cabinet- they get it. Trying to educate the entire generation on a "whole new way" of doing something "easier and faster" will frighten them off.
What's wrong with folders (Score:2, Interesting)
Better yet, instead of the death of folders, why not something which sits alongside side, like som sort of brilliant search capability? But seriously, while its a good start - does it need to go any further than apple or google have taken it? Do we really want power to be hard to get at?
Re:What's taking so long? (Score:5, Interesting)
Now that Apple's shown everyone the way with database filesystems, I wonder if we could get them to replace the "Recent" menu with "Piles" of recent folders. Wait, they're already looking at that. [mac.com] God, I love this new Apple. (i.e. NeXT renamed.) And that's coming from a guy who's hated Apple his entire life!
Re:Bull (Score:2, Interesting)
this is natural selection at its best (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't think the directory as we know it is dead, it is a nice way to hierarchically (word?) organize our data (but wait, Documents and Settings???). Seriously, directories are intuitive enough and most people get comfortable with them quickly.
But, there are some problems with directories:
However, this article I think shows the way technology will take us and I like the abstraction and "flattening" of the storage universe. I've already become less neurotic about how to organize and store photos, etc., especially now with photo organizers and desktop search software like Google desktop. For me it makes more sense to "ask" my computer where something is and have it return the top twenty most likely responses (with the ability to drill deeper if necessary).
Directories served a good purpose, but weren't they mostly artifacts anyway? Aren't they kind of an opaqueness of underlying technology? Directories as far as I remember were a way of implementing pointers and references to blocks of data on a drive, albeit a nicely abstracted implementation at the time (except for DOS, ick... (why no ".xxx" extensions allowed for DOS directories, huh?)).
Re:What's taking so long? (Score:3, Interesting)
Well no, not really. Back in the good old days, "folders" were called directories. Microsoft just stuck pretty icons on them and called them folders. Directories work because they're simple, for both users and programmers. Regardless of real-world metaphors, it's easy to understand a simple hierarchy.
Re:Not quite yet (Score:1, Interesting)
For me, it has made bookmarks obsolete. The only ones I use are the quick toolbar bookmarks -- gone are the days where i maintained a massive heirarchy of bookmarks in my browser.
They haven't used Spotlight, have they? (Score:5, Interesting)
When it is good, Spotlight is very, very good. And when it is bad, it is horrid. So far, in my experience, Spotlight has been very, very good about 50% of the time I've really used it (i.e. to find something I wanted to find, as opposed to playing around with it). And horrid the other 50%.
Spotlight has several big problems.
a) It doesn't find things reliably. This isn't like using Google on the Web, where you're happy with the results you find, and mostly don't know about what relevant hits Google missed. You have a very good idea what's on your hard drive, and it is incredibly annoying when Spotlight does NOT find a file you know is there.
There is ongoing discussion of why Spotlight doesn't find things reliably, and, of course, many people who say "It works for me," but the number of users reporting that Spotlight is not finding files they know are there is very significant.
There are various reasons for this. One is that Spotlight has a fairly long built-in exclusion list of directories it doesn't think you really want to search, but, unfortunately, it does not explicitly show you what they are. This is not, however, the only issue.
b) It doesn't find things quickly. Wags are starting to call it "stoplight." Frankly, I'm scared to type anything directly into the search field. I've gotten to the point where I type the search target into a text editor and paste it into the edit field.
The problem is that Spotlight oh-so-cleverly gives real-time live updating of the partial query as you type it in. So if you type in "Slashdot", for example, by the time you have typed in two characters it is trying to display every file on your computer that begins with "sl". For reasons that aren't clear to me, this frequently locks up the Finder's UI with a spinning pizza wheel. The entire Finder becomes unusable--you can't even activate another window and search for the file manually--for big fractions of a minute.
c) A signficant number of users are reporting frequent occasions when Spotlight causes their whole system to slow down. And, in at least one case, I've pinned down a situation in which Spotlight, for some reason, actually causes another program to fail with file I/O errors unless it is prevented from accessing the directories that program is using.
So, Spotlight is sometimes wonderful... but other times is unreliable, slow itself, slows down the rest of the system, and makes other programs unstable.
But aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?
Death of folders is greatly exaggerated... (Score:4, Interesting)
We need something to help that is clear from the number of digital objects we have lying round on our computers these days. Some method of collecting these objects into conceptual sets or classifications (apart from file extensions which is not always the most useful) could be really useful - I have read some interesting stuff by people who are Metadata crazy (seem to have lost the links though - the tiger review of metadata writer was really interesting [arstechnica.com]...) Maybe the answers are somewhere there.
But for most people, some method of grouping data, adding categorical schemes, visually and texturally organising and generally making files/objects more plastic in the way that we store them would be a great step forward.
But in any case, nested folders *do* still have uses. And I think we need --in addition to-- rather than --instead of--.
---- Posted anonymous as bloody slashdot is banning IP
Re:Bull (Score:3, Interesting)
- Typed queries are a pain in Spotlight. There is a lot of typed meta-data I could search, but the UI for creating a typed query is dire.
- It doesn't search most of my FS. Spotlight indexes little more than my home directory, and I know where everything is in there. When I want to find something outside there, it is useless.
- I can't construct simple boolean queries - they are all in CNF or DNF. How hard would it have been to create a UI that let me find all PDFs containing Apple but not AppleWorks, for example?
On the other hand, I do organise my mail, and still find it easier to search that using a find function than manually (although I can usually make the searches go faster by limiting them to the most probable folder - important when I have almost a 1GB mail spool.I agree (Score:0, Interesting)
My 'My documents' folder is a mess. I am too disorganized to keep it straight as projects/information evolve over time, since my classification scheme will necessarily also, and it is a royal pain in the ass to go through and create new directories, transfer files etc... Nobody but the most anal retentive among us with loads of free time bothers with it.
But with the destop search, I just type in a few words and the info I'm interested in pops right up. I've found all sorts of information I thought I had lost, only to have the desktop search find it buried in some deeply nested folder, a victim of a previous noble effort I had made to classify things into neatly labeled folders.
Here's an example. I am a researcher and I have probably downloaded about a 1000 different pdf research papers over the years. It was becoming so difficult to keep track of these papers on my hard drive, that I would just re-download the paper again instead of trying to figure out which damn directory I had stuck it in two years ago, when the way I thought about my research was different than the way I think about it now. Now I've given up on the directories - I've stuck all the pdf papers in a single directory and just do a Copernic pdf search with a couple of the keywords I'm interested in and the paper pops right up. It's great and it's the way of the future.
Re:Microsoft has planned this for quite awhile. (Score:2, Interesting)
When folders are gone... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Folders good for backups (Score:3, Interesting)
For instance, pictures. For these meta based search systems each picture needs to have a comment attatched (if not searching by date).. and who really does that? I tried adding notes to my pics in iphoto but after a while it gets tiresome.
In iPhoto you can create keywords and drag photos to the keywords. You can also create folders in the viewing window and drag photos to those. You can even make smart folders which pick photos based on existing metatdata. This is easier than making a heirarchical file system for your photos and it works with Spotlight. I think the idea that applications should allow drag&drop assignment of metadata to their files is a pretty decent idea and beats having to set up directories.
I prefer the physical metaphor folders provide (Score:3, Interesting)
And if I want it in more than one place? Space is cheap - I can make copies of it and put it into different places. Different copies, with the same name!
The main reason I don't like using Gmail is that I can't get used to not having a visual way of organizing my data. In my yahoo messages, I mark an email and move it to a folder. Then I have the comfortably familiar folder tree, that lets me know all of the subcategories I can choose. It's automatic, it's easy, and it does what I want it to.
Advanced search features are great, but not at the cost of useability. If it triples the amount of time it takes me to go through my inbox in order to tag every email with relevant metadata, it's not saving me any time or energy.
Folders may die, but at what cost? It certainly won't offer me any productivity increases, and people less knowledgeable than me will find it even more difficult without that metaphor to relate to.
Databases are great for compiling numbers and facts. They're not so user friendly as to become the next great interface for the masses.
Re:Not broken (Score:3, Interesting)
Nothing is broken at all. This is just their latest idea to force an upgrade cycle. Filesystems like reiserfs can easily handle millions of files in a directory. I put 100k+ files in a directory in a regular basis and experience no slowdown.
What I've heard described as the database filesystem idea (and keep in mind filesystems are the most simple type of database) was that instead of really having concrete folders you would just query the system, say somethign like, "gimme all the word documents written by sally" ... Or, show me all the files I worked on yesterday ... That could actually be a bit handy, but turning your OS into a database server seems like a great way to slow down your machine for no good reason.
So I mean, do you *REALLY* need that? I could care less personaly. I keep my files well organized in my home directory/my documents ... seems like a much better solution.
Re:What's taking so long? (Score:3, Interesting)
I like spotlight, it works well for finding documents. I don't know if I will ever get into smart folders because I like knowing that if I put something somewhere, it stays put and it doesn't rely on a particular context to be in the folder it belongs to.
I just don't think smart folders is... smart. Apple has been working towards removing the responsibility of users having to place documents in the right folders by rolling up all the file save dialogs by default and I guess this is the logical extension of that.
What's more... (Score:5, Interesting)
And how about old/less useful files that are unnecessarily included in searches, forcing you to read over more file names to find what you want?
One handy feature about folders I've (automatically or intentionally) organized things in is it makes it easy to go back and figure out what I no longer need, and delete it, thus freeing up disk space and reducing clutter. Spotlight is designed to GENERATE clutter.
Paradigm Shift for Computer self-management? (Score:2, Interesting)
It would seem that allowing the system to optimize file placement could greatly help performance and stability by reducing or even elinimating file fragmentation.
Granted, convincing Grandma that she just needs to type in a few keywords instead of opening one of 100 files on her Desktop may take some human engineering.
Mike
Re:What's taking so long? (Score:3, Interesting)
I believe that both ReiserFS and NTFS allow you to attach unlimited metadata named attributes to any file. In fact, an attribute's "value" could be much larger than the actual "file" it is attached to.
Imagine if every graphic could have a "thumbnail" attribute attached to its file. When the graphic is moved, the attributes (i.e. file size, date, user, permissions, thumbnail, etc.) move with it.
Of course tools such as "cp", "mv", "tar", would have to be enhanced to know about the extended attributes. You could no longer assume that the number of attributes of a file are fixed in number (i.e. name, size, date, user, permissions). You would have to loop through the available attributes of a file to know what they were.
Attribute names would have to be standardized. Everyone would have to agree that the modified date of a file is an attribute named "date". Everyone would have to agree that the thumbnail graphic is named "thumbnail". (Even PDF, or OpenOffice.org documents could have a "thumbnail" attribute generated by the application.)
Do other filesystems (Ext2, Ext3, JFS, XFS) have attributes?
The kernel api's for userspace to access and manipulate the attributes of a file would have to be standardized, just as read/write calls are standardized so that tools like "cp" could copy attributes without regard to the underlying filesystem.
And finally, maybe everyone could agree that the "mimetype" attribute has the type of data within the file, and we could stop using stupid file extensions to designate the filetype. (Something that Mac OS did back in 1984.)
Re:What's taking so long? (Score:2, Interesting)
If I understand Smart Folders, they only group based on a search of existing Meta-Data. It doesn't sound like there's any way to pretend like you're adding a file to a psuedo-folder. If that's the case, then Smart Folders is still a broken metaphor that needs to be expanded.
Re:What's wrong with folders (Score:3, Interesting)
I agree, I separate many things by folders when they have nothing to do with each other, but if metadata application could be as 'painless' as folder picking, then I could go either way.
to a large extent, isn't this how files are stored on a disk anyway? files are at addresses, and folders,(directories) are lists of addresses. add multiple pointers(folder names, metadata) to those addresses and it seems to me that you have the concept of symlinks but in a sort of upside-down in kind of way...
perhaps rather than choosing a single folder, you could have a "click all that apply..." list... hang on, let me call my lawyer...
Re:What's taking so long? (Score:3, Interesting)
I do find that they complement each other quite nicely.
Re:Folders?!? (Score:3, Interesting)
Do you want to overwrite 'c:\index.html' (size 4509 bytes) with 'c:\index.html' (size 16735 bytes)?
Hmmm... there's still a few technical issues remaining. I think folders will be with us for a while longer
Re:What's taking so long? (Score:2, Interesting)
HFS+ has the resource fork (which is structured data) but it also now allows arbitrary metadata as well, though that's only recently been available and so it's not yet well used.
positional memory (Score:5, Interesting)
So for example: 5 or 6 days ago I downloaded a plugin for some blog package or other, written in php or perl I think
That kind of thing will always have a place in my Finder. I like metadata search too, but I'm just not with-it enough to give up my brain's best way of remembering things
Re:What's taking so long? (Score:3, Interesting)
Also, I can see something as a database-driven desktop where a "folder" is merely a script that places an attribute on any items dropped onto it and then if you want the particular files associated with that "folder" you would just open it.
Except for the possibility of having files with the potential of living in different folders at the same time due to multiple attributes, isn't that what current allocation table file systems do? I would wager that a SQL query would be faster than a normal file system query but unless we're talking about a huge number of files is there a time savings? There would be a space savings due to one database tracking files instead of two, that's for sure.
No no no... (Score:3, Interesting)
That's important. If you can't visually navigate it, then it's far too easy to lose stuff. It's just that the bulk of your organization is going to be done by a search engine. What's nice about that is that you can retroactively organize things. Ever had a pile of downloads and wish that you had organized them more? Well, now you can!
It can also be a tool for organization, not just the end of organization itself. Extending the cluttered dowload folder above, the first thing you could do is break the downloads up into groups ordered by date, broken by weeks. You could also search for things that have never been looked at (creation date is the same as modify date).
It also means that multiple people can share the exact same filesystem, but look at it many ways. Your children may only care about the games, email and webbrowser. You probaby care about these things, but you also care about your work.
It takes some abstract thought, since no one has a system that really makes it perfect yet, but Spotlight is a huge step in the right direction, and when we get there and polish ip up, it'll be a boon for everyone, from Grandma to Larry the Bitter IT guy.
Re:Bull (Score:5, Interesting)
That said, I let iTunes do its own thing. I *never* go into the iTunes Library folder (where the actual files are stored). I do all of my organization from within iTunes.
The problem comes from people that want to use two different interfaces (the Finder and iTunes) to manage music. iTunes does this really well. If I want to delete a song, I delete it from within iTunes. iTunes asks if I want to delete the original file.
If I want a copy of a song, I just drag it from iTunes onto the Desktop. Instant copy. Any other organization is done with playlists, smart playlists, and the browser.
I do not see people thinking of iTunes as where music files exist as a bad thing. This gets to the point of the original article - the removal of the old file/folder paradigm. If iTunes can do everything you could possibly need to do with your song files, why would you NEED to go into the folder hierarchy and deal with the actual song files?
Re:Microsoft has planned this for quite awhile. (Score:2, Interesting)
As an aside, I find that I still navigate through folders a lot despite extensively using Smart Folders, Spotlight and Quick Silver as I still think in terms of folders. It's probably out of habit, and probably because I'm quite the clean freak.
I have iTunes, and iPhoto organize my files even though I know I'll never look at them by pointing and clicking through folders and will almost exclusively use Spotlight or the apps themselves. I even organize my movies, and TV shows I've downloaded. However, the latter case is because it's a hassle to add in metadata. The day I can have an app visit something like iMDB and add in some keywords is the day I stop organizing those too. Hmm... I think I just figured out what my next programming project will be
Re:What's taking so long? (Score:2, Interesting)
It's certainly easy to understand a simple hierarchy. In fact, real-world metaphors seem to confuse some people more than unique terms would. For example, my dad has been using computers for 7 years, and he doesn't understand the difference between "windows," "folders," "icons," "files," "aliases," "menus," etc. He uses them all interchangeably. I seriously doubt that he's an isolated case, and let me just say that this makes it really hard to help him troubleshoot over the phone...
Re:Figures. (Score:3, Interesting)
He'd have a folder named October1998, with files in it from April 2001, with another folder in it called 1997, that had a folder in it call May 1999, and so on. It was unbelievable. I was migrating the thing to a T20 with win2k, and as I remember, I ended up having to break up his folder tree quite a bit to even make it fit. NTFS5 wouldn't take it as is no matter what tool was used. Had to fill out paperwork documenting that I couldn't be 100% certain that all documents were migrated successully. Was the only one like that, out of 3500 or so.
Re:Bull (Score:3, Interesting)
I was in the same boat when I first installed iTunes. I had spent hours organizing my music files into Genre -> Artist -> Album -> (Track) Song.mp3 format.
I began to panic when I saw iTunes "Processing..." and heard my hard drive grinding.
But then it occurred to me, iTunes had done in a few minutes what had taken me countless hours to do by hand. I can find my music in iTunes 10x faster than I can using the Finder / Explorer - so what was I worried about?
If I actually need the physical file for something, I search for it in iTunes and then hit command-R and it pops a finder window open with the file selected - no file / folder browsing required.
iTunes was Spotlight for music files. Shortly thereafter I was wishing that I could find any file as easily as I can find a song file using iTunes. A few years later, we have Spotlight :)
Beagle delivered desktop search before Apple. (Score:2, Interesting)
Vague qualifier of lacking 'solidity' notwithstanding, Beagle [beaglewiki.org], a free software desktop search program, was up and running before Apple shipped Spotlight. I'm not saying that Beagle was the first to do this job, but since it was distributed before Spotlight, I don't think that it is fair for Apple to get credit for being first here.
Re:Sometimes I know what's best for me (Score:1, Interesting)
I want to open file "a", I _already_ know where it is located, repeat this many times with many different files; why the hell would I want search for it and save that search?
Fact is you still have to provide some way to efficiently browse the file system _without_ searching for anything.
The funniest thing.... (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm seeing people complaining about namespace clashes, removeable media, flat file systems, mis-labeling, labeling, and 'lost files'.
People, these are issues you ALREADY deal with.
Re:Microsoft has planned this for quite awhile. (Score:3, Interesting)
A hierarchical organization system is not hard to implement optionally on top of a search based one. That way you don't have to remember if you filed your Natalie Portman pictures in the "Petrified" or "Hot Grits" folders. (I keed, I keed.)
But the Finder doesn't just "Find" (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Bull (Score:3, Interesting)
Back in the day I had a laboriously and anally categorized music folder hierarchy. Coming from Windows and Linux to OS X about a year and a half ago I felt like I needed to keep a tight control on how my files were organized. After having my powerbook for a couple months though, I just decided "screw it" and let iTunes have its way with my music folder. Honestly, things have been much easier since I just decided to let Mac OS X do what it wants to do. I feel less stress and frustration about setting things up "just so", because the computer does as good of a job as I could 95% of the time for 5% of the hassle of doing it myself. That seems like a good tradeoff to me.
And I can still do things like move my music collection to my external folder with a symlink. And you can of course do the same if there's a music file you want in some other folder (or whatever your preferred file retrieval metaphor may be).
So I say, jump off the cliff and abandon yourself to the whim of Apple, and let Steve catch you safely below in his turtleneck-bedecked arms. Or whatever.
agreed (Score:4, Interesting)
On another note, my biggest complaint about iTunes defaults is the "Use error correction while reading CDs" checkbox. I ruined much of my library on importing because I left this unchecked when I first started importing my collection. A lot of songs sound like crap; random distortion really loud, and there's no way to know which songs got screwed until they are playing. Why have an almost hidden preference that will ruin your library if not checked? Perhaps other people have better luck importing with this turned off than I do, but now whenever I use a computer's itunes for the first time I make damn sure that box is checked before importing CDs....
finding it is not the same as storing it (Score:2, Interesting)