Spatial interface

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This is an interface that leaves open views open. If applied to a web browser, it would mean that every link you clicked on would get a new window. Most folks wouldn't like that, but the designers of some file system interfaces, notable Gnome, insist that is how file system navigation should work. This has created some controversy, because at least so far, Gnome provides no way to adjust this behavior to replace the current window with what you are drilling into.

In the article that the link above refers to, it is argued (Radoslaw Sokol, Opinion: Why Users Blame the Spatial Nautilius):

So, people in fact love when the machine works in a way
resembling behaviour of real-life objects, but it seems
that only when the "spatial" application is a web browser:
they accept the book metaphor with web pages, but reject
the drawer metaphor with folders and files. Sometimes
they even abuse the physical metaphor of tabbed browsing
by opening multiple pages - not subpages of the same web
site! - in multiple tabs of a browser window. I even know
few people who never open more than one browser window,
viewing all pages in tabs; I hope they do not try to glue
a daily set of newspapers together before reading them...
 

But interface metaphors are just metaphors. Sometimes they work well, sometimes they don't. Obviously sometimes people like to open multiple browser windows - that's whay good browser interfaces let them! A good file system interface would let you choose how you want to see your files.

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