Dan Rabbit’s File browser idea gets revisited, retitled

By , Published September 4, 2010

It seems like an eternity since we last mentioned Elementary & design demi-god Dan Rabbit's 'Dash' file browser idea.

At the time Dash was both an exciting concept and a project that, unlike so many other great ideas, actually moved from pixels on a .png into usable actuality!

Sadly the progress was relatively short lived and work soon dried up  on Dash due, no doubt, to the exponentially increasing popularity of Elementary and it's associated projects.

Not since deterred Dan has gone back to the drawing board, picked up his Crayola and redesigned file-browsing ideas into something fresher, 'smoother' and ever so much prettier.

Meet Marlin.

Related posts:

  1. Meet Dash – DanRabbits awesome new project: an entirely new file browser!
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  • http://twitter.com/leejarratt Lee Jarratt

    Marlin is lovely!

  • http://www.google.com/profiles/suprman2020 Solomon

    Looks excellent. Seems like Dan has so many great ideas but not enough time and energy to work on all of them.

    btw, whats the status on the email application? I haven’t heard anything about it in a while.

    • Anonymous

      Yeah, we need more developers. Dan and I can whip up ideas into pleasing mockups pretty quickly but we don’t have the time to code them =(

      Being open source, you’d think there would be developers for China just itching to start work on some nice designs…

      • http://twitter.com/mickstep Michael Stephenson

        “you’d think there would be developers for China”

        Errmm what? Explain?

        • http://www.google.com/profiles/suprman2020 Solomon

          I think he meant “from China.”

          • objecm

            I think he’s using a good nz idiom, actually….

      • Anonymous

        Not sure I’v seen any application mockups from you…
        Does Joey hate your ideas? Any links?

  • http://twitter.com/explodingwalrus Carl Draper

    maybe i’m missing something here but can’t some of these ideas be incorporated into Elementary?

  • http://twitter.com/alexandrpunk Alexandr

    omg i love that file manager

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Shane-Simmons/100000053744641 Shane Simmons

    Looks like Finder.

  • Harvey

    Not the pretty statusbar.

  • Anonymous

    I honestly think it would be amazing if Dan had the money to hire people to make his ideas a reality. Seriously, Canonical should just have him on the next time they decide the interface could use some great changes, because the people who have the power to change the UI aren’t always going to have the best design sense.

  • Anonymous

    You know the funny part is that I’ve been contracting for Canonical for like 7 months now :D

  • Dante

    Dan Rabbit; if your reading this I wish to lavish money upon you for your work. I also wish to have your babies, but thats another matter :P

  • Anonymous

    In fact, if you use Nautilus elementary with my GTK theme, it’s very very close. The big difference is going to be the pathbar and the filesystem actions.

  • Bill

    pcmanfm2 works fine for me + can be tweaked to look just about that close as above

  • Anonymous

    I accept Paypal :D

    hmm, yea I dunno if I can make that one happen.

  • http://memoriseorangmuda.blogspot.com Afizz

    I’ve just upgraded to Nautilus Elementary three days ago , and now this?? Aww man.. This one looks even better. I like it! <3

  • Balloooza

    I think it looks like nautilus with elementary theme, it will also be usable, finder although it is fast (scrolling, resizing and searching) is unusable because it pushes icons off the screen, 10.6 fixes this somwhat with a new view, but in 10.5 I find myself control clicking and alligning by whenever I resize the window.

    I am not a fan of comparing Linux software that is designed well to apple software, or any theme that uses gray being a mac look alike. But you are entitled to your own opinions

  • Balloooza

    I just love that file copy bar, so much better than what is available now. But what window will get it, the outgoing or the incoming, and if you close that browser will the transfer stop, if you open up the transfer in another window will it still be there?

    I guess that is the kind of things that need to be figured out in an interface…

    This is just an amazing looking software, not common for free software, where creating a productive software is the priority and not the look. But in a way design of (graphical) software is more important than the usefulness, because using a good looking software makes you feel happy and calm (in my opinion, you can have your own) and it looks better in screenshots.

  • http://nenericardo.blogspot.com/ nenelinux

    I love it

  • Anonymous

    Yea those are a lot of good points and I was thinking about it and I’m still not sure. Currently it does show up in the notification area as well, so I’m thinking it would show on every window and if you close the window, it’d be kind of like minimizing to the tray.

    • http://twitter.com/mickstep Michael Stephenson

      I like this, but it should show where the file is going to and from also, it also needs to have a ‘stop’ button to halt the transfer.

      • http://twitter.com/andy_smart Andy Smart

        Maybe if you hovered over the progress bar, “More Info” and “Pause/Cancel” buttons could appear?

        • http://twitter.com/mickstep Michael Stephenson

          I dislike the abuse of tooltips and believe they should only be for first time ‘tips’ expanding their functionality beyond that is a usability failing, using tooltips to gather information on a regular basis is basically the same problem canonical is trying to put an end to with application indicators, lets not give them reason to enforce strict rules on tooltips.

  • Anonymous

    Where can I find that GTK theme of yours ? I am using Nautilus Elementary right now. Thanks for your awesome contribution . Its good to hear that finally Canonical is paying you for your good work :)

  • http://orkutcidio.deliriocoletivo.org Peterson Espaçoporto

    It’s good.

  • Anonymous

    I hope you don’t suggest any red car looks like a Ferrari in the way you suggest anything with a light theme, no menu bar and the buttons on the left looks like an Apple product.

    • Felx

      This is oversimplifying things a bit. There are more details that make it look like Finder: The buttons to switch between views, the slider to adjust the zoom level, the style of the sidebar – to name a few. However, that’s not a bad thing plus there are plenty of original ideas that make it different from Finder

    • Felx

      This is oversimplifying things a bit. There are more details that make it look like Finder: The buttons to switch between views, the slider to adjust the zoom level, the style of the sidebar – to name a few. However, that’s not a bad thing plus there are plenty of original ideas that make it different from Finder

  • Anonymous

    If Apple is a Ferrari than I’ll take Tesla Roadster :D

    • Anonymous

      its better for the environment…right?

      • Anonymous

        right ;)

  • Mohan

    Damn that is beautiful, Dan Rabbit you are on fire dude!

  • http://twitter.com/wolterh Wolter Hellmund

    I think this is great…

  • Anonymous
  • Anonymous

    LOL am already using it. I thought you were referring to some new theme you just made . Sorry should have read it properly :D Thanks again.

  • Anonymous

    LOL am already using it. I thought you were referring to some new theme you just made . Sorry should have read it properly :D Thanks again.

  • ninjapirate89

    Very nice, can’t wait to try it.

  • Anonymous

    Obviously you’ve barely used finder.

  • Anonymous

    Really nice ! Your ideas are awesome !

  • Plaidcounty

    Maybe there could be a Miller Column view?

    • http://thealphanerd.wordpress.com/ Calvin

      You seem like a candidate for GNUstep’s file browser. Now with even more NeXT flavours!

    • Anonymous

      This is a quite often requested feature. I’d like it to happen, but no one has tried building it yet :p

  • garthecho

    This is great, Dan. One suggestion, though, if I may. Get rid of the pencil icon button and just switch to text mode, and back, when you double click the folder name in the breadcrumb bar. You could have a tool tip inform users of this behavior.

  • http://www.flickr.com/stuffbox DuduMaroja

    Do wanna

  • garthecho

    Whoops, I should have said ‘in between’ the folder name.

  • Anonymous

    “Moving 69″. That’s an improvement.

    Seriously, I hope this replaces anustilu.

  • T_________U

    I owned a Mac for some time, and I really think it looks *a lot* like OSX finder.

    • Ethana2

      I hope it has miller columns!

  • http://twitter.com/cyrildz cyrildz

    I always asked myself a question if you were related with canonical and the “dash” file browser used in Unity

  • Anonymous

    that’s an interesting idea. I’ve been trying to think of other ideas as well to make it more obvious and intuitive to switch between breadcrumbs and an editable path.

    • garthecho

      After thinking about it more, perhaps you could use a colored text mouse over effect (like a web link), or use the “link hand” mouse pointer to indicate whether your going to actually click on the directory name, and then use the double click method when clicking anywhere ‘around’ the directory name.

    • http://twitter.com/Heimpjuh Heimen Stoffels

      I like that idea too, but just to add: it’s not a new idea. Dolphin on KDE has this for a long, long time. But I like it in Dolphin, so it’s a good idea for Dash too :)

    • http://twitter.com/mickstep Michael Stephenson

      Double clicking a button is not standard behaviour, I think it is very unintuitive to break from this convention in my humble opinion.

      • Anonymous

        hmm I think I’d have to agree with you. I would probably attempt a right click > edit for double clicking. I’ll have to sit down with some random individuals and some mockups and ask them to edit the path and see what they come up with.

      • garthecho

        But what if we don’t think of it as a button, and instead just give it the classification ‘pathbar’? The original Nautilus used buttons for this purpose, but with Nautilus Elementary and this, i really don’t think of it as a button anymore.

        • http://twitter.com/mickstep Michael Stephenson

          I agree with you to a certain extent, I don’t even know what standard nautilus is anymore, and frankly don’t care as long as elementary nautilus is more awesome, but the fact remains that in every theme they feel and look and most importantly are buttons.

  • Anonymous

    Nope, that’s not me. It wasn’t until the after they announced Unity’s Dash that they found out we already had our Dash out in the wild.

  • http://www.facebook.com/ultysagar SAM

    Someone please build this soon. i am tired of promising Mock-ups.

  • ActionParsnip

    Why are there so many mock-ups. Can we just stick to stuff which is available. I could mock up a billion apps and wave them around and get people all excited. It’s a waste of time.

    • Anonymous

      I understand how you feel. But the idea behind creating these mockups is to get *developers* excited so that they participate in these projects. If I didn’t ever do these mockups, well we would probably never have Nautilus elementary or a lot of the cool stuff you see in Docky.

      Also, mockups give designers a chance to build something without rules and limitations. This is important to the evolution of the desktop. If a designer never sat down and drew something impossible, developers would probably be using the same tired old widgets in the same configuration. So it’s good to dream and give developers something new to shoot for.

  • 6205

    Roadster is for pussies :) I will take Model S :)

    • Anonymous

      haha, well yea I’d love to have a Model S. But the Roadster is definitely the more powerful and sporty of the two.

    • Anonymous

      Laco Horváth ?

  • https://launchpad.net/~davidnielsen David Nielsen

    I like it but I think merging progress bars with the content window is wrong. They should be separate.

    What does the “gear icon” represent?

    Also I does seem to be in need of the Seif touch to handle recent activity.

    • Anonymous

      The gear is a compact menu the same that is present in Nautilus elementary. Other applications that use this are Midori, Postler, Gloobus, Chrome, etc :)

      • zekopeko

        I like the mockups for the setting that Canonical design team created for Nautilus. Clicking the button should change the entire window to a settings center.

        • Anonymous

          The compact menu contains more than just settings. At the moment it shows:

          New Tab
          New Window
          -
          Undo
          Redo
          -
          Connect To Server
          -
          Reset View To Defaults
          Show Hidden Files
          -
          Menubar
          -
          Help
          About
          Preferences

          • zekopeko

            OK then Preferences should do that.

        • Sunergos

          The down side to replacing the file manager window with a settings window is that you can’t preview the settings changes as you make them.

  • http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/KME6NDF3KTWK6NNPG5SF36PLBI Ambleston

    Very nice and clean interface. I like it very much :D Hats off to the Rabbit, he should be put in charge of the interface design ;)

  • http://neojames13.wordpress.com/ neojames13

    Two words: I & Want!

  • Henry

    Dan I love you long time, it’s so awesome to finally have somebody out there in open source UI design who “gets it”. I move that we set up a fund to buy Dan a big gold crown and make him the Linus Torvalds-style dictator of front-end design.

    Edited out the F word. Please don’t swear.

    • Anonymous

      I accept Paypal. Even a dollar helps :D

      Edited out the F word so you don’t have to

      • http://twitter.com/mickstep Michael Stephenson

        We’re not allowed to swear now? Jesus I thought this was a .co.uk now, even the BBC allows swearing…

        • Tylerbrainerd

          This site is viewed by many people in many countries, and if you read our Code of Conduct, yes, we ask you to keep it minimal.

          • http://twitter.com/mickstep Michael Stephenson

            It’s clear that henry used a single usage of fuck in a non aggressive way, I’d call that ‘minimal’. His entire post was kissing dan’s arse all he added fuck for was to emphasise some of that arse kissing.
            Swearing is just part of our language, a particularly fun part, censoring expressive, non aggressive swearing doesn’t improve our discourse in any way, just takes away some of our ability to express ourselves.
            I can’t name a single non lame website that would censor a single usage of the word fuck in this way on a comment section.
            Hell you can get away with it over at the Daily Mail, so where does that leave OMG?

          • Anonymous

            Hrm??? What?
            If there is cannibalism in some part of the world or if some TV channel says its ok, does it mean everyone can be cannibals?

            Seen the movie Idiocracy ? You guys just remind me of what we can achieve!

          • http://twitter.com/mickstep Michael Stephenson

            So you’re just going to ignore my lengthy post and concentrate on where I said all other decent websites don’t remove swearing form the comments and employ “if everyone was jumping off a bridge, would you do it too” argument.

            Then refer to some crap film to imply that I am stupid. Why didn’t you just cut to the chase and go with “you’re stupid because I disagree with you” and leave it at that.
            You might want to rethink who Idiocracy was making fun of.

          • Anonymous

            Noone will ignore, if you cut the redundant language and try to be civil!

            Idiocracy is a movie about people who want forget the English and want to use redundant form of communication instead!
            The kind of people who want to use profanity in public!
            I wonder if you use the same language with your parents , your teachers and your boss! And are you sure if such swearing is allowed everywhere in the world?!?
            Then maybe you can claim “Swearing is just part of our language”
            You do realize that anyone in the world can read these comments, right?

            Everyone needs to feel comfortable with this blog , and not just people suffering from Torrets!

          • http://twitter.com/mickstep Michael Stephenson

            I assume you mean tourettes syndrome. As a tourettes sufferer you have greatly offended me by trivialising my condition with your derogatory slurs, tourettes has a great many symptoms and is NOT synonymous with rude language. How can I comfortably browse a website where there may be a slight risk I may be offended by mindless bullies like you insulting people with disabilities.

          • Anonymous

            Thanks for being offended!

  • Anonymous

    I really like Dan’s work and love having more options. Choice is never a bad thing. Keep up the great work!

    But I still think PCManFM is the best looking file browser I’ve used. It keeps my files arranged in such neat, compact, unified rows (and I can change the size of the icons in the side panel:

    http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1483214/Photos/Glass_Small_1.jpg

    As for those talking about Finder, I’ve found it to be the worst file manager I use. But I can just change it to…. oh no wait, it’s a Mac so I am just stuck with it:(

  • http://twitter.com/fverdeja93 Francisco Verdeja

    unity directly in nautilus :D

  • Anonymous

    That looks stunning and I’d like to have it installed on the PC.

  • Anonymous

    how can I get that gray theme? It’s awesome

  • Anonymous

    What happened to his great idea for Elementary Evolution? It was a great project!

  • Anonymous

    Why is there what looks like a “refresh” button in the first screenshot?

    • Anonymous

      The stop/refresh button has been moved into the pathbar instead of having a stand-alone button.

  • Anonymous

    Freaking Brilliant. Filing a bug against Nautilus elementary with this mockup right now :D

  • Anonymous

    - Also no menubar in Nautilus elementary/Marlin. This can be easily toggled on and off as well, but in 99% of all cases, it’s completely unnecessary to have.

    - Same as in my mockup, one toolbar with navigation and view options (only I use icons so each item takes a uniform amount of space and recognition is quicker)

    - Search with Zeitgeist ;) No need for tagging. Zeitgeist is quite intelligent and fast.

    - If by bookmarks you mean sidebar, yes it’s exactly the same as I have.

    Are you even looking at the mockup or ???

    • http://twitter.com/drsjlazar drsjlazar

      Yes I did look at the mockup… and I mentioned that you already have a lot of this in your mockup. I’m only trying to give you ideas by explaining my own setup. If you don’t think that’s necessary, that’s fine by me. Sorry to take up your time.

      • Anonymous

        Sorry I didn’t mean to come off harsh, it was just sounding familiar :p

  • Max

    DanRabbit, I’d like to add that the localization in Nautilus Elementary is very poor. At least there ary lots of untranslated in russian localization. I may help with translation if it is nessesary..

    • Anonymous

      Hey thanks. We have a project set up in launchpad here: https://launchpad.net/nautilus-elementary

      I’ve never done translations so I’m not sure how it works :p Let me know what you need and I can try and get it for you :)

  • garthecho

    There you go. This is a good way to deal with it. : )

  • Roman

    Hm, and what abount integration and unified interface? Gnome has HIG, and none of these mockups adhere to these human interface guidelines. I wont use file browser that dont adhers usability in same way as my text edito, or email client does. this kinds of projects lead to incosistent idesktop experience. right now it feels like some guy sow OSX screenshots on googlesearch and said “hey i want that too”. think globally ppl. we’re no using just file browser, we use whole environment, so base your ideas on consistency, not cool-nessness, or we’ll get incosistent, unfriedly environment, where all apps are too different to work comfortably with. just my two cents. hf.
    P.S.
    maybe it would be better to sit down and create/write down some usability guidelines first?
    sorry for my english.

    • Anonymous

      I can’t say I’m strictly following the guidelines, because I’m not. But think of the reasons the guidelines exist in the first place: to help build a more usable experience. I’d have to say that this is a more usable experience than vanilla Nautilus. And as for consistency, we’re hoping that other apps pick up on some of these ideas (like replacing the oft-not-used menubar with a tidy menubutton) and we’re working on new/old apps that make use of these kinds of ideas (Midori, Postler, etc)

      I’m sorry you feel that way. Try to see that this concept arose as an evolution of Nautilus, as we started picking away at the things we don’t like and refining the things that we do like. It didn’t come from a desire to imitate OS X. Personally I find Nautilus elementary much much nicer than Finder and I think a lot of people agree. I personally get really frustrated with how incapable Finder can be.

      Sure I think it would be a good idea to get a guideline going. Would you like to participate in the creation of one?

      Your English is great :)

  • http://twitter.com/Ryu_Kurisu Christiaan Druif

    Heey Dan,

    Sorry for the late catch-up, but I really like you ideas so far.
    Not all of them work the way I’d like (I’m looking at you, Midori), but the ideas of simplifying the interface is just great. I think it would be great if Postler and maybe even Dash/Marlin gets a port in FreeBSD. I think it would be awesome, Elementary based on FreeBSD. (Still need to try FreeBSD first, but I like BSD’s ideas too (you know, about “designing” an OS instead of putting together different pieces to “make it work”))

    P.S. I preferred the name Dash, why is the name changed? =S

    • http://thealphanerd.wordpress.com/ Calvin

      Unity took the name Dash

      • http://twitter.com/Ryu_Kurisu Christiaan Druif

        Bastards! =(
        Marlin is also a nice name =D

  • jack

    but now, can you still drag items to their parent directories?

    i say we stick with ctrl+L and perhaps make the edit button smaller. right now it looks like it has nothing to do with the folder path

 
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