In regard of usability, I would put it at the bottom of the Read/Write/Execute cell, down of the Others row without separation line in between. Then separation line and Special flags etc without any change.

I think it’s clearer this way.

We’re really working hard to improve the Nautilus user experience. However, we just need more developers to satisfy your needs and to gain more momentum. Feel free to point out what you still need to achieve your daily work, and feel encouraged to join discussions on the mailing list and file bugs against Nautilus.

When do the recursive changes get implemented? When the checkbox is clicked? What happens then if you tick then untick that box? Something being a checkbox doesn’t imply to the user that something irreversable will be executed on a click.

Do the changes get implemented when the user hits the ‘close’ button? If so, then it’s not really just a close button, is it? Clicking it causes actions to be executed by gnome.

You see, just from looking at it, as a potential user, it’s giving me no clues about how it actually behaves.

What I think is needed in this case is the return of the good old Apply-button. It should probably be accompanied by a note saying that changes only apply after you press the Apply button.

What about making only two checkbox options like

Apply changes to:
[ ] All subfolders
[ ] All files in this folder and its subfolders

– Chris

Since you asked for UI feedback: in my opinion, the permissions tab has always been a bit too complicated for a non-technie user.

The obvious offenders are the “Special flags” section and the “Text view” and “Number view” items. If you’re unsure about this, just imagine your mom trying to decide whether a file should be “Sticky”. And when is the right time for your mom to choose “Set User ID”?

But also, the big grid of Read/Write/Execute permissions means very little to normal people. “Do I want to execute my spreadsheet?” Why would someone want to make their own file not readable to themselves? Or writable but not readable? Maybe on servers, but on the desktop..?

First, we could think about translating from techie speak to human:

-Read means View
-Write means Change/Modify (and Delete, technically, but that’s just a type of modification, no worse than filling a word doc with gibberish)
-Execute means “run as a program”

I made a mockup of a new simplified GUI that I think covers all *normal* use-cases:

http://linuxadvocate.org/images/unlinked/nautilus_permissions_tab_mockup.png

I made this many months ago, so it doesn’t take into account recursion, but I think the design would accomodate it.

If some users demand a UNIX-like permissions dialog, perhaps we need two views: “simple” and “advanced”. With “simple” being the default, of course.

I think the KDE folks have got this right this time, Gnome should try and get some ideas from there.

The real permissions with UNIX permissions is that they are very unintuitive, if not obscure, because “Execute” has a different meaning for folders than it has for files.
For files, the meaning matches of read/write/execute matches your intuition, but for folders, read means “contents may be listed” and execute means “may appear as a UNIX path element”. For instance, files and folders inside a folder which is not readable but executable may be accessed, but only if you know the precise name. This semantic obfuscation really makes it hard to build a GUI.

Ian:
I think your approach is really interesting. I still have no clue whether it is possible to satisfy our power user’s needs with this. I don’t want to lose that idea, maybe you could attach it the referenced bug report?

Jure:
> Maybe the word recursively could be changed to something easier to understand.
Yes, I agree with that. I’m not a native English speaker, and it is obvious that these strings should be revised. I wasn’t totally sure on the GUI part yet (see below), so I just didn’t care.

Chris, Sergej, Robert: The Bugzilla entry also contains some discussion on whether the permission changes should be instant-apply or not. Maybe you can add your comments there?

> just from looking at it, as a potential user, it’s giving me no clues about how it actually behaves”

I very much agree with that. As I stated above, the whole UNIX file/folder permissions must really be grasped before they can be used for advanced justifications. Using an apply button is not really a solution to the fundamental problem of obscureness. The current GUI isn’t very intuitive either. A confirmation dialog just won’t help users who don’t know what they are doing.

I really think Ian got the right approach, we have to replace those funky obscure buttons by something more intuitive, and maybe provide an advanced mode for the chmod-aware people out there.