Problems with current GtkFileChooserDialog usability

Dear GTK devs I’ve been encountering some problems in the current behavior of the latest versions of GtkFileChooserDialog, so just in case It is me that I don’t understand the current behavior I’ll put them here:

  • Right now when we want to open a file a in gedit the Recently Used item is selected. This is a really really bad behavior in my opinion for applications like gedit or gitg where we already provide a way to go to the recently used documents and what we really want is to show the directory where the user is working as it is highly probable that will want a file or directory from the directory it is working on or from one near to that one. Please recommend us a way to get back the previous behavior so we will not have to do crazy things like listening to map and unmap signals to place the right directory to show in our specific applications.
  • Another problem that I have been encountering and I don’t know if it is a new feature or a bug, is that if I click on the list view of directories and I press enter in a directory, the new directory is opened but the focus changes to the Location entry instead of keeping it in the list view. Please let me know if there is some API or a way I can use to get the previous behavior back. If it is a bug I can even provide some patches.
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11 Responses to Problems with current GtkFileChooserDialog usability

  1. Stevko says:

    There are surly more problems – not respecting single-click setting is my ‘favorite”.

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  2. Leif Gruenwoldt says:

    If GtkFileChooserDialog already provides a recently used item list then why recreate the functionality elsewhere in GEdit? Just sayin’ 😉

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  3. Jesse van den Kieboom says:

    @Leif:

    1) Because it’s often faster (in terms of users can open them faster) to make them available directly in the app
    2) Because you can’t filter the recent files in the file chooser, but you can in your app

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  4. Marcel says:

    Even though it is discouraged now, gtk_file_chooser_set_current_folder should still work, I think.
    http://developer.gnome.org/gtk3/stable/GtkFileChooser.html#gtk-file-chooser-set-current-folder

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  5. Jesse van den Kieboom says:

    @Marcel, yes you can, but it will still go to recent items when the widget gets remapped, which is really not usable…

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  6. tm says:

    tab completion that ends up jumping in the left-side favourites and folders when there are no results, is my favourite

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  7. > @Marcel, yes you can, but it will > still go to recent items when the > widget gets remapped, which is
    >really not usable…

    That sounds like a bug that should be reported.

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  8. Ed Page says:

    I personally am more interested in recently / frequently visited directories than recent files. I’ve not checked, is there a way in the file browser to go to the recent files directory?

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  9. Federico Mena Quintero says:

    Mail me; I have some ideas 🙂

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  10. aaaaa says:

    Hmm… am I the only one that saw that when selecting a huge image the file chooser resizes to a ridiculous size and then stays that way?

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  11. gnumdk says:

    Another usability problem…

    If you select a directory while saving a document, click on save enter the dir and then the only way to save in home dir after is to click on an item in favorites and then click again on home dir…

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