M.AGRIPPA.LFCOS.TERTIVM.FECIT
Marcus Agrippa, son of Lucius, consul for the third time, (did)
It is true that the boys of Elementary OS They like minimalism, but it is clear that they are also very fond of using names that are bombastic or show power. Not for something they called Jupiter to your first OS; the king of the gods Olympus and the largest planet in our solar system. Pantheon means "Temple of all gods" and the building is "Angelic and non-human design" according to the words of the same Miguel Angel. So or more pretentious the name?
However, etymologies and historical references aside, how much "Angelic and not human" is the Files of Pantheon that the boys of Elementary? Files is actually a new version of Marlin, whose code was improved, and the end of the developers of Elementary is to use it as your new file explorer GUI call Pantheon. One of the first things you notice about this improvement is that its formal design is much better than the current one. Nautilus de GNOME.
At first glance, we notice a strong resemblance to the Finder, MacOSX, and despite that tendency to "copy" the aesthetics of OS de Apple has been one of the most criticized points in the development of Elementary, the development of Pantheon, at least visually, it goes down that path.
Files feels more intuitive and much easier to use than Nautilus because, in accordance with the Fitts Law, has something that the native file explorer of GNOME no: a proper ergonomic design.
In any of the design disciplines -architectural, graphic, industrial, packaging, urban, etc..- the maxim is always that "Form always follows function", And in Files (Fig. No. 1) we find that it is affectively so. All navigation operations input -which are the ones that run the most- are concentrated to the left while in Nautilus (Fig. No. 2) form a large inverted "L":
Fig. No. 1
Fig. No. 2
This that seems so simple is very useful since it avoids the dispersion of attention when browsing our file explorer and we have shorter cursor paths, something that our wrist -what is the one that moves the mouse- thanks.
Another advantage is the hierarchical single-window navigation that allows you to explore the content of a folder and / or subfolders without having to open them to see their content:
However, not everything is honey on flakes, Files still inherits some of the shortcomings of Marlin, such as the fact of not having an integrated document search engine and a menu that, although it offers other functionalities, is still limited compared to that of Nautilus. The latter may be due to the fact that it is not yet designed to be fully integrated into GNOME or that possibly the guys from Elementary they plan to integrate those functions through extensions.
Even with all this it seems to me a great proposal -at least in terms of ergonomics- which obviously still needs to mature and when it does it will undoubtedly surpass the file explorer of GNOME.
For those who want to try it, they can install it very easily:
sudo apt-add-repository ppa: nemequ / sqlheavy
sudo apt-add-repository ppa: elementary-os / daily
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install pantheon-files
You can also compile the code on the official page: https://launchpad.net/pantheon-files