Usability
File dialogs have been a subject of much usability debate. As a widget receiving constant use, ease of use is a major factor in their design. The most common reasons for file dialog usability problems include:
- File system limitations,
- Wrong type of dialog for the application (e.g. no thumbnail view in a Wallpaper Selector, As in GNOME 2.6),
- Horizontal scrolling (As in Windows file dialogs),
- Uses non standard terminology (Commonly in ports from other operating systems)
Many application toolkits such as Motif and GTK+ have been criticised for their lack of it. Early versions of Microsoft Windows also suffered from problems, mainly from the DOS legacy behind it. However, most of these are being addressed as more legacy programs are being converted to use newer, more usable file dialogs.
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