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Back button ignores invocation of Up button
Status:
RESOLVED: INVALID

Comments

Description Mathias Brodala 2007-10-05 00:05:09 CEST
User-Agent:       Opera/9.23 (X11; Linux i686; U; de)
Build Identifier: 

If you walk through directories and invoke the "Up" button to go one level up, the "Back" button does not correctly go "down" again but to the last directory in "horizontal" order.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Enter a directory
2. Go up
3. Press back

Actual Results:  
If you did the steps above directly after launching Thunar you’re not able to go back at all.
If you already did walk through some directories and follow the steps you won’t end up in the directory where you pressed "Up" but in the one before that instead.

Expected Results:  
Thunar should go back, so "down" again here.
Comment 1 Benedikt Meurer editbugs 2007-10-09 19:13:33 CEST
Most probably because the "up"-folder was one of the previous folders? The history in Thunar is smart enough to detect such situations.
Comment 2 Mathias Brodala 2007-10-09 20:26:36 CEST
(In reply to comment #1)
> Most probably because the "up"-folder was one of the previous folders? The
> history in Thunar is smart enough to detect such situations.

Hm, I can understand that. Seems like I have to get used to use the "Forward" button to get back to where I was. Feels a bit odd though doing this to get "Back"…
Comment 3 Benedikt Meurer editbugs 2007-11-28 19:18:34 CET
Okidoki.
Comment 4 Forest 2008-04-18 04:14:43 CEST
I'd like this bug to be recondisdered.

I generally love Thunar, but in this case its smart behavior is confusing and inconsistent.  When I press alt+left (or the back button) I expect it to "go to the previous visited folder", just like the help text says it will, always.  In practice, it might go to the previously visited folder, or it might not, depending on what the previously visited folder happened to be.


One situation where this comes up a lot:  

I navigate to a subfolder in Thunar, do some file management, and leave the window open while doing something else for a while.  When I return to the Thunar window, perhaps minutes or hours later, I see what folder it's displaying and decide to take a look in its parent folder.  When I'm done there, and want to go back where I just was, I press the back button, only to find that it does nothing.  

Adding to the confusion, I see that the back button is disabled, while the forward button is now (surprisingly) enabled.  I press the forward button, and it takes me back to my previously visited folder!  This inconsistency is even more mystifying when the toolbar is hidden, as it often is for those of us who prefer keyboard shortcuts to reaching for the mouse.

Alternatively, if I remembered which folder I had come from, I could get there by aiming with the mouse or fiddling with the arrow and enter keys.  What a hassle.


Every time this happens, I spend a few seconds wondering why Thunar failed to follow my command, and when I remember this special case behavior, I feel like Thunar has tricked me.

Lessons that I'm still re-learning after six months of using Thunar:

1. The back button doesn't always go back in history.
2. The forward button sometimes goes back in history.
3. The back and forward buttons do not behave like those in my web browser or any other app I use.
4. The only way to predict when the back & forward buttons will work as expected is to memorize the commands I happened to use to reach current folder.  Even if that was hours ago.

In short, please make the back and forward buttons stop trying to outsmart me, or at least make it a preference that I can disable.  Thank you.

Bug #3589

Reported by:
Mathias Brodala
Reported on: 2007-10-05
Last modified on: 2009-07-17

People

Assignee:
Jannis Pohlmann
CC List:
1 user

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