Open file popover refinements
The open file popover has served us well over the years, and I get the impression that people like it. That said, there's always scope for improvement, and there are a few things we could do to make the popover even better!
- It's not entirely clear what is being listed - what are these files?
- The popover feels unnecessarily constrained - you only get to see five files in the list.
- The layout of each list row doesn't feel quite right - there's too much space between the label and the sub-label.
- The "Other Documents..." label is a bit unclear. What is going to happen when I click this?
- The search results list is a bit confusing - it's not clear that you can scroll (partly because the recent file list is truncated, but also partly because this style of list isn't typically scrolled in GNOME - we scroll the container, not the list itself)
Things we can do to improve these points:
-
Add a heading to the list ("Recent Files" or "Recent Documents") -
Add another file or two to the recent list, and allow it to be expanded -
Reduce the spacing inside each list row -
Change the "Other Documents..." label to "Browse Documents..." -
Place the search results inside a scrollable container, and expand the height of the popover to accommodate more search results when they're returned
I've drawn some mockups of what this could look like.