Other locations: more prominent display of recent server connections
Use cases
When returning to the Other Locations view, it is often to reestablish a previous connection. There it displays the hard drive and a non-existing Windows network. Then it is possible to access my recently used servers via the dropdown of the server connection address bar. To reestablish a connection takes three clicks and mouse movements:
- Open dropdown
- Select server
- Click connect
Desired behavior
In a perfect world, Other Locations would display recent connections as greyed-out network connections with the eject button now labelled with something like ⦾ or ⦿
Then the connection can be reestablished/remounted with one click on the button, or double-click on the icon.
Benefits of the solution
This proposal makes more use of the available screen estate, reduces mouse movements for health concerns, and renders other Locations a convenient hub to external storage, if available or not.
Possible drawbacks
For some users, it could be irritating to find the same connections in the icon drawer, plus in the server address dropdown. The latter could be obsolete, then.
Also an option to remove unwanted connection ghosts would seem neccessary.
Eventually one could mix both approaches, with keeping the full log in the dropdown, and ghosts disappearing after a few weeks if not used regularily. A combination could mean to see only recent connection shadows in the icon list, and push outdated items to the dropdown list, splitting the current list in two.
References
This issue is informed by the discussions in #265 (closed), #1310 and #1681, and could provide a further location to consider within #577 (closed), esp. with regards to online accounts.