Reserve background space at the bottom of the list.
Use cases
When viewing a sufficiently populated folder in list view, it is impossible to right-click the background in order to get the context folders menu. This is a known issue, but as evident by the plethora of questions about this, for example on askubuntu, many users are not aware of the intended solution:
- https://askubuntu.com/questions/1345859/using-ubuntu-nautilus-file-manager-how-do-i-get-proper-context-menu-items-in?noredirect=1&lq=1
- https://askubuntu.com/questions/1189971/how-to-get-the-non-file-rightclick-menu-when-files-is-in-list-view
- https://askubuntu.com/questions/1093690/ubuntu-16-04-nautilus-there-is-no-clickable-area-in-a-folder-because-the-folder?noredirect=1&lq=1
- https://askubuntu.com/questions/1062560/context-menus-in-nautilus-ubuntu-18-04
- https://askubuntu.com/questions/550423/nautilus-context-menu-for-current-directory-when-theres-lots-of-files-open-i?rq=1
- https://askubuntu.com/questions/483421/how-to-create-a-new-folder-on-list-view-on-nautilus?noredirect=1&lq=1
The intended solution being of course that one can right-click the folder name in the top bar:
Desired behavior
A mind-numbingly simple solution to the problem is the following: Simply extend the scrollable space by some whitespace equivalent to 2-3 files at the end of the folder. A user unaware of the intended solution can simply scroll to the bottom of the folder and finds some whitespace they can right-click.
Benefits of the solution
- It is way more intuitive.
- There is a secondary benefit: It makes it easier to drag-and-drop items into a sufficiently populated folder that only contains folders. In the current setup, this is error-prone because one needs to carefully place the cursor in-between folders. One can very easily accidentally move the item unintentionally into a subfolder. A large whitespace at the bottom is way easier to hit that only a few pixels in-between folders.
- Indeed, if this solution is implemented one could even think about removing that feature completely, which in turn would make it easier and less error-prone to move items into correct subfolders.