Search entry should understand paths
Use cases
I did not know that pressing /
would allow me to go to a directory for years. My alternative was clicking my way through many folders, and it is as fun as it sounds. I'd like to improve the user experience so that this doesn't become a behavior users end up doing.
Desired behavior
If you press the search icon, and enter a directory, it should allow you to navigate to that directory, and not search.
Benefits of the solution
If a new user to the Linux desktop decides they would like to navigate to a directory in Nautilus (as that's a feature I've personally used lots in Windows with the File Explorer), they wouldn't hit a brick wall on why they can't. They may conclude that they'll have to navigate manually via solely mouse navigation, or just launching the terminal and figuring out how to do certain operations there (which both are time-consuming).
Possible drawbacks
This is a band-aid for not being able to click on the folder name to change directory, which is my (and assumed for many others') automatic response for when they'd like to change path. So this won't be a perfect solution. I'm also guessing this may collide with the search function. The work-around in my head is that if the user types "/" as the start of the search, it'll go into path entry mode.
However, I'm guessing there's some functionality using the "/" character somehow with search, which I'm unaware of. If there is, this will end up being more time to implement, but a potential solution would be a "Did you mean" prompt at the bottom of the search bar, asking if you wanted to CD into that path, along with a link to preferences to hide it. With a keyboard, you'd be able to navigate via arrow keys to highlight it, and if you press Enter, it will navigate to that directory.
My user story can also be somewhat mitigated by simply having /
listed as a shortcut in the menu. This would likely be a lot less time to implement, although having it be only there is not great user experience, in my opinion. It'd probably be listed as "/
- Navigate to a path" or something similar.
Unfortunately I can't speak towards code complexity, as I'm completely unfamiliar with the C programming language, let alone the codebase.