Keyboard selection when entering directory continues to remain counter intuitive and confusing in version 46.0
Affected version
- Fedora 40 Linux vanadium 6.8.7-300.fc40.x86_64
- GNOME Shell version 40
- Wayland
- This issue is also reproducable without extensions
Bug summary
When navigating into a folder, initially no file in it is selected. Hitting Down
arrow then counter-intuitively selects the second file rather than the first. This becomes problematic when there is only a single file or folder in a folder: hitting Down
then does nothing.
When entering into a folder, it is possible to select the first item by hitting Tab
. However, the next Tab
will not select the next file, but move to the next control (in a difficult-to-see and unpredictable way, but that is another issue).
Steps to reproduce
- Create a few folders and within these folders one or more files, e.g. using following commands:
mkdir -p Dir1 Dir2 ; touch Dir1/text11.txt Dir1/text12.txt Dir2/text21.txt
- Navigate to the directory where the two folders were created.
- Press
Enter
. Nothing happens. That is consistent with the observation that initially, no item is selected. Probably the first file should be selected to make for a fluid work flow, but that is another discusson. - Hit
Down
to select the first directory: we want to enter it. Oops, the second one is selected, so hitUp
then pressEnter
to (finally) be in Dir 1. - If you now want to open the second file, text12, you are rather lucky: Hitting
Down
Enter
will open it. The first file is somewhat more cumbersome: because the second file is selected first, you need to hitUp
before having the first file. - Go up the directory tree with Alt+Up
- Correctly, and intuitively, the directory you just left remains selected.
- Hit
Down
Enter
to enter Dir2, which contains only a single file. - Attempt to open text21, the single file there. Hitting
enter
won't work because no file is selected. Hitting an arrow key, which normally is used to move from file to file, leads you nowhere…
What happened
As seen from the walk-though above, the behavior of Nautilus was not quite intuitive.
- Nothing is selected by default when entering a directory. Instead of having a default selection so an
Enter
is sufficient if there is only one item or if the first item is wanted anyway, the user explicitly has to engage in selection first, which is counter intuitive. - The first selection made if the user engages in making a selection is the second item rather than the first.
- While the Tab key can be used to select the first item, that key serves changing focus to different parts of the UI. Needing to use
Tab
to initiate the selectiom, then having to continue with arrow keys caused additional friction and is counter intuitive
What did you expect to happen
Consistent, friction-less behavior.
Entering a directory immediately selects the first item. Arrow keys can be used to change the selection.