Handling of "Parent directory" in LocationBox is somewhat counter-intuitive

Issue #723 resolved
Tim Wundke created an issue

This “bug” (I’ve marked it as a bug, but am not really sure that it belongs in that category) stems from when I first started using my U4. I was trying to move a recording to my NAS, with a structure as follows:

NAS
 |- TV
   |- Show
 |- Movie
  ...

I wanted to move it into Show, so naturally (to me, anyway) highlighted the file, selected Move, selected Other..., navigated to Show and entered that directory. Of course the only entry that actually showed was <Parent directory>, but my natural inclination was that I'd entered the directory to which I wanted the file copied. Obviously I hit the green button and the file was copied to TV, rather than Show, which wasn't what I was expecting.

Once you work out what’s going on it makes sense, and you know not to enter the directory, but it took me a couple of tries before I finally realised what was happening. I dare say I’m not the only person that has been caught out by this when they first try it.

So, my suggestion (which I've already got an implementation for and am running at home), is to return the current directory when <Parent directory> is highlighted, as I think that's ultimately more intuitive. Perhaps the wording of "Parent directory" could even be changed in this instance (say, "Up to parent directory") to make it clearer that the entry is only for navigation purposes, not selection.

I’d like to hear others' thoughts on this.

Comments (3)

  1. Peter Urbanec

    Re #723 [LocationBox] Changed the handling of "<Parent directory>" in getPreferredFolder() to return the current directory, rather than the parent directory.

    → <<cset fea6f8db7449>>

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