Ignacy Kuchciński

Introduction Throughout this summer I've been working on making the New Documents feature discoverable in Nautilus, a file manager for GNOME as part of the GSoC project . This post is an overview with links of the work I did together with my mentor Antonio Fernandes. Results For the project I was supposed to resolve the discoverability problem of this feature - when there are no templates in the Templates directory, the new document menu is not shown, and many users don't know about its existence. Below is a list of steps I've taken to fulfill that quest: Planning - first we had to establish a schedule for our work Research - then we had to do some research about how others implement this feature Design - afterwards we had to design a mockup for the improved feature Code - at last a prototype was made, and after several design iterations, a final MR was submitted and merged to a feature branch (not master yet), during that phase I also presented at GUADEC Future While t...

Introduction I published my last blog post about the design phase of my GSoC project on 17 July. It's been a month, and it's been far from uneventful. I'm going to talk about the first prototype and my short presentation at GUADEC, as well as the review from designers and the result of it - the new mockup and the second prototype. First prototype and GUADEC Following the old mockup from my last update, I prepared the first prototype of the revamped New File menu; it wasn't really functional but served its main purpose as something that the designers at mini-GUADEC could test and review. Speaking of GUADEC, I took part in the Intern Lightning Talks where I presented the old mockup - you can watch my presentation on YouTube . Me presenting the old mockup at GUADEC Intern Lightning Talks Review at mini-GUADEC Equipped with the old mockup and the first prototype, my mentor Antonio Fernandes presented the work at mini-GUADEC satelite event to the designers, and we got fol...

Introduction It’s been a while since my last update , in which I’ve shared my research about the underlying problem and use cases of the “New Document” feature, regarding its discoverability and ease of use, as part of my Nautilus GSoC Project . Since then I’ve been focusing on the following phase of the project: “Design a mockup based on aforementioned research”, and I’m here today to share the results with you. Use cases Figuring out hypothetical user profiles and their use cases could prove really helpful in designing and refining prototypes, so together with my mentor Antonio Fernandes we’ve come up with the following examples: User profile #1 - Programmer A programmer or system administrator with a repertoire of many pre-made code snippets/basic scripts for a variety of needs.  Use case: has to create source/script files at specific locations with the premade content. User profile #2 - Computer science student An aspiring programmer, who attends classes where they learn about ...

Introduction Two weeks have passed since I started the first phase of my “Make New Documents feature discoverable” Nautilus GSoC project. It’s called “Researching the underlying problem and use cases'', and according to the timeline that was set up in my last planning post, I’m here to share our findings and results. Why do the research Before we start revamping/fixing issues with our implementation of the “New Document” feature, it’s essential that we look into other operating systems, file managers, and web apps, to see how they approach allowing the user to create files. Do not be mistaken - the intention is not to blindly copy them, but to take inspiration from them, identify potential problems with specific solutions, and find out what users may expect from us. If there’s a clear trend in some approach, there may be a valid reason to implement it. We don’t exist in a vacuum, and we are definitely able to learn from the accomplishments or mistakes of others.. Everybody, in ...

Introduction This summer I'm contributing to Nautilus as part of GSoC, focusing on improving the discoverability of the new document feature. In this post I will describe how the project was split between me and Utkarsh, briefly go over the schedule established for my work, and briefly mention my current research in GNOME Boxes . The split The initial short project idea assumed that only one student was going to work on it, so when both me and Utkarsh Gandhi were accepted, we had quite an unexpected situation. Fortunately, the fact that the project had many stretch goals allowed us to split it so that both of us can work independently. The unexpected situation has taught us to share tasks in a meaningful way, which has made us all the more able to grow at our assignments, furthermore we have learned how to work without blocking each other's progress. Most of the initial tasks that aim to revamp the UI and the code of the New Document menu go to Utkarsh, while I'm going to...

Hello there! My name is Ignacy Kuchciński and I'm studying computer science at UMCS in Lublin, Poland. I've been making minor contributions to GNOME over the past few years, and among the projects I was looking into was GNOME Files, a.k.a Nautilus. I learned about GSoC in #nautilus irc chat room as I observed the effort to port nautilus properties dialog to use GtkBuilder, and I really liked the idea of it - have a chance to make a more significant contribution and be a part of an awesome community on a deeper level. Fast-forward two years, I've applied to Nautilus for GSoC'22 and got accepted to help revamp the “New Document” submenu - an adventure I'm very excited to undertake. The project GNOME Files, also known as Nautilus, as many of you already know, is a file manager for GNOME. Its goal is to provide the user with a simple way to navigate and manage files. One of its abilities, the New Document creation feature, is considered to be a part of core user experie...