Favorite folders... as a tree

[Diego Regio]

This is a suggestion for improving the Favorites menu list.

When talking about web page favorites It's pretty OK to display them as a list.

But when dealing with folder favorites in file systems, there is a difference: almost any file system has a tree structure. So, the favorites should be a tree, not a flat confusing list.

Let's see an example. Suppose the following folder structure:

--Folders--
C:
|--Documents and settings
|  |--John
|  |  |--My documents
|  |  |  |--Development
|  |  |  |  |--FlashFolder
|  |  |  |  |--...
|  |  |  |--My music
|  |  |  |--...
|  |  |--...
|  |--...
|  |--Mary
|  |  |--My documents
|  |  |  |--My music
|  |  |  |--...
|  |  |--...
|  |--...
|--Windows
|  |--...
|--...

(Note that "..." means lots of other folders I didn't want to draw.)

If I add as favorites C:, "My music", and "FlashFolder", they would be displayed like this:

--Favorites--
C:
|--My music
|--FlashFolder

If then I add My documents, I would get this:

--Favorites--
C:
\--My documents
   |--My music
   \--FlashFolder

Extend this to many more than four favorites, maybe to around twenty favorites as I have at work. In that case, a list structure is helpful but confusing.

The user has a mental representation (call it memory if you want) of where his most frequently used folders are. And that representation usually is in his mind in the same way as the folders are organized: as a tree.

So, why are we getting stuck with just a flat list of favorite folders, when we could have a tree of favorite folders?

It's not essential to be able to reorder the tree structured favorites. Every new favorite should be automatically added to the right place in the tree according to the folder placement. If the real parent folder is not in the favorites, but it's parent is, then it should be a sub-node of that one. And so on, up the top, when it would become a top node favorite.

Let me know what you think.

Cheers,
Diego Regio (from Argentina).

[Diego Regio]

There is a typo in the 2nd example. It should be like this:

--Favorites--
C:
\--My documents
   |--My music
   \--FlashFolder

[Diego Regio]

OK, it was not a typo but a problem when rendering lines that start with blanks. Here I added ! to the begging of each line just to work that around.

!    --Favorites--
!    C:
!    \--My documents
!       |--My music
!       \--FlashFolder

[Diego Regio]

I give up, I hope you got the idea.

And please take a look at Cubic Explorer, an alternative free file manager that has a tree structured favorites pane:
http://www.cubicreality.com