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Comment by Cockbrand | Hacker News Reader

I find this debatable from a UI/UX perspective. I think that the designers made the right choice here, because a context menu should show actions which can be applied to the object I right clicked on. "New Document" isn't really some function of a file or folder icon. Even worse: when I right click on a folder, should the "New Document" menu item create a new doc in the current folder? Or in the one I clicked on?

It would be better to have these common tasks in a separate menu item in the icon bar where they are always available, in addition to the context menu when right clicking on empty space in a window.

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Nah, no different from 'Create Row Below' or some such. Hunting for white space to click in order to act on the directory is like hunting for the borders in a spreadsheet or table to click in order to add a new row

Interesting opinion. I think it would be so much less confusing to have only one menu. The easiest for power-users and newcomers alike would be to put on the top of this unique right-click menu the folder-level options (create new folder, open terminal here, paste here, ...), and the selection-specific options bellow. This way it would be predictable and we can build habits (muscle memory).

But you're right it's debatable. A matter of preference. I guess I'm just in the camp of "more explicit is better than implicit". And I'm willing to pay the verbosity cost (having a longer menu in this case). The alternative seems like a complex decision tree to me: Am I in list-view? Yes. Is my folder full of files? Yes. What menu do I need, depending on the task I want to accomplish? I want to create a new folder. Ah, so I have to find some empty pixels to conjure the menu with that option...

> It would be better to have these common tasks in a separate menu item in the icon bar where they are always available, in addition to the context menu when right clicking on empty space in a window.

In GNOME Files they are! It’s the folder menu - the one that’s connected to the location bar.

It isn’t the most beautifully discoverable of menus, but it works well, and it’s worth noting the menus have been rearranged a bit in 47.

> It would be better to have these common tasks in a separate menu item in the icon bar where they are always available,

And which icon shall have this menu ? Points and lines are already taken. /s

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