GTK Open Files - Search

A while ago I saw a proposal to add search to the GTK FileChooser dialogs by adding a Search item to Places and thought there has to be better way. Perhaps even better than adding a separate search entry. So here’s my attempt at combining path-bar, location entry, search and making type-ahead find with its problematic pop-up unnecessary. Based on Gedit’s dialog as example.

Click on the thumbnails for full size images.

The path elements are click-able for navigation, but appear as contents of the entry to give more sense to navigating upwards via backspace. They contain / to give a hint to its use for entering a folder (typing foo/ to enter foo). The entry also accepts ../ to go up, / as start of an absolute path and ~ for home.

Text entered is used for a recursive search on file/folder names in the current folder. Followed by a search inside files, a system-wide search and maybe a system-wide search inside files. Where system-wide could be limited to what a user is allowed to access. There would also be a search for tags wherever available.

The entry has a split for Name and Modified lined up with columns below. So the second part allows searches based on date of modification. There could of course be a third column and entry-segment fo size.

Finally something I had to at least try once. For all I know, current layout mechanisms don’t cover such things and I’m in doubt if it would be worth it: