Comments by user "pasamio"
Registered since: January 29, 2009
Merge folders option when copying/moving
All it needs is a "Stop", "Merge", "Replace". Alternatively using 'option' (alt) to modify it so that is changes from "replace" to merge would keep the interface clean as well.
Merge folders option when copying/moving
Wrote on April 18, 2009, 1:47pm
To be fair the dialog, at least in English, says "A[n] [older|newer] item named X already exists in this location. Do you want to replace it with the newer one you are moving?" - it is very clear that it is replacing the item (file or folder), I think the problem with this is that people have been used to Windows prompting you a stupid amount of times with a dialog that asked you if you wanted to replace individual files which has desensitised people into just clicking replace to get rid of the dialog. Effectively what Windows XP has is a 'merge' operation that asks you to replace files that conflict. I wonder how many read and took the time to understand what it was saying or saw "replace" and just clicked it since that is how it worked on Windows (or even Linux).
Vista's dialogue is an improvement but could do a UI designer. It makes it clear that it knows what the next files it wants to apply this to are but doesn't provide an easy ability to display that. A dialogue similar to what iTunes shows when it has issues pushing items to a device (e.g. if it can't find the item) which would show you and potentially allow you to decide if you really do want to replace those files or not.
The main issue with Vista's dialogue as I see it is that it waits until the end to nag you instead of asking straight up and presenting the option to not do the copy at all. Working this out first whilst potentially a bit time consuming and will be slow when doing it with a large number of files (need to intersect the set of each files) would be much better than waiting for it to go "oh yeah, by the way these files conflict".