Figure 2.1. “Nautilus Standard Window” shows the standard window of Nautilus. To open folders or files double-click the icons. Folders will be displayed in a new window in addition to the parent folder. Alternatively, set Nautilus to behave like a browser with the same navigation functionality. Right-click a folder and select ‘Open in File Browser’.

Figure 2.1. Nautilus Standard Window

The standard window is shown in Figure 2.1. “Nautilus Standard Window”. Use the icons in the toolbar to move forward and backward, to move one level up in the directory tree, to stop loading a document, to reload the document, or to go to the preferred starting page. ‘Location’ shows the path to the current directory or to the current file. A different path can be directly entered here. ‘Notes’ is useful for managing personal information about objects. These notes are saved along with the object.

Nautilus tries to select appropriate icons for objects according to their associated file information. Image and text files are shown as a thumbnail. Double-clicking shows the file in a viewer.

Nautilus supports dragging and dropping for managing files. To move files from one directory to another, use ‘New Window’ from the context menu or the ‘File’ menu in Nautilus to open two windows. Access the path of the original location of the objects in one window and access the destination path for those files in the second window. To move the files, drag the files from one window to the other and drop them there. Copying files is a little more complicated. Right-click the object to copy and select ‘Duplicate’. Then move the copy to the new directory. The context menu that appears when right-clicking an object provides functions for renaming files and other tasks.

Nautilus retrieves its default font and other preferences from the desktop configuration. To set Nautilus-specific preferences, select ‘Edit’+‘Preferences’ in any Nautilus window. The configuration dialog offers four tabs: ‘Views’, ‘Behavior’, ‘Icon Captions’, and ‘Preview’.

The ‘Views’ dialog allows switching the ‘Default View’ between ‘Icon View’ and ‘List View’. A sorting order can be set for any of these options.

The ‘Behavior’ dialog allows choosing between single-click and double-click response and also sets the handling of executable files. These can either be started on activation or the content displayed. The operating mode of the trash is also set here. Activate a confimation dialog before deletion, if desired. ‘Include a Delete command that bypasses trash’ can also be set. The files are immediately deleted if this option is activated.

The ‘Icon Captions’ dialog features three options for determining what information should be displayed for icons and how it should be displayed. In the ‘Preview’ dialog, select whether to activate preview thumbnails for certain file types.