The standard window of Nautilus is shown in Figure 3.2, “Nautilus Standard Window”. The default view of a folder's content is the icon view just featuring an icon and the filename for each file. If configured accordingly, a preview of the file's content can be provided, as described in Section 3.3.4, “Configuring Nautilus”. When you double-click a folder icon, a new Nautilus window opens, displaying the folder's content.

If you prefer browser-like file navigation, switch to the Nautilus browser interface. Right-click the folder to browse and choose ‘Browse Folder’. A new Nautilus window opens, providing the normal functionality, but with a browser's look and feel. To navigate folders and files, you can now use the ‘Back’, ‘Forward’, and ‘Up’ buttons as you would do in a Web browser. The functionalities and configuration options described below (Section 3.3.2, “File Management” and Section 3.3.4, “Configuring Nautilus”) also apply to the file browser interface.

Figure 3.2. Nautilus Standard Window

To navigate between folders, use the drop-down menu at bottom left edge of the Nautilus window. Here, find all parent folders to the current directory up to the file system root. Select the desired folder and it opened in a new Nautilus window on top of the old one. Alternatively, open just the immediate parent of the current folder by choosing ‘File’+‘Open Parent’. If you want to close these parent folders, select ‘File’+‘Close Parent Folders’.

Nautilus supports drag and drop for file management. Any file from the desktop can simply be dragged onto an open Nautilus window and dropped to its final destination. To move files between directories, open the source directory containing the file to move. Select ‘File’+‘Open Location’, enter the path to the target directory, then drag the files to move to the Nautilus window holding the target directory. Files and folders can be moved to and from an open Nautilus window and the desktop.

If you need to create multiple copies of a file, use ‘Edit’+‘Duplicate’. For simple cut, copy, and paste of files, use the ‘Edit’ menu or right-click the file icon then selecting the appropriate item from the context menu that appears. To rename a file, right-click it and select ‘Rename’.

Nautilus supports file browsing across a network. To connect to a remote server (FTP, SSH, HTTP, Samba, etc.), click ‘File’+‘Connect to Server’. You are then prompted for the type of server to which to connect and some additional information, like the name of the folder to access, the port number, and the username to use. When you leave this dialog with ‘Connect’, the remote folder is displayed as part of the ‘Places’ panel menu and appears as a desktop icon. For any future connections, just select the appropriate item from the ‘Places’ menu and provide the necessary authentication to log in to these network folders. To close these connections, right-click the desktop icon and select ‘Unmount Volume’.

Nautilus provides basic CD burning functionality. If you created a directory holding data you want to back up by just burning it to a CD, click ‘Places’+‘CD Creator’ and drag the folder holding the relevant data onto the ‘CD/DVD Creator’ window. Select ‘File’+‘Write to Disc’ to copy the data to CD or DVD.

MIME types determine which application should open a file when clicked in a Web or file browser. The actual file type and the MIME type of a file are closely associated with each other. An HTML file has the file type html and would be registered to have a MIME type text/html. Nautilus has built-in support for most of the common MIME types and proposes the appropriate application when you choose to open a file. In this case, it would propose a Web browser.

However, you might want to change the MIME type for certain files if you are not quite happy with the default applications suggested by Nautilus. Changing the default application assigned to a certain MIME type is very straightforward. See Figure 3.3, “Editing the MIME Type”.

Figure 3.3. Editing the MIME Type

If a MIME type has not yet been properly registered, the procedure is the same as described above. These modifications are applied globally, which means that any file of this type is subsequently opened by the application defined.

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 five tabs: ‘Views’, ‘Behavior’, ‘Display’, ‘List Columns’, and ‘Preview’.

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

In ‘Behavior’, choose between single-click and double-click response and also set the handling of executable files. These can either be started on activation or have 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.

‘Display’ features three options for determining what information should be displayed for icons and how it should be displayed. In addition to that, the data format can also be set here. ‘List Columns’ determines what information should be revealed in the list view. In ‘Preview’, select whether to activate preview thumbnails for certain file types.