27 Apr 2010

Recycle bin

I, for one, think that Windows operating system's Recycle Bin is badly designed.  Systems like KDE copied the idea without improving and it bothers me every time I delete a file.  Here is the list of changes I would make to make it a little more user-friendly:
  • There will be no Shift+Delete shortcut to bypass recycle bin.  After a while, bypassing recycle bin is in your muscle memory and you start Shift+Deleting all your files.  Until you lose a file or two.  In my design, you have to open recycle bin and delete your file from there to permanently delete it.
  • There will be, however, an option to disable recycle bin for all deletes.  (All versions of Windows already have this option.)  By default recycle bin is enabled and a user can disable it if they want.
  • The user would be prompted only when a file is permanently deleted.  It can happen for two reasons: the user has disabled recycle bin and they are deleting a file.  Or the user is deleting a file from the recycle bin itself.  If you are moving a file to recycle bin, you are not asked to confirm your action.  (Windows already provides an option to undo file deletions if recycle bin was used for the deletion.)
  • Recycle bin would be maintenance free.  A file in recycle bin will automatically be permanently deleted after it has been there for a certain amount of time.  I often end up with my recycle bin occupying GBs of space, which is ridiculous.
Although I can't remember the last time I used recycle bin!  When the world is moving to the clouds, who wants to manage files manually? ;-)

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