The Nautilus Spatial View

Nautilus gives you two ways to work with files: the traditional File Browser view and the innovative. By default, Fedora/RHEL display the Spatial view.

The Nautilus Spatial (as in “having the nature of space”) view has many powerful features but may take some getting used to. It always provides one window per folder. By default, when you open a folder, Nautilus displays a new window.

To open a Spatial view of your home directory, double-click the Home icon on the desktop and experiment as you read this section. If you double-click the Desktop icon in the Spatial view, Nautilus opens a new window that displays the Desktop folder.

A Spatial view can display icons, a list of filenames, or a compact view. To select your preferred format, click View on the menubar and choose Icons, List, or Compact. To create files to experiment with, right-click in the window (not on an icon) to display the Nautilus context menu and select Create Folder or Create Document.



Use SHIFT to close the current window as you open another window
If you hold the SHIFT key down when you double-click to open a new window, Nautilus closes the current window as it opens the new one. This behavior may be more familiar and can help keep the desktop from becoming overly cluttered. If you do not want to use the keyboard, you can achieve the same result by double-clicking the middle mouse button.



Window memory
Move the window by dragging the titlebar. The Spatial view has window memory— that is, the next time you open that folder, Nautilus opens it at the same size and in the same location. Even the scrollbar will be in the same position.



Parent-folders button
The key to closing the current window and returning to the window of the parent directory is the Parent-folders button. Click this button to display the Parent-folders pop-up menu. Select the directory you want to open from this menu. Nautilus then displays in a Spatial view the directory you specified. From a Spatial view, you can open a folder in a traditional view by right-clicking the folder and selecting Browse Folder.

Source of Information : Prentice Hall A Practical Guide to Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5th Edition