Comment 47 for bug 389176

I dont know why we have to reinvent the wheel !

The problem is that the archive is presented as a list view in the archive manager. Which would surprise the average user. Other than that AFAIK there is no element of surprise for the users!

Instead of auto-opening the archives ,
1: *just make the archive manager display the files in the nautilus window* (this probably needs an archive-manager nautilus plugin) [or]
2: *make the archive manager display files in icon view* . [or]
3: If the average user is not understanding what an archive is ,then it is better to present with a dialogue window explaining that this file is an archive.[in as little words as possible] containing unknown files, Do you want to "Extract" or "Just view it". With an option , "Dont ask again,Do this for all archives".
These are non-papercut solutions ,

     But they are better solutions than auto-opening archives because:
1: Can overwrite files [as already pointed out]
2: Content of the archives are not know to the user[users do download unknown archives from the internet] , so unless they are sure of the files, *it should not self extract* . This is behavior would be a security risk.
3: Not everyone needs all the files of the archive, if this is a large compressed archive , then while extracting all the files the user has unnecessary write operations ! leading to poor system response during such operations ! and then we will have complaints of poor performance !

*If the average user is not understanding what an archive is* , that is the only problem! > they didnt understand it,
*So we need to think in terms of better ways of explaining it to them* . we only have to present it better.
We need to teach them to fish , Not spoon feed the cooked fish!
Just because it is a little hassle for some users, such auto-extract/auto-open behavior should not be encouraged.