Today I've been reading a very interesting article which talks about the advantages of spatial interfaces. It is titled About the Finder... and can be found here. The paper starts explaining what spatial interfaces are, how they mimic reality and why they are good in usability terms.
To provide implementation examples, it focuses on Mac OS's Finder for the good ideas and Mac OS X's Finder for the bad ideas because, in the oppinion of the author, the later is worse in terms of spatial behaviour. However, I find that many of the concepts explained can be applied to Nautilus (the GNOME file manager), and as it is free software, any features not yet implemented could be added by anyone.
If you like spatial interfaces, this article will only make some concepts clearer to you. If you don't - or you are unsure about their purpose -, it may change your mind. Personally, I like the spatial interface quite a bit, and it is not so bad - as you may actually think - when you get used to it.
