Update: "Connect to Server" isn't gone, it just moved. Thanks go to readers who led me out of a non-networked Nautilus desert.

Here is the original post before I was brought to my senses:

If this is what awaits users of GNOME 3.6, I don't blame Ubuntu for sticking with Nautilus 3.4 and Linux Mint for forking the file manager and creating Nemo.

The GNOME developers have got to be kidding.

They take a file manager and REMOVE perfectly good features? They could have HIDDEN the features but left them intact.

Right now I can't figure out how to get the Nautilus in the Fedora 18 Alpha to open an FTP site. This is basic Nautilus functionality that this particular file manager has included for years and years.

And now it's gone?

I know this is a Fedora Alpha, but will the ability to browse FTP/SFTP and WebDAV be gone in future versions of Nautilus?

You can go to other machines on your network (which I never do, by the way) but not to FTP/SFTP and WebDAV (which I do all the time)?

Words fail me.

Even if the feature is really, really hidden, the fact that as a longtime GNOME and Nautilus user I can't find it -- and I do believe it's completely gone -- is so very, very wrong.

Will Gigolo allow me to browse networked files in the "new" Nautilus? Even the Thunar file manager doesn't need Gigolo anymore in Xfce 4.10 -- you can go directly to an FTP site and work directly in the file manager.

Unless I'm missing something, GNOME is screwing the pooch pretty good here.

Again, I know this is the Fedora Alpha, and right now it looks like it's running the development version of GNOME -- i.e. 3.5 instead of 3.6. But this is my first exposure to what Nautilus is supposed to become in 3.6 and thereafter, and I'm stunned. Not in a good way, either.

So I'm testing the Ubuntu 12.10 GNOME Remix and notice that the Shell is more responsive in GNOME 3.6.0 than in the 3.4.2 build in Debian Wheezy, the system I'm using day-to-day.

I write about it and wonder if the performance boost is worth making an entire distro switch.

Later the same day I'm looking at my GNOME Shell Extensions via the extensions.gnome.org website (where you can find, install, configure and manage your GNOME Shell Extensions from either Firefox/Iceweasel or Epiphany/Web) and I come across Impatience.

Here is the description of Impatience:

Speed up the gnome-shell animation speed. By default it's sped up by a factor of 0.75 (i.e 25% faster), but this is configurable if you have gnome-shell 3.4 or later.

I install it, and boom -- hitting the "super" key and typing in the first few letters of an application brings up the icon as quickly as it does in the Ubuntu/GNOME 3.6.0 live environment.

Another problem solved in Debian Wheezy's GNOME 3.4.2. And a GNOME Shell Extension you must try right now.