Missing Home Button in KFD

[Aaron J. Seigo]

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On Monday 22 July 2002 04:15, Waldo Bastian wrote:
> Then we have to make some tough decisions to reduce the number of modes.
> (*ouch* I just enabled seperate dirs & sidebar & preview all together)

oh boy, my favourite discussion genre: which feature do we remove? aka whom do 
we upset ;-)

> What about this:
> left pane: one out of side bar / seperate dirs / preview / none

well, each of these do completely different things. the side bar + preview 
combo seems especially popular. users don't feel comfortable with these sorts 
of modalities since it goes against how people normally work.

use case:

 o open up the file dialog
 o click on the pictures icon in the sidebar 
 o takes me to /home/aaron/pix
 o select a file, want to make sure it is the right one before opening it
 o check in preview box
 o realize i'm in the wrong directory, click on the Home icon in the sidebar
 o select the right dir
 o check out the pix in the preview window until i find the right one

modality would require me to switch modes three times, and it would probably 
leave me in an innapropriate mode (preview, instead of sidebar) for the next 
time. unless i'm really anal about it and remember to switch back to sidebar 
mode before clicking Ok. but i'm not. i'd just get frustrated and stop using 
the preview altogether, all the while wondering why i can't (== frustration)

> right pane: one out of simple list view / detailed view / icon view

this makes sense since they all provide the same functionality

> Why do we have the sidebar at all actually? I'm not sure if I'm fully up to
> date, but I have here:
> *) Sidebar
> *) Bookmark toolbar button
> *) directory combobox.
>
> All three provide essentially the same functionality. Do we need the
> sidebar?

the directory combo does something slightly different than the Quick Access  
(QA) sidebar and bookmarks: it shows the current directory and caches 
recently used directories. the other two allow one to permanently and 
purposefully create name->location relationships (bookmarks). similar to the 
location bar / bookmakrs dichotomy in konqueror.

of bookmarks and QA sidebar, both have strengths and weaknesses. here, as i 
understand it, are those strengths and weaknesses:

QA sidebar strengths:
  o easy to get at, obvious interface
  o allows per-application settings (ooh! ahh!)
  o simple management of bookmarks
  o comes with some decent default bookmarks
  o single click on large targets

QAS weaknesses:
  o keeps entries in kdeglobals. this may have a performance impact for those 
with lots of file dialog bookmarks? (and there are those who do)
  o the default icon size takes up a lot of space. there is the list mode, but 
it is only found on the RMB menu. of course, those who will have lots of 
entries are probably power users, as well...

Bookmark strengths:
  o uses standard KDE bookmark behaviour, so lesons learned from Konqueror can 
be applied here
  o allows sorting into subfolders for those w/lots of bookmarks
  o uses its own bookmark file (xbel format) so it should be efficient and 
shouldn't impact time parsing kdeglobals

Bookmark weaknesses:
 o not as obvious or accessable on the toolbar. few notice it up there, while 
everyone notices the QA sidebar
 o the bookmark editor is deffinitely a lot more powerful than it needs to be
 o two clicks for activating a bookmark, small targets for clicks


also note that the QA sidebar has gotten good reviews and is similar to what 
is in file dialogs in Windows. i don't think this is a reason to keep it, but 
it does show that it is, as a widget, effective.

personally, i tried using the bookmarks, and made several of them. i rapidly 
got out of the habit of using them since it was so slow to access them. i'm 
using the QA sidebar regularly, though, because it is quick to access.

- -- 
Aaron J. Seigo
GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA  EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler"
    - Albert Einstein
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