Button order in KFileDialog

[Ellen Reitmayr]

Hi all,

On Sunday 14 January 2007 17:42, Olaf Schmidt wrote:
> Your arguments make sense, but I am a bit concerned that the topic is
> discussed without including the usability people. Unfortunately this seems
> to happen almost every time when a usability-related issue appears on this
> list.
>
> What's the point of having usability professionals in KDE if we don't
> include them in usability discussions, or if we ask them and then assume to
> have better usability experience ourselves?
>
> I am cc'ing to Ellen so she can comment on your (IMHO very important)
> observations herself.

thanks, olaf!

I think Aarons argument to have back as the primary button in web management 
versus up in file management makes sense. however, konqueror is both, a file 
manager and a web browser, and there are different view profiles for that. so 
we might change the button order of "file browsing" to up/back/forward.

the question here is if we want to optimise konqueror for people like (most 
of) ourselves - who don't have a clear distinction between web and file mode, 
or if we want to optimise it for people who clearly distinguish between file 
and web. in the first case, we should leave "back/forward/up".

i'm tempted to say "let's leave it as it is in kde3 and do it right in kde4" - 
and dolphin ;-)

/el

> [ Aaron J. Seigo, So., 14. Jan. 2007 03:53 ]
>
> > On Saturday 13 January 2007 18:53, Andreas Hartmetz wrote:
> > > I propose to change the order of navigation buttons of KFileDialog
> > > from Up/Back/Forward to Back/Forward/Up, to make it more consistent
> > > with Konqueror (and other browsers people are used to). Ellen of
> > > openusability thinks this would be good, too - I asked her.
> >
> > this was discussed when we (i) changed the button order in konqueror. i
> > initially leaned towards consistency as well but then looked at the
> > common actions in a file dialog.
> >
> > most of the time "back" is actually the same location as "up". "up" is
> > always a sensible selection while "back" only sometimes makes sense.
> > therefore it's common to consider that "up" should have precedence.
> >
> > in a web browser the opposite is true. konqi's interface is "optimized"
> > if you will as a web browser.
> >
> > so while they may look the same on the surface, they actually serve two
> > rather different use cases. perhaps that's why users don't seem to have
> > an issue with this apparent inconsistency.
> >
> > may i ask what prompts this change on your part? is it simply a matter of
> > spotting an inconsistency or do you have a deeper reason?

-- 
Ellen Reitmayr
KDE Usability Project
usability.kde.org
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