Feedback about Breadcrumb Navigation stuff.

[Stephen Kelly]

Aaron J. Seigo wrote:

> On Friday, August 27, 2010, Bart Cerneels wrote:
>> The breadcrumb items (Home, kdabtest2, Inbox) look the same as the
>> selection items (Tasks, Journals, etc) *
> 
> that was precisely my thought as well..

This is already a misunderstanding. In the screenshot the selected item is
"Inbox", "kdabtest2" is one level up from that, and "Tasks" etc are children
of "Inbox". Only one breadcrumb item ("kdabtest2" here) is ever shown
currently, though that might change in the future (If an item has few or no 
child items, we'll show more breadcrumbs rather than leave empty space 
below). "Home" is not a breadcrumb, but a always-there way to get back to 
the invisible root of the tree. If "Contacts" had two child folders (it 
doesn't otherwise you would see a plus) and I clicked it what I would see is 
this:
 
  Home |
Inbox  |
--------
Contacts
--------
Sub1   |
Sub2   |
 
I would be interested to know if this is clear to people who used it, and 
not only saw videos and screenshots. I think the animations really help too.

Please checkout and build this:

svn+ssh://svn.kde.org/home/kde/trunk/KDE/kdepim/runtime/qml/kde/tests/qmlbreadcrumbnavigation

It's a self contained Qt only (4.7) test case which you can use to navigate 
around and try out.


> 
> this is mostly due to using identically sized and styled items in the
> list, with the border for "Inbox" the same on the top and bottom. it all
> communicates "these items are all peers".
> 
> an important question is whether all the "above" items must be shown as
> individual items. if not, it could be possible to to show the "up on
> level" item on top with a smaller font, showing the end of the path
> "..abtest2/inbox". when drilling down, the "up one level" item could have
> a nice animation where the text is added to and scrolled to the left while
> the the old "this" entry (in the screnshot "Inbox") animates up as it
> fades out. this would communicate "the current folder, Inbox, has become
> the new 'up one level' folder and it is now accessible from the 'up one
> level' button".
> 
> selecting the 'up one level' entry would take you up one level in the
> hierarchy.
> 
> this isn't, strictly speaking, a breadcrumb anymore in that every item in
> the previous path isn't visible and you can't jump to any random entry.
> given the screen constraints, though ....
> 
> pros:
> 
> * probably quite clear
> * doesn't require showing 5 items if you are are 5 items deep in a
> hierarchy, allowing more of the current listing to be shown by default
> 
> cons:
> 
> * the user can't jump immediately to a spot in the middle of the
> hierarchy, but would need to tap the "up one level" entry as many times as
> they are deep in the hierarchy (the Home entry would jump them to the top)
> 
> i'm not sure this fits your requirements or design goals, but it's perhaps
> a thought :)
> 

I think all of this is already the current status functionality wise with 
the exception of the scrolling text. Try out the test case and let me know 
if it is. Other than that visual improvements can probably be tossed around 
with mockups. I don't think different sizes of breadcrumb and child items 
would work as it would break some consistency (the email list items are the 
same size too).

Thanks for the feedback. We'll need to figure out a some place in kde to put 
and share all the qml stuff we're making.

All the best,

Steve.