KIO slaves wizard

[slaout]

Le dim 07/11/2004 à 18:08, Enrico Ros a écrit : 
> Great, I love your proposal! The only thing I'll like to modify is the wizard 
> button.. why don't we use the already existant "Location:" label ? We can 
> make it a button (maybe flat, maybe with an icon, maybe reacting on hover).

Oh, yes: good idea.
But in such case it would be a "special" button since if we disable text
on icons in toolbar (default), it will be the alone button to keep its
text visible :-/
Don't know if it is programatically possible.

But in any case we will have to keep the icon.
Because such button is intended to make KIO visible to the user.
It would be counter-intuitive if a simple label named "Location:" would
also call a wizard: no hint in it.
Nobody would try to click the "Location:" label because it is a label
(it is even unknow to a lot of users that dragging this label will drag
the URL in the address lineEdit).

> You did great, Sébastien!

The initial wizard idea is now my own, indeed :-)

Le dim 07/11/2004 à 18:22, Dik Takken a écrit : 
> > Yes, that's yet another (good) idea.
> > However only Konqueror (and eventually Open/Save dialog) woud have this
> > "popup widget". Not very consistent and expectable.
> 
> Inconsistent with respect to... what? We can change it everywhere, can we 
> not?

In fact, no widget over KDE/GNOME/Windows/MacOS allow to make the
apparition of another widget when hovering a small part of it.
What are the examples it is used in other parts ?

Yes, there is close-button-on-tabs-hovering.
But they are seldom, and in my KDE 3.3 they have been completly removed
by default (no application I used before with close-on-hover have it
activated now: don't touched any configuration).

And dynamic UIs are bad usability wise.
(dynamic: ie widgets are added/removed at runtime. A better way is
disable unusable widgets in a context, but that's not applicable to the
combobox).

It wouldn't even solve a problem highlighted on kdedevelopers blog: if
there is "ftp://user@server.org" in address bar and user change the
protocol via the combobox to "file".
What's happen ? "user at server.org" isn't relevant anymore in file
protocol context.
Remove it ? select it ? Remove it but make it reappears if selecting
back "ftp" ? Make it configurable ?
That add a new hack.

> > And what about if I want to select the first characters of the URL?
> > The popup combo will... popup and... we would need to find another hack.
> 
> You can hack around that. You could add a delay before the combo appears, 
> and you could disable the combo when the user is busy selecting the URL.

Yes, of course.
But at first the idea is to make KIO known to the user: it should be
visible.

And an advantage of the wizard proposed on the dot is that it allow to
get informations on the selected protocol, and a page to easily fill in
the fields of protocols parameters.

For example, kio_locate allow to search a text, of course, but also grep
the result with a special semantics.
A wizard can propose LineEdit for that and the user will learn the
syntax.
A combobox would just allow to select a protocol and leave the rest to
the user.

- Do you know you can access two drives via floppy:/ protocol?
- Do a "normal" user know how to specify a user in the FTP protocol
(since KWallet store password of ftp URLs and I have two accounts, I
temporary believed that KWallet was just able to store only the password
of ONE account. And I then remembered the syntax : ftp://user@server.xx)
- Did you know "device=/dev/sdc" can be passed to audiocd protocol?

> > BTW, tabs popup close button also have usability problems.
> 
> That's because accidentally clicking on these buttons causes a small 
> disaster. Accidentally clicking the KIO combo won't harm anyone.

But that's annoying.
Yes, I'm not an "ordinary" user and I'm hangry if an interface make me
loss even a second :-)

And I think adding a timing could be worst, since you don't usualy place
your mouse hover the protocol.
Users would discover the combobox "by hazard", after months (after
weeks, if they are lucky).
And sometimes they willn't be able to say what of her actions have made
the combobox appear.

Sombodies would say "hey: make the time configurable."
Or even "Hey: make the combobox disablable".
It would add two options, just to solve the problem "KIOs are
under-used".
It's what I call "hacks over hacks" : to solve the copying problem we
make it popup, and to save the annoyance we make it configurable, and...

> > Perhaps I'm alone to think the wizard icon+dialog is a good solution?
> 
> I think the button does not 'look' useful, because you can't guess what it 
> does just by looking at it. It will be just one more button that many 
> users never try out, much like the 'clear address bar' and 'go to' 
> buttons. A protocol combo will really catch the user's eye, I think.

It is near to the address bar, like the "erase" button.
But, yes it's not so intuitive.
At least, it is visible.
If the user can't take time to look at the tooltip of the button (or click
it to test what it is), he willn't even able to use KIO.

> > <<
> > Unfortunaly, I willn't have time to implement it for KDE 3.4.
> > It's why I posted on this list: to find a person agreeing to develop this.
> > In last resort, I could free time to start it.
> >>>
> >
> > Sébastien Laoût.
> >

Best regards.