KIO Slaves proposal

[Dik Takken]

After the recent discussion about a KIO Slave wizard, I have been thinking 
of other ways to make KIO slaves more accessible to the user.

The idea is that we create a special KIO slave that allows the user to 
browse other KIO slaves, like some sort of virtual file system. To see 
what I mean, take a look at some screenshots:

http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=17800

Users no longer need to know or remember the names of the various KIO 
slaves (my girlfriend always forgets how to type a decent fish:// URL :-) 
) , all they need to do is browse to the right icon and click on it. Even 
browsing remote computers using any available protocol (http, ftp, fish, 
...) can be handled this way by asking the user for a hostname and select 
a protocol (see screenshot).

If we really want to go User-Friendly (TM), this new locations index 
should become Konqueror's default location, replacing the current 
file://home/username location. Three disadvantages that I can think of:

* Replacing file://home/username with locations:/ is a Really Big Change 
which we will probably need to wait for until KDE 4

* The user's personal files will be one more click away. But so are many 
useful KIO slaves.

* We might be tempted to turn this index into a jungle, like what 
happened to KDE Control Centre


Opinions?



Cheers!

Dik