some comments on the konqy usability report

[Alexander Neundorf]

On Monday 02 January 2006 15:40, you wrote:
> On Monday 02 January 2006 14:51, Alexander Neundorf wrote:
> > On Monday 02 January 2006 01:34, Luciano Montanaro wrote:
> > ...
> >
> > > Is there some feature of the tree view that can be hard to use (and to
> > > get accustomed to) for beginners? I'm not too familiar with other
> > > operating systems, but I think the old MacOs "Finder" had a similar
> > > view, and if it is an interface already learned by our potential users
> > > I think it would be useful to keeo it.
> >
> > I found the feature of the tree view to expand the directories always a
> > bit strange. In the other views you always see the contents of one
> > directory, in this mode you can see the contents of multiple directories.
>
> Well, sure. That's actually the reason I use this view. But while it is
> unique between konqueror views, its behaviour is used in other KDE
> applications. For example, the Amarok collection view is very similar to
> that.
>
> > Back then in 2000 I implemented the TextView and I still use and prefer
> > it over the other ones.
>
> Can you explain why? Is it because it is faster, or for the color-coding
> of the contents, or is there anything else?

Several minor things, together they make it quite mc-like
-the color coding and the symbol-characters (* for executable, @ for a link)
-the rows are a some pixels lower than in the detailed listview, so more rows 
are visible at once
-the focus rectangle is drawn over all columns, not only the file name
-mimetype-lookup is delayed, so it should load directories a bit faster (not 
sure this is still the case, at least it was intended this way)

Maybe there are more small differences, but I'd like to keep them.

> As I said, I normally use the "normal" icon view the tree view, and the
> specialized views. I don't use the other variations of the icon/list views,
> so I may be missing something.
>
> I think it would be useful to clarify between ourselves what's good in each
> view (and maybe check out other file managers out there) and take the best
> things of each to "distill" in, I'd say, two main filemanager views.
>
> > So I'd say both should be kept, but IMO moved to the "advanced" views.
>
> That would be ok with me, too.
>
> Again, what about the "Multicolumn icon view"? Is there anybody using it at
> all? Trying it I have found out that it reserves little horizontal space
> for file names. For example, it splits "Documents" in two lines on my home
> computer, where I probably use a slightly larger font than the default.

Code-wise it was very easy to implement, only a handful lines of code. Not 
sure anybody uses it. Windows explorer provides such a view too. 

Bye
Alex
-- 
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