Konqueror 4

Martin Konold martin.konold at erfrakon.de
Mon Oct 30 14:15:11 GMT 2006


Am Sonntag, 29. Oktober 2006 18:47 schrieb Aaron J. Seigo:

Hi,

> try the implementation in dolphin; you'll notice it's quite easy to jump
> between breadcrumb and editable location bar. there's a button, a keyboard
> shortcut and a config option.

I gave dolphin a try and I am not convinced. E.g. when I navigate to / I can't 
do this via a button or by clicking on icons. I am forced to use the menubar. 
As we all know being forced to use the menubar has usability issues.

The next thing is that dolphin tries to be smart and hides most directories. 
E.g in / I can on my kubuntu system only see 

- debootstrap/
- home/
- media/
- usplash_fifo

This selection is a very bad idea. E.g. me navigating to /tmp should be easily 
doable.

After enabling the access to the hidden files (only available via menu not 
icons) I get presented all hidden files and directories including those 
starting with  a dot. Then when navigating to /tmp and back to / it forgot 
about my selection again. In practice this meand that navigating from $HOME 
to / and then to /tmp is not a reversable action. (The users needs to 
explicitly enable the access to the "hidden" entries again and again.

IMHO this is a typical but lame attempt to make the UI simpler.

Rule of thumb: Make it as simple as possible but not simpler.

In the real world this means don't make sane assumptions like "when I enter a 
direcotry and navigate back to the upper directory I can easily go back to 
the original directory. (Action of Navigation must always allow to be 
revertable without changing any view/contents by the mere act of navigating)

Regards,
-- martin

-- 
http://www.erfrakon.com/
Erlewein, Frank, Konold & Partner - Beratende Ingenieure und Physiker




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