Dolphin with tabs

[Peter Penz]

Hello Keith,

> I am purposing that there be setting within dolphin that controls
> whether or not tabs are allowed and that tabs be implemented
> into dolphin.
> I am attaching a patch that implements tabs into dolphin but it
> doesn't yet allow for tabs to enabled/disabled yet or the
> closing of tabs.

First let me thank you for providing a patch instead of "just requesting" a feature.

> I have talked with several individuals some which say tabs should be
> allowed. Others are saying that tabs shouldn't be allowed. I think the
> best
> compromise and solution to making everyone happy is to make a setting for
> tabs and by default the tab feature is disabled keeping dolphin simple.
> Then
> if the user wants a more advanced feature like tabs, the user simple
> enables it.

Dolphin was never intended to replace Konqueror (see also http://aseigo.blogspot.com/2007/02/konqueror-not-vanishing-news-at-11.html for more details). Konqueror will stay as first choice for power users, so it will provide tabs, unlimited splitting of views, a very powerful context-menu etc.

So Dolphin aims for a different target audience and we must somewhere draw a line to stop adding features just for trying to make everybody happy. I admit that drawing this line is very difficult, but in the case of tabs for a file manager I see this as a feature for power users.

When it has been made public that Dolphin will get part of KDE 4 two of the most controversal discussion points have been:
- no tree view
- no tabs

We've added the tree-view as it is an orthogonal feature which is turned off per default and does not need to get configured. In the case of tabs we would have additional menu items for creating a tab, closing a tab it, we must provide configuration options (open tabs in background, hide tab bar when only one tab is open etc.).

During writing this mail I've just seen that there have been some replies to this thread, which cover already some points I wanted to mention. So I'll keep this mail short and just want to say again 'thank you' for contributing a patch and willing to help. I'm sorry that in this case the consent of the Dolphin developers is that we have Konqueror for use cases where tabs are needed.

We would appreciate if you still would help us with contributions and patches and hope we did not scare you off by this.

Best regards,
Peter