kfm-devel Digest, Vol 52, Issue 20

[level1]

Hey guys, as a former windows user I think I might as well clear this up.  IE6 
and the file browser (called "Windows Explorer") are actually the same 
program.  If you put a local file into the location bar of IE6, it will 
magically turn into windows explorer.  Very few windows user realize this and 
it certianly shouldn't be compared to konqueror, which attempts to seamlessly 
blend browsing, viewing and managing of both web and files.

The windows file browser always opened files in seperate viewer even though it 
clearly *could* open them embedded using the IE6 technology.  Honestly, I 
don't think there's very much to learn from IE6.

This all changed when IE7 came out.  IE7 is completely seperate from the file 
browser (which itself changed greatly in vista).  IE7 is actually a pretty 
good browser.  Its fast, and has all of the features of firefox, even 
extensions, and firefox users on windows are starting to move back to IE, 
perhaps for the operating system integration.  As for security, I really 
don't know.

I like the idea of konqueror merging file browsing and web content, but I 
guess each to his own.  Hopefully, the following promises will be kept:

1.Konqueror will still get most of the benefits of dolphin improvements 
through kparts, and konqueror development will not suffer.
2.Dolphin will be powerful and full featured, including things like tabs 
(because there's no reason not to include them)
3.konqueror will not lose useful functionality like the up button.

By the way, konqueror can be configured (through a file) to present a close 
button where the icon is on each tab when the mouse hovers over it.  I think 
this should be defualt, or at least configurable.

In case your wondering who the heck I am, I'm Conor Sullivan.  I'd like to 
contribute a bit to kde 4... has any progress been make on the file size view 
for dolphin?  If there is no support for this yet, I'd like to start 
implementing it as my first venture into kde programming.  I emailed Peter 
Penz about this.  Can I contribute?


On Wednesday 25 July 2007 05:00, tyrerj at acm.org wrote:
> Message: 1
> Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2007 03:56:35 -0700
> From: James Richard Tyrer <tyrerj at acm.org>
> Subject: Re: Dolphin with tabs
> To: kfm-devel at kde.org
> Message-ID: <46A5DAE3.40004 at acm.org>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
> K N wrote:
> > I forgot to mention this. In windows there a two seperate programs, one
> > for browser files and one for browser the web. Many users are going to
> > confuse this with dolphin being the folder browser of windows and
> > konquer being internet explorer.
>
> Perhaps that is where the idea comes from.  I do not have a recent
> version of Windows.  I think I have 3.x for DOS somewhere.  So, I will
> have to ask how this works in Windows.  I have IE6 installed with
> CXOffice so I know how it works.  It is like Firefox, it will browse
> anywhere -- even on Linux with CXOffice, it will browse my local files
> if you give it a phony path.  However IE will not manage files.  That is
> how Konqueror is different, it is a browser that will also manage files
> (and also has the icon view/thumbnail preview display).
>
> So, the question is what the other Windows browser does.  Will it
> browse?  That is, can it display the contents of files or does it only
> open them in the appropriate applications?  If so, then it is a file
> manager like Dolphin.
>
> Note that there is nothing strictly local about managing files.  You can
> also manage files on a network or with FTP over the internet.  Dolphin
> would make a good FTP app if it could store the needed book marks.
>
> So, the current purpose of Dolphin is to satisfy users that don't want
> to manage their files with a browser.  I don't see that it should be
> lacking features; it doesn't need to be overly simple; it just needs to
> be ONLY a file manager.  We can add Konqueror features as long as we
> maintain this limited purpose.
>
> As for tabs.  I don't see that that is a power user feature.  I just
> find it more convenient than opening more browser windows.
>
> --
> JRT