Split View in dolphin usability issue

[Frank Reininghaus]

Hi,

first of all, I appreciate that Daniel and the other people involved
in the discussion try to make the "Split View" functionality better.
My cautious and conservative reaction does not aim to annoy anyone,
I'm just trying to make sure that we really make the user experience
better for the large majority of the user base.

2013/1/9 Todd:
> On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 10:59 AM, Daniel Kreuter>
> wrote:
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> Am 09.01.2013 10:40 schrieb "Mark":
>>
>>
>> >
>> > On Tue, Jan 8, 2013 at 2:22 PM, Jekyll Wu wrote:
>> > > On 2013年01月07日 20:21, Frank Reininghaus wrote:
>> > >>
>> > >> I understand that one might often want to keep the active view,
>> > >> rather
>> > >> than the other one. However, a quick Bugzilla search did not yield
>> > >> any
>> > >> indication that the current behaviour is a problem for many users.
>> > >
>> > >
>> > > Just for the record, there was such a report[1], but it was closed[2]
>> > > as
>> > > WONTFIX by Peter.
>> > >
>> > > I myself also would like to keep the active view, and even made a
>> > > stupid
>> > > patch to do it that way sometime ago. But perhaps Peter is right.
>> > >
>> > > This should really be carefully considered and discussed. Make a poll?
>> > > Write
>> > > a article on planet KDE to collect opinions ?
>> > >
>> > > [1] https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=188474
>> > > [2] https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=188474#c4
>> > >
>> > > Regards
>> > > Jekyll
>> >
>> > In my opinion it is logical to expect the url of your active view to
>> > become the url for your single window when you close split view. The
>> > fact that there aren't many/any duplicates/votes is likely due to the
>> > fact that split view isn't the default and is not used "a lot". People
>> > that are using it probably like the split view and hardly close it
>> > anyway thus only very rarely experience this issue. Another reason is
>> > that the issue is really minor in terms of usability so users are just
>> > not likely to take the step and report it.
>> >
>> > just my 5 cents.
>>
>> I often use the split view temporarily f.e. to copy/move files from one
>> folder to another. When i'm finishend i return to the single view and always
>> the wrong view stays open.
>>
>> I created a wish in bko two days ago (
>> https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=312834) and there are already 60 votes
>> so i will start working on it as soon as my build environment is set up.
>>
>> So long
>
>
> This is also my most common use-case and this problem constantly trips me
> up.
>
> The reason I never submitted a bug report is because developers generally
> seem resistant to changing these sorts of semi-arbitrary choices out of fear
> of upsetting users who have grown accustomed to the current behavior

It might be hard to believe for non-maintainers, but that fear is
actually justified. In my experience, many behaviour changes, no
matter how stupid the old behaviour was, cause many angry reactions,
which end up in the *maintainer's* inbox. The recent discussions about
dropping automatic icon resizing in the places panel and about "Sort
by Date" not sorting hidden files separately since Dolphin 2.0 come to
my mind.

Therefore, I prefer to make sure that the current behaviour is
sufficiently stupid and/or people care little enough about it before
considering a change that has not seen many user requests yet. And no
Daniel, the votes for your bug don't mean anything because almost all
of them come from people who are involved in the current discussion
here on the mailing list.

> such a proposal would be accepted.  Frank has expressed this concern
> already, but perhaps if there is enough support for this idea we can at
> least get a second toolbar button we can add.

I have tried to point out earlier in this thread that I consider a
second "Split/Close" button a nightmare from both a usability and a
maintenance point of view, even if it's hidden by default. And the
same applies to a new config option.

So I think the only reasonable option is to just change the behaviour
without any possibility for the user to control it.

Jekyll's idea of assessing the possible damage of such a change in
advance looks like it might be worth considering. However, a poll
might be problematic:

a) IMHO, a poll only makes sense if there are transparent and reliable
criteria on what outcome of the poll is required to actually make the
change.
b) Given that it's extremely easy to manipulate online polls, this
might be problematic.

If anyone [1] blogged about the current behaviour of the button, the
perceived usability issues with it (again, I fully agree that one
might expect the inactive view to be closed if one didn't know what
the button does) and the possibility to change that to see how many
angry comments there are, that might be good.

Best regards,
Frank

[1] With anyone, I mean anyone != Frank. In my experience, writing
useful blog posts takes a lot of time, and I have some more urgent
issues to work on in the limited free time that I currently have at
the moment.