Split View in dolphin usability issue

[Frank Reininghaus]

Hi,

2013/1/9 Daniel Kreuter:
> Hi Frank,
>
> Am 09.01.2013 13:13 schrieb "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.
>
> I totally agree that such a change won't be easy to introduce and we will
> need to think carefully before starting to work on it.
>
>> 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.
>>
>
> I agree with you so i wrote on Google+ a short post about this topic with at
> least one complain out of one comment in 3 hours, not much but better than
> nothing.
>
>
>> > 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.
> I will blog about it this evening. The only problem is that my blog isn't on
> planetkde yet.

Just ask for it to be added, or add it yourself. Anyone with commit
access can (provided he/she writes mostly about KDE-related things and
respects the code of conduct, of course).

Best regards,
Frank