[Design] lighten Dolphin’s Control menu

[sinma]

Le mardi 3 septembre 2013 17:46:58 Frank Reininghaus a écrit :
> Hi,
> 
> 2013/9/3 sinma:
> > Thank you for answering. I’ve tried to take into account what you’ve said,
> > and I think some little changes can improve Dolphin a lot.
> > 
> > 
> > About «Undo»: you convinced me that move it on the toolbar is not worth
> > it.
> > 
> > About «View Mode»: I report that it duplicates the icons on the toolbar
> > (<https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=324408>).
> > 
> > About «Adjust View Properties»: this menu is duplicating «View Mode»,
> > «Sort
> > by», «Additionnal Information», «Show in Groups» and «Show Hidden Files».
> > Are there a good reason to keep it?
> 
> Yes. With the dialog, you can change the view properties not only for
> the current directory, but also for its subdirectories.

Ok, I didn’t know about that because I’ve checked «Use common properties for 
all folders», so the «Apply View Properties To» choice doesn’t appear in my 
conf.

> > About the «Location Bar» submenu: seems pretty useless. What do you think
> > about it?
> 
> I think that you should stop assuming that everything that you don't
> use is useless. Do you have evidence that nobody uses these menu
> entries?

You can edit the location by clicking on the location bar, then typing.

Or you can «Control» → «Location Bar» → «Editable Location» or «Replace 
Location», then typing.

I don’t see any use case for that, and I’m interested to know a use case where 
it’s easier than clicking on the location bar (quicker and more intuitive) or 
using a shortcut (even quicker).

> > About the «Go» submenu: it’s not really useful because we can go anywhere
> > we want
> 
> Note that there are no toolbar buttons for "Up" and "Home" In the default
> UI.

You can «Up» by just clicking on the parent folder on the breadcrumbs.

«Home» is in the vast majority of case the personal folder of the user, for 
the other cases the user can add the folder to places.

Note that «Recently Closed Tabs» might be in another place though.

> Would you also suggest to simplify Dolphin's UI by removing the "Back"
> and "Forward" buttons from the tool bar? We can go anywhere we want
> with the location bar, can't we?
> 
> > About the «Configure» submenu: nobody said that’s a bad idea. What do you
> > think about it?
> 
> I think that it forces me to do one more click to access one of the
> settings dialogs. Is there any evidence that this is better than
> having these entries in the menu?

Maybe I’m wrong but editing the Dolphin settings isn’t very frequent, the 
«Control» menu is a bit cluttered, and an organized menu is easier to use and 
remember. Others applications have a traditionnal menubar with the three 
«Configure *» items together in «Settings» menu, so it’s consistent with the 
other KDE applications.

If you don’t make a «Configure» submenu, maybe «Tools» submenu might not be in 
the same section of «Configure *» entries (i.e. there should be a separator 
between «Tools» and «Configure Shortcuts…»), because it’s not consistent with 
other KDE applications.

It’ll be nice if some of the design decision were on the Dolphin website or 
somewhere easy to find, so guys like me can understand why things are like 
there are, etc (and also for others KDE projects, on techbase or userbase for 
example).

sinma