[KDE Usability] Review Request 116469: Always go back/forward in history when pressing the corresponding mouse buttons

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

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There is no reason for users to expect that back/forward buttons on the mouse should do something different if the cursor hovers over a file/folder, especially not that they select the file. They may learn it after a while, but likely after a lot of confusion (and even then they may still get confused).
Consistency should only be broken if the benefits are very big, which is not the case here. Users who want to select files easily should switch off single-click activation, the back/forward buttons should not be abused for this.

Therefore, from a usability perspective, please make the back/forward mousebuttons behave consistently regardless of the position of the mouse cursor.

- Thomas Pfeiffer


On Feb. 28, 2014, 7:24 a.m., Frank Reininghaus wrote:
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> This is an automatically generated e-mail. To reply, visit:
> https://git.reviewboard.kde.org/r/116469/
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> (Updated Feb. 28, 2014, 7:24 a.m.)
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> 
> Review request for Dolphin, KDE Usability and Sebastian Doerner.
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> Bugs: 310288
>     http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=310288
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> Repository: kde-baseapps
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> Description
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> Support for the backward/forward mouse buttons was added to Dolphin in https://git.reviewboard.kde.org/r/101335/ . They can be used to navigate in the history now.
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> However, this only works if the mouse cursor is not above an item - in that case, the item is selected, and no back/forward action is triggered.
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> Sebastian's motivation for implementing this behavior was that KDE uses "single click" activation by default, so it's not possible to select an item using a single click of the left mouse button (if the item is a file, it will also be opened, and if it's a directory, Dolphin will navigate to that directory). The backward/forward buttons can now be used to select items easily.
> 
> I understand this motivation, but the behavior might be a bit counter-intuitive, and I'm not sure if the number of users who make use of the "select item using back/forward button" feature is greater than the number of users who are annoyed by this behavior (the bug report about this is https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=310288 ).
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> Moreover, we already have multiple other methods to select items with the mouse (the selection markers, Ctrl+left click, rubberband selection), so I'm not sure if this feature is really required.
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> Therefore, I think it might make sense to change the behavior, but I don't have such a mouse at all, so I can neither test this patch, nor can I judge if my guess that the current behavior does more harm than good is correct.
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> Testing and input from the usability team is welcome!
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> Diffs
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>   dolphin/src/kitemviews/kitemlistcontroller.cpp 7344b99 
>   dolphin/src/views/dolphinview.cpp b68e8aa 
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> Diff: https://git.reviewboard.kde.org/r/116469/diff/
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> Testing
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> I cannot test it because I do not have a suitable mouse.
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> Thanks,
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> Frank Reininghaus
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>

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