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

[Frank Reininghaus]

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https://git.reviewboard.kde.org/r/116469/
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(Updated March 1, 2014, 11:19 a.m.)


Status
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This change has been marked as submitted.


Review request for Dolphin, KDE Usability and Sebastian Doerner.


Bugs: 310288
    http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=310288


Repository: kde-baseapps


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.

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.

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 ).

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.

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.

Testing and input from the usability team is welcome!


Diffs
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  dolphin/src/kitemviews/kitemlistcontroller.cpp 7344b99 
  dolphin/src/views/dolphinview.cpp b68e8aa 

Diff: https://git.reviewboard.kde.org/r/116469/diff/


Testing
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I cannot test it because I do not have a suitable mouse.


Thanks,

Frank Reininghaus

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