[dolphin] [Bug 414670] New: Make connecting to arbitrary servers more obvious and user-friendly, like in Nautilus

[Nate Graham]

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=414670

            Bug ID: 414670
           Summary: Make connecting to arbitrary servers more obvious and
                    user-friendly, like in Nautilus
           Product: dolphin
           Version: unspecified
          Platform: Other
                OS: Linux
            Status: REPORTED
          Severity: wishlist
          Priority: NOR
         Component: general
          Assignee: dolphin-bugs-null at kde.org
          Reporter: nate at kde.org
                CC: kfm-devel at kde.org
  Target Milestone: ---

I found myself using Nautilus today and quite liked a feature of theirs:
Nautilus makes it really easy to figure out how to connect to a network
location. On the "Other locations" page, there's a big, obvious "Connect to
server" label with a text field that prompts you to enter a network location
URL, and it remembers recently-connected servers. See attached screenshot.

Of course Dolphin has a URL bar that you can just paste arbitrary URLs into,
but this is an inferior UI for several reasons:
- It starts out in breadcrumb mode; many users may not ever discover that it
has a URL entry mode
- Even in URL entry mode, it's not obvious that it accepts arbitrary URLs to
network locations we well. You might think that it only shows local paths.
- It doesn't remember recent network locations (Bug 174810).

In addition to this UI, Dolphin has an "Add network folder" wizard accessible
from the remote:/ ioslave. It is also sub-optimal because it's in the form of a
wizard that asks you lots of questions you might not know the answer to. Also,
the whole point of it is to create a semi-permanent link to some network place,
not a transient connection to a server that you might not necessarily connect
to again.

Overall I found Nautilus's approach to be quite user-friendly and I think we
could learn something from it. Perhaps we could add a toolbar visible in the
remote:/ ioslave that displays this feature in it, like we do for the trash:/
ioslave that displays a custom UI to help you empty the trash:
https://cgit.kde.org/dolphin.git/commit/?id=eb68fae15cdbf15e894d1a9d555c88d306261cc2

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