[dolphin] [Bug 466050] Triggering selection mode by accident

[Felix Ernst]

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=466050

--- Comment #6 from Felix Ernst <felixernst at kde.org> ---
(In reply to Riku from comment #2)
> File manager GUIs have worked more or less the same for as long as I can
> remember and now suddenly the muscle memory is destroyed. But I won't argue
> against accessibility and it's great that people are actually thinking about
> this stuff. It's just that it seems to always come at the expense of
> irritating proficient users.

Yea, I think there is often times not much way around that. After all, the most
proficient computer users use keyboard shortcuts (often) and are therefore more
likely to gain muscle memory for pretty much any action. If we want to change
anything for the benefit of average users it is somewhat unavoidable in many
situations that it causes disruption/irritation for proficient users. The most
bug reports we got for a change in the last year was about the pre-selected
button on the permanently delete dialog switching from "Delete" to "Cancel". It
broke muscle memory and even though it is not completely stupid to have
"Cancel" pre-selected, many users were getting really angry over it until I
fixed it. See https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=462845.

> >Which keyboard shortcut are you triggering by accident? Mostly the Space key shortcut or others as well?
> Mostly space indeed. I noticed there was already some discussion about
> allowing rebinding space which would help a lot! However I do also end up
> hitting copy or cut on an empty selection.
> Say I try to copy but the file I thought was selected isn't. Now I would
> instinctively try space, which actually exits selection mode. Even with the
> original behavior of space restored, entering selection mode on an empty
> copy is not what I wanted and doesn't help me in terms number of key
> presses, etc.
> I just don't see myself ever benefitting from selection mode, only having to
> cancel it after having mistakenly activated it.
> 
> I'd like to hear your thoughts on my proposed solutions.

This is generally not a good use of my time. I'll answer briefly but please
don't expect a back-and-forth discussion to come from this.

>A. Add an option to fully disable selection mode.

Seems like a somewhat weird way to solve this bug report to me. Selection mode
isn't really meant to be a feature that users have to live with. It is supposed
to only be triggered after explicit user action. It wouldn't really make a lot
of sense to have an action in the UI and then a separate setting in the
settings to disable that action.

>B. Do not trigger selection mode with keyboard. It could still be triggered with mouse or touch.

This does make some sense for the specific issue in mind, but it is also
totally inconsistent with every other action in KDE applications. Having
actions that act differently depending on how they are triggered goes against
many expectations. So while I agree that it would make some sense in the given
case, I consider it overall a harmful precedent that can be solved differently.

>C. Put selection mode on some shortcut that won't be constantly hit by accident.

>From the feedback I have gathered (which has been overwhelmingly positive at
times) it seems like a good idea to make selection mode easily accessible by
default. There is no way to get representative statistics on this because we
have no way to gather representative data of our user base (only opt-in which
computer-illiterate people who are part of the target user group of this
feature won't have enabled). 

So, changing the shortcut away from Space by default doesn't seem like a great
idea to me currently. It is not totally out of the picture but AFAIK we don't
have enough reason to assume that this is the issue.

Being able to change the key-binding of selection mode on the other hand does
seems like a good idea, which is why my favourite solution for this bug report
would be marking it as a duplicate of
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=465489.

This, however, doesn't address the other issue you mentioned about activating
selection mode by accident e.g. by pressing Ctrl+C when nothing is selected. I
don't really think this is something we need to fix. Maybe I am weird, but I
generally don't press keyboard shortcuts by accident unless they are very close
to each other. That's an issue for example with Ctrl+Q (quit application) right
next to Ctrl+W (close tab). However we aren't going to remove the Ctrl+Q
shortcut by default because having that is normal among pretty much every
application. In the same way we shouldn't remove keyboard shortcuts out of fear
that users are going to press them accidently, especially when the only thing
that happens then is that a bar is shown which can be closed again in many
different ways.

There are also real advantages to having an action that would previously
silently fail now guide the users towards success, but I don't want to also get
into details on this detail as well.

Would it be fine with you if I marked this bug report as a duplicate of
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=465489 ?

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