[Bug 163332] New: Usability: Allow room for bigger descriptions in result boxes and/or use a vertical table for easier selection/display

[monstermunch at fmail.co.uk]

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http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=163332         
           Summary: Usability: Allow room for bigger descriptions in result
                    boxes and/or use a vertical table for easier
                    selection/display
           Product: krunner
           Version: unspecified
          Platform: Compiled Sources
        OS/Version: Linux
            Status: UNCONFIRMED
          Severity: normal
          Priority: NOR
         Component: general
        AssignedTo: panel-devel kde org
        ReportedBy: monstermunch fmail co uk


Version:            (using Devel)
Installed from:    Compiled sources

Currently in krunner, each result is shown as a single large sized icon with a text description of the icon underneath. This seems fine when the text descriptions are short e.g. kmail, thunderbird, kbiff as results. However, I think this really hurts usability for more interesting uses of krunner.

For example, let's say we allow a new command like:

play mozart

When krunner sees this, it can ask, say, amarok for a list of all songs which have the word mozart in the title/artist. If we then use the icon grid as it is for the results, there just isn't any room to show the full song title name. If the user can only partially remember the artist/song name, they need this data to pick the result. Forcing the user to tab through all the results is incredibly cumbersome and inefficient.

There are a few solutions I can think of:

* stick to the grid layout but just give each result a box with more horizontal space with the icon on the left i.e.

                     Results
------------------------- -------------------------
| **** Mozart           | | **** Mozart           |
| icon Song 1           | | icon Song 2           |
| ****                  | | ****                  |
------------------------| ------------------------|

...

* Use a single row vertical table i.e.

                     Results
---------------------------------------------------|
| **** Mozart                                      |
| icon Song 1                                      |
| ****                                             |
---------------------------------------------------|
---------------------------------------------------|
| **** Mozart                                      |
| icon Song 2                                      |
| ****                                             |
---------------------------------------------------|

This might look similar to the current "add widget" dialog box for plasma.

I find the second option massively better. We now have lots of room for album name, title, year, album art etc. There's also no reason why krunner cannot take up most of the screen (instead of just a small box, use 90% of the screen space showing results). As we tend to want to stick to about 7 results in the list max for usability reasons, I think a fullscreen krunner in the table form would be excellent. This also means we can select the result using only the up/down arrows with no need for left/right movement. If the history results were integrated into the table, we could then just start krunner, type the command and then simply use up/down to select results without the need for cumbersome tabbing between the edit box and the grid because of the clash caused by the use of left/right arrows.