Breadcrumbs in Kickoff

[Aaron J. Seigo]

this is my last email on the matter as i refuse to allow "decision by endless 
discussion" and acceptable means of resolution have been put forward.

On Wednesday, December 21, 2011 00:51:45 Alexey Chernov wrote:
> > plasmoids, including the tasks plasmoid (and that's ended up turning out
> > rather well for everyone i think :).
> 
> No, I mean a contribution with config option or something which can return
> the Back button. 

i know what you meant, and i'm saying that's not going to happen for the 
reasons already outlined. please respect that.

> I don't think it's perfect idea to fork kickoff because of
> one function.

as Martin noted, this has a way of becoming 2 functions, then 3, then 4, then 
... we've been there before with other software. we know how this works. you 
can promise me the moon and "just one function" but i _know_ that is not how 
it works in the long run.

we've also experimented with "create a different plasmoid". we did it first with 
clocks, we've done it with many others since, even including the tasks widget 
of which there are now ~4 different options out there that i'm aware of. and it 
works really, really well -> people can find exactly the feature set they want, 
and don't have to put up with what they don't want.

put another way, we don't end up with a tyranny of the minority. a few people 
want it to work a specific way, and the rest don't want the hassle and bother 
of having to wade through complex configuration. to meet everyone's needs, we 
create multiple widgets with the default one being the "most applicable" 
version (which, btw, can change over time)

as a result of this approach, we have great new features in the default task 
widget and a ton of great features in the alternative offerings.

it works.

so rather than trying to struggle against the wishes of the people working on 
plasma day-in, day-out please consider simply trying the solution we're 
offering.
 
> > the back button was not
> > serving everyone well (we got lots of feedback on it ...)
> 
> I didn't say the Back button was ideal. I think a serious usability research
> should be performed to find the better solution instead of it.

so let's not put it in just to take it out again later. or, hell, you could 
attempt the research you're talking about and come up with something 
_actually_ better rather than just going back to "something not great"

> > and the
> > breadcrumbs are more consistent with what we see elsewhere (file dialog,
> > dolphin, ..)
> 
> That's right. But there're areas (URL string in browser, date and time
> string in clock applications, rich text editors etc.) where breadcrumbs
> look more natural but in spite of it it's not used there.

because they aren't navigable paths.

> Yes, it will
> probably make something more consistent but will spoil things in many other
> areas. I don't think consistency is the key factor here.

it's a reason to select it as a solution.
 
> As to me, my solution is: keep both Back button and breadcrumbs. 

i don't think it makes sense to just add every possible idea and hope one of 
them works for people :)

it will also look rather horrible :/

> Here's my
> arguments:
> - no config and no tweaks required
> - users can use both ways
> - no redundancy or duplication as it's just two methods to reach the same
> result

but ... that's the definition of redundancy and duplication :)

> I don't mean that it's a bad code or something and I respect all the efforts
> of Martin and whole Plasma team to improve navigation, to find some better
> decisions. But I think such a things should be discussed especially given a
> significant number of critical comments.

trust me, this is not a significant number of comments. relative to other 
topics we've been through, this is a small number.

moreover, it is impossible to simply respond to "number of comments" by doing 
whatever those comments suggest and get a coherent product. most commenters do 
not have the knowledge and experience necessary to offer proper advice, any 
more than i can suggest to a structural engineer how to build a bridge ... 
despite the fact that i've used thousands of bridges in my life and continue 
to use them every day.

so while the amount of feedback is a useful metric (and in this case, it's not 
very high), and listening to what the _problem_ is is useful .. usually the 
suggested solution content is less useful.

in this particular case, we purposefully decided against the back button. we 
will not be going back on that. any new adjustments should have user testing 
and consist of more than just "put the old failed method back".

-- 
Aaron J. Seigo
humru othro a kohnu se
GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA  EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43

KDE core developer sponsored by Qt Development Frameworks
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