Breadcrumbs in Kickoff

[Alexey Chernov]

On 21 дек 2011 08:25:03 Martin Gräßlin wrote:
> but that's the point. Now in a month someone else wants something completely
> different. Then it's still not the perfect idea to fork Kickoff because of
> one function. A month later the next config option creeps in and another
> one and another one. And a nice small applet becaume a Frankenstein.
> 
> Either you decide that no non-valid config options go in or you have
> discussions about it each other day.

As I said before, I agree with it. I don't know the whole background but it 
seems to be right.

> 
> > > i do not want plasma desktop to become a collection of everyone's
> > > pet
> > > features with a thousand configuration tweaks.
> > 
> > Exactly. I agree. But as I remember Martin said that we're discussing
> > only config option and reverting to Back button wasn't an option. I
> > think, nobody also wants Plasma desktop to become a collection of wrong
> > decisions, it's even worse.
> 
> Yes, I said we can discuss the need of a config option. For that we require
> good arguments why such an option is required. That has not yet presented
> here. Neither we can do it, nor but it was there is a good argument.

Yes, we discuss it as you propose it as the only way "with the Back button". 
Now you give an argument that config options are bad in general. Does it mean 
it never was an option?

> So you are a usability expert? I didn't know that. I am no usability expert,
> because of that I do not argue with usability. (Just look through my mails
> you will nowhere find that I say the breadcrumbs are better and the back
> button is worse from a usability point of view). If you have not studied
> usability, I would appreciate that you don't pull such arguments. It a
> serious field of research and we should not do like we know better.

Nope, I'm not. But since you mentioned millions of users somewhere below I 
would expect some usability research to be performed for such kind of cases. 
So my question is: how then it was decided that Back button should be replaced 
with breadcrumbs? Is it right that you don't know whether it's better or worse 
than Back button in terms of usability but still make such a decision?


> I'm sorry but all your examples are bad ones. Let's consider them:
> * main menu is normally dropped. Finding an option there is a complicated
> task. See for example Unity which basically removed the menu completely.
> * context menu you have to explicitly trigger, you have to know that the
> functionality is there.

I meant application main menu (File, Edit, View etc.), sorry if it wasn't 
expressed clear. Also I wouldn't say Unity is an ideal example for this, but 
AFAIK it just moves application main menu to global level so main menu isn't 
gone completely. Anyway, it was example that multiple ways to the same 
functionality aren't necessary evil, redundancy or duplication, it was just a 
description for my argument ('no redundancy or duplication').

> With Kickoff we are talking about two always visible and directly reachable
> UI elements. This is something completely different. We also have to
> consider how close these UI elements are. Given the new QML design they
> would border each other. That is one of my main concerns that it visually
> clutters the view, makes them inconsistent (only one of four views uses the
> back button) and confusing. I don't see why the average user would need
> this always there. To me this looks like you realized that you don't get
> your config option and now you try to adjust your argument ;-)

No, not really, I initially wanted to keep both methods, you can see it in my 
bug report (http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=285401) which is now a 
duplicate to more famous one. We just began to discuss a config option but 
Aaron and you pointed to the problems with config and I tend to agree.
 
> > - minimum of code required
> 
> this is just not true. This would significantly increase the code size. See
> my other mail on that subject. As I wrote I expect an increase of code size
> for one QML file by at least 10 %.

Hmm.. OK.

> > 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. If
> > something was wrong I don't see any problems to solve it.
> 
> Which significant number of critical comments? How many users have commented
> here in the thread and reported bugs? 5? 10? 20? We are talking about a
> feature which will be used by millions of users. If we get to a thousand
> users complaining we can start to think about significant numbers.

Well, it depends. For someone every single user is significant, other projects 
can lose thousands of users and feel good. For me it seems significant.
 
> A small anectode: we had a recent event in the state where I live. In our
> state capital the German government and the Deutsche Bahn want to build a
> new station. It will take many years to build it and will cost several
> billions €. Over the last year there were many demonstrations in the
> captial with thousands of people protesting against the station. Since the
> last election the state is governed by a prime minister of the one big
> party opposing the new station. It really looks live the people is against
> the station. All the protests, nobody in favor of the station.
> 
> Last month the people were allowed to decide in the first direct vote since
> the founding of the state whether the train station should be build or not.
> Well it turns out that the majority against the train station is the
> minority. Even in the capital more people voted for building the station
> than for stopping it.

Hah, interesting story, thanks. We have some famous voting here a couple of 
weeks ago, so I understand it's so realistic :)
 
> What I want to tell with that: just that it feels that there is a lot of
> protest, does not mean that you are the majority or that your opinion is so
> important. And that's especially true for open source. You have always very
> vocal users who are very demanding. But whether they represent the majority
> of users cannot be said. Here in this case I doubt it given the number of
> users in the bug report.

No, no. I didn't mean there's majority of some opinion in some way. But I 
don't think it means that some opinion is not important. I just believe a 
constructive critics is good.