GSoC 2016 Project Idea Usability Suggestions

[Johan Ouwerkerk]

On Thu, Dec 24, 2015 at 1:49 PM, Arnav Dhamija <arnav.dhamija at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi everyone
>
> I am a first year computer science undergraduate at the university and I
> have a project idea I want to implement in the Dolphin file manager.
> Response from the Dolphin team has been positive and they have suggested
> bringing the issue towards the usability side to create an easy to use GUI
> to make this happen. My idea is as follows:
>
> Trays Panel Extension for the Dolphin File Manager for improving GUI file
> selection operations
>
> Selecting multiple files in any file manager for copying and pasting has
> never been a pleasant experience, especially if the files are in a
> non-continuous order. Often, when copying files between devices we might
> find that we need to select only a subset of the required files we have
> selected and this leads to the unwieldy operation of removing files from our
> selection. Of course, the common workaround is to create a new folder and to
> put all the items in  but this is a very inefficient process and can be very
> slow if large files need to be copied between devices.
>
> My solution to this problem is to add a panel/view in Dolphin where the
> links to files and folders can be temporarily saved for a session. The files
> and folders are "staged" on this panel. Hence, the user can add folders and
> files from several different directories to this panel and can then
> collectively perform actions on all the items in the tray such as copy,
> paste, cut, upload images in selection to Facebook, upload files to Dropbox,
> etc. This makes complex file operations easy by staging the operation before
> performing it.
>
> Files can be added to this tray by using a right-click context menu option
> or by using the mouse scroll click or drag and drop. As an additional
> option, the session for the File Tray Panel can be saved for later use.
>
> My initial idea was to have another split view mode with its button in the
> toolbar in Dolphin. It will function similarly to the existing split view
> but with one half of the screen dedicated to the "Files tray". This would
> make it neatly integrated with Dolphin's existing toolset and it would make
> dragging and dropping easy. Dolphin maintainer Emmanuel Pescosta suggested
> using Plasmoids to make the project more cohesive with KDE and to make it
> usable with multiple applications (eg Gwenview).
>
> I would be much obliged to hear feedback from the usability and visual
> design team on this and suggestions for a cleaner UI. Thanks!
>
> --
> arnav dhamija
>

Not a usability team member but kind of intrigued by your proposal nonetheless:

How does this idea improve on hold Ctrl, then click files? I.e.
can/does it apply to multiple disjoint folder trees at the same time?

Does this mode have special provisions for navigating in the one panel
so you can easily select file (sub)sets from disjoint directory trees
without setting up the file view as an expanded tree view first?
Would it be a good idea and feasible to integrate generic context menu
actions/capabilities so you could use it not just for copy/paste but
also for creating archives, redoing file permissions, vcs actions,
etc.?
Should it be possible to trigger this via Ctrl + click'ing files, as
well as the other shortcuts mentioned?

As for UI would it be a good idea to have a toolbar in the panel
corresponding with common context menu actions one might use the new
panel for?
Basically I'm thinking something like this ASCII art mockup
(navigation & file view panel on the left, staging area on the right):
____________________________________________________________
</path/foo>      |[ Copy ] [Move To] [Archive] [ Attributes][View
mode] [...] <- ... is like burger menu button, for less common actions
that most non technical people wouldn't bother with
...              | >- <selected/folder/1>
...              |  ... - <selected file1>
...              | v+  selected/but/not/expanded/folder/2
...              | >+ also-staged/not/selected/folder/3
...              | .... + foo
...              | v-   not/selected/and/not/expanded/folder/4
...              | >+ more/stuff/in/folder/5
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Where +/- are normal selection overlay icons.
The staging panel probably should have various view modes the same way
as the normal file view has except that at the top level it should
always be like the tree mode.
By this I meant that you can put it in big icons, small icons, list,
tree with alphabetic headings view mode for the child items of the
selected folders, but that at the top level it's always an expandable
list of selected folders in which the selections were made before
staging them. (Hence the >

Additionally, ideally I think it should be possible to use normal file
selection mode in the staging panel so you can un-stage multiple files
selected by accident also; hence the need for +/- overlay icons as
well.

... Personally I think your panel idea could make for a really
interesting and powerful file management feature!