VisualDesign granted: [Bug 446031] Improve usability of dragging launchers to desktop

[bugzilla_noreply at kde.org]

Jan Rathmann <jan.rathmann at gmx.de> has granted	VisualDesign:
Bug 446031: Improve usability of dragging launchers to desktop
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=446031



--- Description ---
I somehow got inspired by one of Nate's recent posts about topics like how
intuitive/friendly KDE's UI feels to new users to do a bit of usability testing
myself. What I did was pretending that I'm new to KDE and taking a look how
easy it is to add icons to the desktop (I don't have desktop icons in my
personal setup, so I rarely used this feature before on KDE).

I particulary tested what happens when I just drag a launcher icon from Kickoff
to the desktop to create a launcher there. (To me dragging seems to be the most
intuitive thing to try first.)

It seems to me that the current user experience is less than optimal and in
particular confusing regarding some aspects:

If I drag a launcher icon to the desktop and release the mouse button, the menu
that appears offers me three(!) possible ways to add it to the desktop:

1. Copy here
2. Link here
3. (Widgets) Add icon

Each of these three possibilities comes with its own "quirks":

1. == Copy here ==
    a) The desktop icon initially has an exclamation mark added, which makes it
look like something is wrong with it. On the first attempt to launch the app
you're getting asked if you really want to do this and you trust the
applicaton. After that the exclamation mark on the icon goes away and on
further launches you don't get asked again. The reason for this is that the
copied desktop file is initially not marked as executable.
    b) If something changes to the original desktop file (from
/usr/share/applications, e.g. the app updates its icon in any way), these
changes don't get applied to the copy of the icon on the desktop. This may not
be the desired behaviour, since it means that you must update your copied
desktop icons manually (copying them again).
2. == Link here ==
    a) A chain-like symbol is added to the icon indicating that it is
representing a symbolic link. This clutters the appearance of the icon a bit
IMHO.
3. == (Widgets) Add icon ==
    a) The resulting icon doesn't respect mouse behaviour preferences: It
always launches the app via single click, even if one has chosen to launch/open
files by double click.
    b) It's harder to move the icon: To do this you have to right click on it
and select "Enter edit mode" which seems not very intuitive in this case.
    c) The icon ignores all settings under "Desktop settings -> Icons", like
sort order, icon size, align to grid etc.
    d) But you can do special things with such an icon: Make it incredibly big
or small, or even rotate it ;-)

How could this be done better? I'm not completely sure how to do so without
upsetting anyone, but here are some basic ideas how to make it less confusing:

* The copy/link here functionality makes perfect sense for normal files and
folders when dragging them to the desktop. But it would make sense as well to
treat .desktop files special, by merging "copy here" and "link here" to one
entry titled "Add to desktop" (same as in Kickoff when you right click on a
launcher), because I think that's what the expected behaviour when dragging a
launcher to the desktop.
* The question is: Better link or copy? The current behaviour when you
right-click on a launcher in Kickoff and you select "Add to desktop" is to
link, and this may be the better solution because it avoids problem 1.b).
* If it gets decided that "Add to desktop" should mean "link desktop file", I
would suggest to investigate if showing the "pure" app icon without the
chain-symbol makes sense (problem 2.a)).
* If the "(Widgets) Add icon" functionality should be kept, perhaps there is a
way to make it more clear what it does and how this is different from "Add to
desktop".

Kind regards, Jan