[prev in list] [next in list] [prev in thread] [next in thread] 

List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Re: KUrlNavigator widget usability
From:       Peter Penz <peter.penz () gmx ! at>
Date:       2008-05-26 23:12:56
Message-ID: 200805270112.57137.peter.penz () gmx ! at
[Download RAW message or body]

Hello,

sorry for the late reply, I was offline during the last days...

On Sunday, 25. May 2008 23:19:02 Aurélien Gâteau wrote:
> As the maintainer of Gwenview, I am regularly asked to add an "Up"
> button to make it easier to go up in the folder hierarchy.

David Faure and I discussed already whether it might make sense adding an 
up-button to the KUrlNavigator. But we discussed this only for the "editable 
mode" (http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=156316) -> slightly different 
discussion...

> Gwenview uses KUrlNavigator to display the current folder. This is the
> widget responsible for showing paths as a row of buttons in Dolphin, the
> file dialogs and other applications.
>
> While I could easily add an "Up" button, I think this request
> demonstrate a usability problem with KUrlNavigator. The problem comes
> from the way KUrlNavigator handles "places" (the starting locations
> placed on the left sidebar in Dolphin):
[...]
> If I ever want to go to /home/aurelien/pictures/2007, I need to either
> switch KUrlNavigator in edit mode, or click on the "Home" place and
> navigate to the right folder.
>
> I can see two possible solutions to this:

Before discussing the two solutions below, for me one important solution is 
missing: offering an up-button in the toolbar. I had similar discussions in 
Dolphin and got no complaints anymore after telling the people that they can 
add the up-button in the toolbar in an easy way.

(see [1] at the end of the mail why I did not add the up-button per default in 
Dolphins toolbar)

> # The Gtk+ way
[...]
> # Variant of the Gtk+ way
>
> Basically the idea is that everything above the place would be hidden,
> but a [<] button would be added to reveal the hidden part.
>
> Clicking on "2008 pictures" would make KUrlNavigator looks like this:
>
>    [<] [2008 pictures]
>
> Clicking on the [<] button would expand it like this:
>
>    [/] [home] [aurelien] [pictures] [2008]

The "Variant of Gtk+ way" is a good base of discussion from my point of view.

I don't like "Gtk+-way", as it removes the possibility to give the "place" a 
custom short name (see also [1] for details).

I'd like to introduce another proposal based on your "Variant of Gtk+" way: 
what about just letting the [<] button act as "up-button" instead of directly 
expanding the breadcrumb to the whole path?

What I mean: Assuming
/home/aurelien/pictures/2008 is mapped to "Pictures 2008"
/home/aurelien is mapped to "My Home"

Then clicking on [<] for

[<] [2008 pictures]

would expand to

[<] [My Home] [Pictures]

and clicking again on [<] would expand to:

[home] [aurelien] [Pictures]

(-> just like when adding an up-button to the toolbar). This would be a 
combination of the discussion David and I had on 
http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=156316 and your "Variant of Gtk+"-way...

If possible I'd like to postpone the implementation to KDE 4.2, as this is 
no "bugfix" from my point of view and I still think we need a lot of 
discussion with Aaron, Celeste etc. I'd also like to do some tests with users 
first before adding such a button to the navigator.

Would this be OK for you?

Thanks!
Peter

[1] Just as a little backround information: My initial reason of introducing 
the URL navigator was to get rid of the up-button :-) When I started 
developing Dolphin around 2 years ago, I watched how people used Konquerors 
toolbar buttons. I know this is not representative (I watched 3 people and 
have summarized them now as "target user group" of Dolphin at 
http://enzosworld.gmxhome.de/philosophy.html), but at least for me it was 
surprising that the up-button never was used by those people. They always 
used the back-button instead. Maybe this comes from the familiar interface 
they know from web-browsing, where the back-button is also the most used 
button...

Another important point for me was that it should be possible to replace an 
URL like /home/peter/Documents/Pictures just by "Pictures", so that 
navigating to /home/peter/Documents/Pictures/2008/01 (January) is shown as

[Pictures] [2008] [01 (January)]

instead of

[home] [peter] [Documents] [Pictures] [2008] [01 (January)]

> What do you think about this? I personally like the first solution
> better because it gives more context about where the user is, at the
> cost of some horizontal space. I am even willing to implement the
> changes if we agree the current behavior is suboptimal.
>
> Aurélien


_______________________________________________
kde-usability mailing list
kde-usability@kde.org
https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-usability

[prev in list] [next in list] [prev in thread] [next in thread]