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List:       kfm-devel
Subject:    Re: view "follows" (tree)view
From:       Waldo Bastian <bastian () ens ! ascom ! ch>
Date:       1999-06-29 16:14:53
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Simon Hausmann wrote:

> Now the problems:
> 
> 1) I'm not sure whether we should make this a general feature,
>    meaning that the parent can be any kind of view or whether 
     we should restrict this on the treeview.

From a technical point of view... if it is not too hard: Yes
See also my next point.

> 2) *How* should the user be able to select such a binding? 
>    The problem here is also: Would be menu entries like 
>    "follow view on the left/right" sufficient?
> 
> GUI design gurus, please speak up! :-) We need an easy way 
> (for the user) to say: "Hey, make this one follow that one" or 
> "Hi, please follow this treeview" . 
> I think this is difficult in a multiple-view environment like
> Konqy. 

Konqy can do a lot but it doesn't mean we should let the user
do all this. (Unless he really really wants to)

[SNIP]
> I would really like to see such a feature, but I have no 
> clue how I as user would like to create this binding.

As a user, you don't.

Let me explain:

Konqy has great flexibility in how its views behave. Basically
you can configure 25 features independently of each other.

That is great. But it isn't user friendly. I don't want to spend
5 days configuring my filebrowser before it does something
usefull.

The views should do something logical, smart and ergonomic all
by themselves. 

Perhaps we should have "view-configuration profiles". That means
that a user can select a profile and that konqy shows a set of
views which are linked to each other in some way. E.g. the 
"copy files profile". Which shows two directories from which
you can exchange/copy files.

Or the "browse images profile" which shows a directory in one 
view and images (using a kview-part) in the other.

Of course there is an option to create these profiles all by your
self and hack 25 views which all show something different but
the main idea is that we provide a set of profiles which are just
very easy to use and which can selected with a single click.

There shouldn't be a "delete view" or "add view" menu option.
That is much too dificult to manage. Click the web-browser
profile and you get one big view with KHTML. Click the web-author
profile and you get 3 views: one with the directory, one with
KHTML and one with the output from web-lint. 

We can make a big repository of profiles and let the user drag 
the profiles he wants to use to the toolbar.

To be user friendly KDE needs to be smart, it should offer the
user what it wants without the user needing to explain every
detail. (E.g. the user should just be able to push a single 
button to rearrange the whole browser for a given usage)

But we don't must outsmart the user. KDE can never predict 100%
what a user wants. So we must leave the user the option to 
correct KDE's smart behaviour when he doesn't like it.
(E.g. The user should be able to edit the profiles to his own
taste)

The priority is also very important. 1st smart. 2nd configurable.
The user shouldn't NEED to configure the bloody thing. He hasn't
bought a computer to configure his filemanager (we KDE developers
on the other hand....) He wants to browse the web... and then 
view his collection of photos... and then install a new game
he bought... He only wants to reorganize the way his views work
when he is a) very bored or b) they annoy the hell out of him.

Cheers,
Waldo

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