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This idea for Dolphin I readily admit I stole from someone else who posted it KDE-apps.org, I think, but it was such a great idea I felt I needed to include it. These mockups are mine, though:



In this mockup, folders or files in dolphin will show progress bars when there is something happening to them. In this specific case, the folder is being downloaded using KGet. So you see there is a KGet icon on the folder, the amount of data that has been downloaded in the lower left, and the progress percent in the lower right. The green area is a progress bar that will grow vertically as the file is downloaded. This next one is essentially the opposite:



In this case the file is being deleted. The progress bar is red, to show the file is going away rather than coming in, and the progress bar will shrink until it is completely gone as the file is deleted. Normally deleting is quick, although it can take longer for large files and depends on the filesystem a great deal. However, this is just an example. If you are, for instance, moving a file, the source file will show this progress bar as it is moved while the destination file will show the green progress bar. It can also be used, for instance, for erasing a rewritable CD or DVD.

These two examples show two different levels of progress for the "Details" view. The "Columns" view would look similar to this:





Notice that in the first one the text and KGet icon are both to the right of the folder, while in the second one the text is inside the progress bar. The text stays outside the progress bar until the progress bar is far enough past the name of the folder that the text won't overlap. The icon stays outside.

This sort of thing could be used for a large number of different tasks, copying to a somewhere, cutting to a somewhere, cutting from somewhere, downloading, uploading, backing up, restoring, compressing, uncompressing, even ripping from a CD or DVD. If you go into your "media" folder it can show the progress of a CD or DVD being burnt. The places bar can show similar things, burning or ripping disks, backing up to a disk, etc. I would guess that the same principles that allow the notification system in the 4.2 plasma system tray could be used to notify dolphin which files are being worked on and by what program. Something similar could be used for taskbar icons (windows 7 has that already).



This is part of my series of Dolphin ideas

Wow, this is amazing, nice job on the mockups, you tend to make a lot of good ones.

I love this idea, but what would the behavior of a.) the transfer dialog (when plasma's is disabled) and b.) the plasma notification transfer thingy...

be after this change? Would there be a functionality change?

I'm thinking that this would be quite difficult to implement, but am curious as to how much it would be.

This is very smexy

EDIT: ugh, I accidentally quoted the entire post...

No, this would simply be another way to view the same information. You could probably turn off the plasma notifications (or this) if you want, but the intention was to make it more clear which files in Dolphin have stuff going on with them so you don't try to interact with them and screw up whatever is happening. Notifications also tend to disappear, this wouldn't. But it has the disadvantage that you can only see what is happening if you are in the right folder.

This idea is very useful, maybe not for being active by default since many users may not need it, but at least to be present as an option.

I sincerely believe you should be in touch with Dolphin's developers, if not be part of their team as a "think-tank" (if they have something like that) member; you have posted several good ideas Dolphin's devs should take seriously into account,

Regards

Yeah, I just thought of it not too long after I posted. So it is mostly so that when you are rearranging loads of files, or just a mere folder, so that you can see exactly what is going on, without comparing things like paths via what the notifications say. I do like this idea, it clearly (and sleekly) presents what exactly is happening to your current view... and it lets you know exactly what is going on, what you have queued up, what you can ignore (because you dealt with it), etc.

I am really curious to see how this could be done, and would like to do this and with the feature freeze for 4.3 coming (in like a week), (after it hits), I will look into this with more detail, since I have quite a few features of other things to squeeze in before then, and will have more time after those are finished....

Dolphin and KFileDialog and KDirSelector would probably all want to use this then, and it would probably be best to first be added into dolphin, then tested, then eventually push dolphin features like this and the selection (+)(-) buttons near an icon), but that of course, is a different topic.

I do, however, think that the deleting progress being inverted is a bad idea. It is very backwards, you do not see normal dialogs showing that something is being deleted, and having it start at 100% and go backwards to 0% .

So I think having them both the same would be good..

Another question, what about moving files/folders... Should this be Blue or something, or should it just be green?

What do you mean by what you said about the taskbar, and windows 7??

Another part of the confusion that you have to clear up, is that I think that one of those mockups (showing dolphin in the details view mode) as opposed to showing just one icon... Not sure what to do about that, when it should change, because if the folder/file icons are tiny... what happens? (that would occur in e.g. the folder dialog).

So icon size and view mode -may- have to play a factor here... but where do we draw the line?

P.S. I think the delete progress looks the prettiest :P

In windows 7, taskbar icons show a progress meter.

I don't understand your second question.

Taskbar icons??

What kind of progress would they have to show? On the taskbar, and the icon of the taskbar entry? I don't see what they would have to show... unless that is just for I/O jobs..

Sorry, that's where multi-tasking gets ya (doing homework and posting comments to bugs) :P Anyways, with the second question...

This:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v89/t ... wnload.png

Compared to this:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v89/t ... load-1.png

For instance... with the first image, what if the user sets the icon to a really really tiny size? What should happen?

Also, in the details view mode, should the progress bar expand from LTR or from bottom-to-top? When does it decide to do this? What if the name column is shortened, does the progress bar get shortened also?

Something that adds quite a bit more work, is that this will require two different painting modes, although it seems like this would be required...

So I was thinking... what if the icons are set big enough within the details view mode, to show it within the icon... should it still be shown from right-to-left?

When you are in details mode, how far can the progressbar extend to? The maximum of the name column? Or just take up the entire name? In the latter case, what if you have a short name?

Hopefully I made this at least a little bit more clear.

Yeah, they are a bunch of what-if questions, but it makes it all the more easier for us to implement this, then implement it one way, then figure out we have to change it all around again.

sreich wrote:What kind of progress would they have to show? On the taskbar, and the icon of the taskbar entry? I don't see what they would have to show... unless that is just for I/O jobs..

See Here

sreich wrote:For instance... with the first image, what if the user sets the icon to a really really tiny size? What should happen?

It should probably just switch to a solid color at a certain size, as opposed to a bar.

sreich wrote:Also, in the details view mode, should the progress bar expand from LTR or from bottom-to-top? When does it decide to do this?

LTR, you can see this in the two mockups for details mode.

sreich wrote:What if the name column is shortened, does the progress bar get shortened also?

Yes, it should.

sreich wrote:So I was thinking... what if the icons are set big enough within the details view mode, to show it within the icon... should it still be shown from right-to-left?

Yes, it should still be LTR because one I think it should be kept consistent for a given view and two it should give a larger area for the bar to move over.

sreich wrote:When you are in details mode, how far can the progressbar extend to? The maximum of the name column? Or just take up the entire name? In the latter case, what if you have a short name?

It is meant to take up the entire name column. If you look at the second details view mockup you can see that it extends past the name, and in my description I talk about how the text labels move when the progress bar gets beyond the name.

Just to give you a heads up, as to the status of this project. Currently, the information that is required for this, is not accessible (currently not possible). Basically, the systemtray currently only has access to this information, to have more than one accessor of this information, it requires a lot of reworking on the backend.

So, currently, as a Summer of KDE (SoK) project, I am working on this (as I am typing, actually).

This comes in two parts, the backend, and the actual painting onto the icons, after I have gotten the first done, of course. The former is the most time-consuming/difficult part, from my perspective.

I am not sure if I can finish the entirety of it by mid-august (somewhere around there I think is when the SoK ends), or not.

In the case that I can't finish it, I will at least have gotten very far, but would continue to work on it.

Well, I am bad at time estimations, so I have absolutely no idea how long this will take.

I absolutely fell in love with your idea by the way, and this is why I am currently working on implementing this sexy feature



*Warning, this post has been written by a tired individual, and has not been proof-read, read at your own discression.

Great! I am glad to see that this is being implemented. This is a really unique feature that I think will be very useful. I should point out, though, that it is not actually my idea.

Edit: I think this is the idea I based mine on, although I am not 100% sure:
http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.ph ... tent=34629

Yes I know, but you presented it quite well, especially with the images :P

Also, just fyi, it will not make it into 4.3, since we are undergoing all kinds of freezing at the moment(in case you were unaware of our release schedule).

Well if this is a GSoC project, and KDE 4.3 is released in july (before GSoC is over), then I can understand how it wouldn't make it. Actually, it looks like the hard feature freeze is next week, while GSoC doesn't even start until the end of May.

Okay, to let you know, I will be posting status updates on planetkde.org, which retrieves it from my blog, which is actually sreich.blogspot.com

(Just for all who are curious or what have you)

TheBlackCat wrote:These two examples show two different levels of progress for the "Details" view. The "Columns" view would look similar to this:

I think in Detailed view current action on folder would better to show in a separate column. This way users can hide it, move it, and it won't overlap on current design.

blindvic wrote:

TheBlackCat wrote:These two examples show two different levels of progress for the "Details" view. The "Columns" view would look similar to this:

I think in Detailed view current action on folder would better to show in a separate column. This way users can hide it, move it, and it won't overlap on current design.

Yeah, and user can sort items by progress then.