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Pinned File Selection

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TheBlackCat
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[Dolphin] Pinned File Selection

Fri Mar 20, 2009 8:09 pm
This is an idea for Dolphin that is designed to solve a common problem I have. Because the + button is kind of small, and even if I use ctrl, I often miss where I intend to click or accidentally let off the ctrl button for a moment. Either way, what I end up with is deselecting all of my files, or opening a file and deselecting all of my files. This can be very annoying when I am trying to highlight a number of non-adjacent files. That is how I came up with the idea for the icon in the upper-right corner of the mockup below:

Image

This is one of the corners in my active icon corners idea.

What this icon does is what I called "pinning" the file. It is essentially an alternative group of selected items that you don't lose if you click on a blank area or open another file. You can click on the icon for multiple files to pin them all. This way, if you accidentally open a file or click on a white area, you won't lose you selection. Pinning the file will highlight it in an orange box instead of a blue one. If you click on a pinned file, it will open all of pinned files. Dragging and dropping a single pinned file will drag and drop all of them. However, clicking on a blue-highlighted file, that is one that was selected normally, or an unhighlighted file, will not open any of the pinned files. That way you can set a group of files aside you know you want to work with later, and then work with other files without affecting them. When you do this, the entire dolphin file browser area turns tan to let you know that files have been selected this way.

Another example of a use-case for this is if you are trying to find certain pictures that are too similar to other pictures to differentiate based on just the thumbnail. You click through pictures that might be the ones you want in order to open them Gwenview so you can see them more closely. You find one of them, close Gwenview, then pin it. Then you continue. You can open other possible files just by clicking them, it won't affect the pinned files in any way nor will it open them. As you find more files, you pin them as well. If you make a mistake and pin the wrong file, you just click the pin icon again and it is back to normal. When you are done, you can then do the action on the entire group, like moving them to a different folder. Then you can right-click on the file browser and select (unpin all files). The files go back to normal and the file browser goes back to its normal white color.



This is part of my series of Dolphin ideas

Last edited by TheBlackCat on Fri Mar 27, 2009 4:11 am, edited 1 time in total.


Man is the lowest-cost, 150-pound, nonlinear, all-purpose computer system which can be mass-produced by unskilled labor.
-NASA in 1965
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plaristote
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Pinned File Selection

Sun May 09, 2010 9:22 pm
I find that a great idea that we should discuss more about. So up !
airdrik
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Pinned File Selection

Mon May 10, 2010 4:09 pm
Problems I see with this idea involve switching between selected and pinned, and how the user is supposed to wrap their head around the differences/that they are different and why.


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TheBlackCat
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Pinned File Selection

Mon May 10, 2010 11:53 pm
I don't think it is that ambiguous.


Man is the lowest-cost, 150-pound, nonlinear, all-purpose computer system which can be mass-produced by unskilled labor.
-NASA in 1965
Lachu
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Pinned File Selection

Tue May 11, 2010 5:49 am
I think better solution is don't remove selection, when user click on blank space. Instead it the menu similar to files D&D menu should appear. It should have only two options:
- Remove selection
- Cancel

We can add more options in future, like actions(for example unpack, move to, etc.), changing selection behavior, switch Dolphin into select mode(clicking on files don't open it, but only select; we have also top pane with go to normal mode button).

According to switching mode, we can allow to switch Dolphin onto certain bulbs mode. There's should been option Edit -> Mode -> bulbs and Edit -> Mode -> Normal. But this paragraph is not about idea.


Lachu, proud to be a member of KDE forums since 2008-Nov.
DanaKil
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Pinned File Selection

Sat May 15, 2010 1:39 pm
I think it could be more usefull to add a "Select mode" entry in the Edit Menu. When you click on it, it is checked and when you click on a file, it toggles its selected state. When you have finished your selection, you just reclick on "Select mode" to put it off. Great for Digikam too !


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unhammer
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Pinned File Selection

Mon Nov 01, 2010 9:12 pm
I really like this idea. I don't think users would have many problems with this; it worked great in Picasa (if anyone has tried that) -- however, in Picasa, pinned files are shown in a little bar at the bottom, this gives the user instant feedback that their actions will affect a range of files instead of just one.

I guess that's the idea with turning the background tan?

I'll bet very new users will probably happily ignore this function, while those who are at the level of knowing one or two keyboard shortcuts will love it.


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