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Status: Tabs in Dolphin are great. Fast, useful, but not perfect.

Proposal: Would be even better, if you had two types of tabs:
1. global tab (as it is now): that is similar to open a complete new window of Dolphin
2. sub-tab: if you work in split view of dolphin (two views like in classic norton commander) it would be greate to have seperate tabs inside each split view.

Clarification to proposal: It often happens, that I copy or move files from one source to several destinations. So I use the split view with one view for the source directory and the other for the destination. However, I often have several destinations (who has not, as sorting into folders is for sure one of the most frequent tasks when you work with a computer).
Unfortunately it is not possible to manage several destination views as tabs at the same time. If you had tabs inside the split views, you could do this very easily.

My suggestion to fix this is being able to CTRL-Click tabs. If you CTRL-Click two tabs, it splits it into two. Click 3, and it splits it into 3. Once you just click one, it goes back to the full screen. Much more intuitive, much less clutter.

I am implementing drag-and-drop on tabs for 4.5. What is the advantage of your proposal over this?

A paint would be more explanatory...

I believe its more intuitive to include the tabs when splitting the screen. So basically, Im saying I think its more appropriate to have tabs within the split screen window than it is to have split screen window within the tabs like it is now.

TheBlackCat wrote:I am implementing drag-and-drop on tabs for 4.5. What is the advantage of your proposal over this?

drag n drop for tabs sounds like a great feature to have. That feature would cover almost every use case, but Im arguing for this idea from a usability point of view

I don't think this is good from a usability point of view. It would greatly clutter the UI, make menus much more complicated, and make actions less predictable. If you got to File->New Tab, will the tab be opened in the overall window or in the split view? What about File->Close Tab? What about when you hit ctrl+t? What about when you middle click on something? Dolphin will probably need a whole set of new menu entires for this, perhaps even a new set of keyboard shortcuts. It will also take up a lot of space, you won't be able to have many tabs, makes the code much more complicated, yet from what you say we don't actually gain much, if any, additional functionality over how things work right now (or will in a couple of days).

TheBlackCat wrote:yet from what you say we don't actually gain much, if any, additional functionality over how things work right now (or will in a couple of days).

agreed. I just would prefer to have tabs within the split view instead of the split view within the tab, but functionality wise it works either way (when the move to dialog is implemented). Im pretty sure there are some well known file managers that work the way I described. But its up to the developers, and if they dont want to mess with it, its something I can easily overlook.

P.S. I dont think it would complicate things, bc New Tab would open in the current active pane of the split view window. It would just need to find out which side is active and then create a new tab there

Supreme1012 wrote:P.S. I dont think it would complicate things, bc New Tab would open in the current active pane of the split view window. It would just need to find out which side is active and then create a new tab there

This doesn't help. Your proposal is to have two sets of tabs, one for the whole window and one for each split view. If the controls only affect the per-view tabs, then you lose the ability to control the global tabs, and vice versus. Either way you end up with a lot of ambiguity regarding what command affects what part.

TheBlackCat wrote:This doesn't help. Your proposal is to have two sets of tabs, one for the whole window and one for each split view. If the controls only affect the per-view tabs, then you lose the ability to control the global tabs, and vice versus. Either way you end up with a lot of ambiguity regarding what command affects what part.

No. The original author proposed 2 types of tags. Im proposing only having tabs open in the split view windows and not using global tabs at all.

Sorry, my bad.

I don't like that idea, either. I like being able to have different split and non-split view available, and you can only do that if the split view are inside the tabs.

I think with Supreme1012's idea is that when the split view is active the tabs would be within one or the other view, but if the split view is not active then they would still be available in the only view. You can also get the effect of the 'Global tab' by making use of the tabbed window grouping and having multiple dolphin instances - with and without splits as necessary.

Supreme1012 wrote:agreed. I just would prefer to have tabs within the split view instead of the split view within the tab

Totally agree... Just fire up Total Commander, and watch how it works.
Having the split view inside of tabs is completely replaceable by opening new Doplhin instances. This way having 3 tabs is like having 3 Dolphin instances.
When I work with, say 6 folders (3 on the left as server folders, 3 on the right as local folders) the Total Commander way I can use any folder on the left and right (drag&drop of tab works there!). The current Dolphin way locks me into 3 pairs of folders, where I have to decide which local folder I want to use with which server folder.