How about you answer this question: What don't you like about QuickAccess? If it just a matter of form factor, then that should be easily fixed. I'm not sure why there isn't a desktop form factor.

However, QuickAccess isn't the panel form of FolderView. They are distinct. You can even put a FolderView in the panel (4.2).

Its not a matter of arbitrarily crippling. It's "crippling" based on usage case. I just want to use my FolderView to view a folder. Nothing else. Any added feature takes away from my usage case. It doesn't matter how simple it would be, it changes the behaviour. QuickAccess "cripples" at a different place. It has browsing, sorting, and a bunch of fancy configurable features, but it still doesn't have all the features of Dolphin. And Dolphin cripples at another place: it doesn't have all the features of Konqueror. "Crippling" is intentional. You don't want extra features to get in the way of your intended usage case. And in plasma, since interface is minimal, ANY extra feature gets in somebody's way.

I agree, Steve. If QuickAccess gets a proper desktop form factor, then everything should be settled. Folderview is for one use case (a starting point to quickly launch a file manager), Quickacces is for a second use case (navigating to a file or folder and launching it), and real file managers are for everything else.

The problem with quickaccess is that it is harder to launch folder using it then it is in Folderview, requiring two clicks and a sometimes large mouse movement instead of one click. The advantage is that you can navigate to subfolders in Quickacces, which you can't do in Folderview. I do not think either of these features inherently trumps the other, it all depends on what you are doing and how you personally prefer to do it. Janne obviously prefers being able to access subfolders over easily being able to launch a particular folder. I am honestly in the same boat, primarily because Dolphin is pretty slow for me thanks to me terrible Nvidia card performance, but I can easily see how people could prefer getting into their file manager more easily and using it to navigate to subfolders. That is why there are two plasmoids, for two different use-cases. I just wish they would implement a desktop version of Quickaccess.

TheBlackCat wrote:I agree, Steve. If QuickAccess gets a proper desktop form factor, then everything should be settled. Folderview is for one use case (a starting point to quickly launch a file manager), Quickacces is for a second use case (navigating to a file or folder and launching it), and real file managers are for everything else.

I'm not sure I agree with that. First of all, because that would require the user to know which plasmoid to use in which circumstance - and I don't think that's necessarily always the case. Ideally, there would be just ONE plasmoid that would be able to adapt to the use-case and form-factor.

Secondly, I can easily think of a use-case where the proposed idea of extending the folderview would make a lot of sense.

Consider this example: someone is maintaining a website. (S)he has one folderview pointing to his local copy of the site. And another pointing to the remote host. If everything is in the same directory, no problem. Everything works as intended. But say he only wants to update one file in a subdir (say pics or css). In such a case, it's a drawback that folderview opens dolphin instead since it would defeat the purpose of using folderview in the first place.

Then again, I suspect one reason for why folderview is "crippled" is because it can be used both as a plasmoid and as a containment. I don't know, but I suspect the UI aspects of a plasmoid that can work as both are a lot harder to be made to work in all circumstances compared to a plasmoid that is not meant to work as both a containment and a "stand-alone" widget.

Now, I can see the use-case for a "folderview as containment that does not have to open dolphin as soon as you click on a folder". I'm not sure I would use it myself since it could turn out to be very confusing, but I can see the "lure" of it.

As always, there is a trade-off. Personally, I can't see how to make the navigate-back-and-forth issue could be easily solved. But if it can be solved, I can't see why not do it.