To my knowledge, widgets are not windows nor they were intended to be...

@fijx: One cotton-picking moment! Who tells you what you *must* do, unpaid, for the benefit of others, in your spare time? Never mind the excuses. Konqueror was nice in some ways, but had many flaws. The developers did exactly what you propose - they threw it away and started afresh. The built a file manager which is extremely capable. If you can't be bothered to learn to use it, that's your choice. Fine, you are entitled to that. Just stop complaining.

@annew: As long as people complain, they care. If I were you, I'd be happe to see they still care.

@Annew: I agree that fijx sorta crossed the line, but I do think it's worth going back through this thread and checking out what people are saying. This is KDE's user base right here, and a lot of us are also contributors (and yes, I really am working on that Kword manual; it's not going as quickly as I'd hoped). Looking back through the thread I'm seeing very few comments such as "I love Dolphin, screw Konqueror!". Or forget the thread; do a couple of Google searches. Dolphin vs. Konqueror; try running a search on that. I've seen very few that prefer Dolphin.

I keep hearing the argument blackcat used above: Konqueror has too steep a learning curve. I really don't see that; my completely non-techie wife recently migrated to KDE and went from Nautilus to Konqueror without even blinking. The extra options Konqueror offers don't pose a steep learning curve for most users; they simply won't get used. Standard file management tasks are very simple in Konqueror. The only thing I can see that would make Dolphin (arguably) easier is the trail of breadcrumbs, which (in my opinion) is really only a useful tool if you don't know where stuff is. The tree view is far more flexible and useful.

Integrated functionality. Configurability. Those are the things that have always made KDE stand apart from the rest. If you kill those things you kill the primary reason most of us are using this great desktop platform in the first place. A simplified, standalone app that requires you to open lots of extra programs to perform ordinary file management tasks (I switched back to Konqueror from Krusader last night; decided I couldn't live without the embedded text editor) is a serious retrograde step.

I'm actually kind of an unusual case... an old KDE 3.x diehard who actually likes KDE 4.x. I tried KDE 4.0 when it first came out, found it unusable, and continued using KDE 3.5 right up until January of this year, at which time I started using KDE 4.3. The transition has been painless and pleasurable for me, but if Konqueror hadn't still been available I'm not sure what I'd have done. As of right now I'm fairly content with the current state of Konqueror, although I do wish that I could still create CDs/DVDs without opening K3B (which is a wonderful app, don't get me wrong) and that the web browser was working properly. But I'm concerned for the future state of the app; is Konqueror development going to continue, or are the devs going to lose interest and allow it to wither and die?

einar wrote:To my knowledge, widgets are not windows nor they were intended to be...

That does not explain why the focus model is broken.

The focus model used by kwin - the window manager - only applies to the focusing of windows (e.g. dolphin's window, konqueror's window, dialogs, etc - whatever has its own window border). Its rules don't apply to widgets within a window (e.g. konqueror's file view pane(s), konqueror's panels, konqueror's terminal widget), and it is up to the individual application to set up the rules for focusing different widgets within its window.
Therefore, it isn't that the focus model is broken, it's just that focus models inside of Konqueror or Dolphin other than what is currently present were never implemented and you are more than welcome to submit the idea to Brainstorm.

No. By definition a focus model applies to the whole DE. I can't remember it beeing anything else since the late 80's, on any GUI I worked on.

I'm perfectly aware that KDE tries to make it seam better by smooth talking and hiding behind "new desktop paradigm". It's a bug, how ever you name it. And it's a WONTFIX. It renders the whole plasmoid stuff useless for power users with "focus follows mouse".

As it is now the one and only consistent working focus model is "click to focus". That's quite poor, don't you think?

Anyway, it's not something very related to konqueror and dolphin.

2handband wrote:Looking back through the thread I'm seeing very few comments such as "I love Dolphin, screw Konqueror!". Or forget the thread; do a couple of Google searches. Dolphin vs. Konqueror; try running a search on that. I've seen very few that prefer Dolphin.

Of course not, the people who yell the loudest are always the one complaining. There is nothing new about that. You aren't going to get a whole bunch of comments or blog posts about how great something is unless it's made by Apple

2handband wrote:I keep hearing the argument blackcat used above: Konqueror has too steep a learning curve. I really don't see that; my completely non-techie wife recently migrated to KDE and went from Nautilus to Konqueror without even blinking. The extra options Konqueror offers don't pose a steep learning curve for most users; they simply won't get used. Standard file management tasks are very simple in Konqueror. The only thing I can see that would make Dolphin (arguably) easier is the trail of breadcrumbs, which (in my opinion) is really only a useful tool if you don't know where stuff is. The tree view is far more flexible and useful.

First, a LOT of users don't know where stuff is and have complicated folder structures. Most people don't keep their files neat and tidy. So saying we should just screw people who don't memorize where all of there files are is not a good way to increase KDE's market share.

As I keep saying, the whole point of Dolphin was to make a file manager that is useful to everyday people. Super-advanced users are not the target users of the application (although many still like dolphin).

Second, having a huge number of buttons, menus, sub-menu, panels, and other stuff that people are never going to use significantly hurts usability and significantly increases the learning curve of an application. That is an empirical fact, ask anyone remotely familiar with usability. Your single anecdote does not refute that.

2handband wrote:Integrated functionality. Configurability. Those are the things that have always made KDE stand apart from the rest. If you kill those things you kill the primary reason most of us are using this great desktop platform in the first place. A simplified, standalone app that requires you to open lots of extra programs to perform ordinary file management tasks (I switched back to Konqueror from Krusader last night; decided I couldn't live without the embedded text editor) is a serious retrograde step.

There is a trade-off here. Having a jack of all trades, master of none like konqueror, or have a bunch of more specialized apps that do their jobs extremely well. It also means the konqueror UI has to be much more complicated than a dedicated application, since it needs to keep the UI for file managing and then add another UI for the more specialized tasks on top of that. With kparts we can have both, and konqueror still supports both. But using konqueror in that way comes at a significant cost as well, since the various stuff konqueror can do will never be done as well or be as easy to use as a dedicated stand-alone app. Once again, it may make things more convenient for experienced users, but the added complexity also significantly hurts usability and makes the application more difficult to learn.

2handband wrote:I'm actually kind of an unusual case... an old KDE 3.x diehard who actually likes KDE 4.x. I tried KDE 4.0 when it first came out, found it unusable, and continued using KDE 3.5 right up until January of this year, at which time I started using KDE 4.3.

You are hardly an "unusual case", it is just that as always the people who were upset were the ones doing all the talking.

2handband wrote:The transition has been painless and pleasurable for me, but if Konqueror hadn't still been available I'm not sure what I'd have done.

Use Krusader?

2handband wrote:But I'm concerned for the future state of the app; is Konqueror development going to continue, or are the devs going to lose interest and allow it to wither and die?

As I said several times now, they just added the places panel for 4.5. So obviously development is continuing. Whether it continues for KDE 5 is another question, and depends entirely on whether people are willing to step up and support it.

Ya know, I kind of agree with the whole "jack of all trades, master of none" accusation, but here's the thing: Konqueror DOES master at least one thing... basic file management. As far as the other stuff goes, it doesn't really have to (although I do wish it would once again master web browsing; I'd love to dump Iceweasel forever). Take the embedded text editor, for instance. It's inferior to Kate in almost every way, but for quick, on-the-fly text editing tasks it beats the hell out of opening and closing a separate app in a separate window. For more advanced stuff I still use Kate. I said earlier that I wish I could burn CDs and DVDs within Konqueror again, but that doesn't mean I'd expect the functionality I'd get with K3B. Thing is, 90% of the time (at least) I don't need the advanced functionality K3B offers and would love to avoid having to open it. That's the thing... for a man who spends a lot of time working with files, integrated functionality is a huge time-saver, even if some of the "extra" features are a bit stripped down.

I am glad to hear that Konqueror development is continuing, but I'm still concerned. With the app relegated to secondary status it's hard to imagine that developers would stay interested. If I knew anything about programming I'd do it myself...

annew wrote:@fijx: One cotton-picking moment! Who tells you what you *must* do, unpaid, for the benefit of others, in your spare time? Never mind the excuses.

Very sorry if I was rude. My apologies.
My tone was, mainly, due to your own response that seem to ignore what everyone here says and repeats the same karma over on. Please listen what users say.

The two responses following yours say a lot (samhain and 2handband). Specially what 2handband says is of my complete agreement. I couldn't have said it best. So much that I must say TheBlackCat that I can't agree that learning curve of Konqueror is that steep (even trying to disconsider myself, a non-trivial user).
Anyone can use Konqueror almost the same way it would make with Dolphin. The extra features can pass unperceived till the day a user gets curious.

annew wrote:Konqueror was nice in some ways, but had many flaws. The developers did exactly what you propose - they threw it away and started afresh. The built a file manager which is extremely capable.

Yes and not. Dolphin is not a clean reimplementation of Konqueror. It has a different target, even occupying good part of Konqueror functionality.
Extremely capable is so discussible that so many people are spending their time talking about it.
For my own perception, Dolphin keeps me from doing tasks that I used to do very naturally, so it is not so capable.
If there is a plan to make Dolphin so capable as Konqueror was since KDE3, I'd like to hear it. I would surely stop complaining and wait, as I waited for several other KDE features that disappeared from 3 to 4.

One of the best things I had to say over KDE was just its integration and flexibility, and my first example usually was about the things I could do in Konqueror and no other file manager (Nautilus, Rwindows Explorer, Midnight Commander, etc).
Throw away this flexibility and all of this functionality is, at least, to needlessly loose a big advantage over "contenders".

annew wrote:If you can't be bothered to learn to use it, that's your choice. Fine, you are entitled to that. Just stop complaining.

I see no much coherence in that part.
I Dolphin is so easier than Konqueror AND I know how to use Konqueror, how hard can be to learn Dolphin (if it really is anything else to learn)?

"Stop complaining": Heey... it is not only me. There's a crowd over there saying the same. Will you shut up them all? Is it wiser than listening?

Final note:
Clients, customers or what else it is named regards to who takes and uses what is produced.
It does not necessarily means that one will go paid in money for that.
If you can think in a better term, I will apologize again and use it thereafter with no restrictions.

I always thought that seeing the success of a creation is worth enough to do the task. I can conclude from that that doing what people want is more valuable than doing what they don't want.

2handband wrote:Ya know, I kind of agree with the whole "jack of all trades, master of none" accusation, but here's the thing: Konqueror DOES master at least one thing... basic file management. As far as the other stuff goes, it doesn't really have to (although I do wish it would once again master web browsing; I'd love to dump Iceweasel forever). Take the embedded text editor, for instance. It's inferior to Kate in almost every way, but for quick, on-the-fly text editing tasks it beats the hell out of opening and closing a separate app in a separate window. For more advanced stuff I still use Kate. I said earlier that I wish I could burn CDs and DVDs within Konqueror again, but that doesn't mean I'd expect the functionality I'd get with K3B. Thing is, 90% of the time (at least) I don't need the advanced functionality K3B offers and would love to avoid having to open it. That's the thing... for a man who spends a lot of time working with files, integrated functionality is a huge time-saver, even if some of the "extra" features are a bit stripped down.

Yes, the integrated applications in konqueror lack functionality, but that has nothing to do with the point I am making. As I said, the real problem is that integrating those applications is hurting usability and making the application harder to use.

You are never going to get konqueror anywhere near as easy to use or with as good usability as a dedicated application because it has the UI elements from a whole bunch of different applications and different tasks all mushed together. You are never going to get konqueror be as good at ordinary file managing tasks as even a decent dedicated file manager, it is always going to be more complicated, harder to use, and harder to learn. It is never going to be as easy to learn or have as good of usability as a dedicated web browser, a dedicated text editor, a dedicated image browser, or a dedicated anything else for that matter.

It just isn't possible to have all that functionality that people never use scattered all over the UI without interfering with basic tasks. It can't be done, the human brain just doesn't work that way. You just can't have an application that does as much as konqueror be anywhere near as easy to use or easy to learn as dolphin. The more advanced functionality will get in the way of more ordinary tasks. It isn't possible for it not to. You can either have an application that does everything, but is relatively hard to make it do anything, or you can make an application that does one thing and makes it easy to do that one thing. You can't have both, they are by definition mutually exclusive.

Usability is a buzzword. KDE4 is not usable under many aspects (did I mention the focus-bug?). It's just a justification for developers to do things they think that are good for the user, which has nothing to do with what the user thinks that's needed.

Mixing GUI elements from various application - that you state as bad - is exactly what's sold as the "new desktop paradigm" with plasmoids. Only the shell that was konqueror before is now the desktop. The new restrictions that arose from that are tried to overcome with "activities".

I have to respectfully disagree on the usability issue. Konqueror's functionality as a file manager is both full-featured and easy to use. The advanced functionality may be a little beyond most users, but it doesn't flaunt itself; it stays quietly tucked away in it's menus until you need it. that said, I wound up switching my wife over to Dolphin last night. She told me that she missed the breadcrumbs from Nautilus. I just don't see what's so great about breadcrumbs...

2handband wrote:I have to respectfully disagree on the usability issue. Konqueror's functionality as a file manager is both full-featured and easy to use. The advanced functionality may be a little beyond most users, but it doesn't flaunt itself; it stays quietly tucked away in it's menus until you need it. that said, I wound up switching my wife over to Dolphin last night. She told me that she missed the breadcrumbs from Nautilus. I just don't see what's so great about breadcrumbs...

Dolphin has bread crumb mode http://docs.kde.org/development/en/kdeb ... read-crumb

google01103 wrote:

2handband wrote:I have to respectfully disagree on the usability issue. Konqueror's functionality as a file manager is both full-featured and easy to use. The advanced functionality may be a little beyond most users, but it doesn't flaunt itself; it stays quietly tucked away in it's menus until you need it. that said, I wound up switching my wife over to Dolphin last night. She told me that she missed the breadcrumbs from Nautilus. I just don't see what's so great about breadcrumbs...

Dolphin has bread crumb mode http://docs.kde.org/development/en/kdeb ... read-crumb

I know... that's why I switched my wife over to it.