Nice. You just proofed that nobody can pilot airplanes, 'cause the UI is way too loaded.

"harder" != impossible (and that was all TheBlackCat said)

It's impossible in Dolphin right now.

This is beginning to go in a circle... The last statement was about Konqueror... anyway, both apps have different use cases, and luckily you can use what you prefer. For missing functionalitly we have brainstorm or bugs.kde.org. And also, every new contributor willing to help out is very welcome.

samhain wrote:Nice. You just proofed that nobody can pilot airplanes, 'cause the UI is way too loaded.

That is certainly true for 99.9% of the population

Are you willing to jettison airplanes?

Replace "airplane" by "car" "truck" "medic" or what ever and you end up with the same problem. Even "paper & pencil" can be too hard to use following that line of argumentation.

neverendingo wrote:This is beginning to go in a circle...

I'd say this has been going in circles for several pages. Occasionally there has been a new argument thrown in, but mostly it's been the anti-Dolphins complaining about Dolphin and how they wish it was more like Konqueror and the pro-Dolphins complaining back that Dolphin is what it is because Konqueror is more complicated than the average user needs.

I'd suggest some admin came and lock this thread and if anyone has anything new to say they can start a new one.

TheBlackCat wrote:

spoovy wrote:

TheBlackCat wrote:I've done that, but as I said all the menus and options I never use just get in my way.

Please stop using this line of argument. It can never be a good thing to have functionality missing. To have a tool and not need it is always preferable than to need it and not have it. (for the community at large I mean, individual preferences notwithstanding. I assume KDE is not designed specifically for you)
This argument in defense of KDE4's shortcomings irritates the hell out of me, and it is flying around on this forum all over the place.

Sorry, but you are simply wrong. This is not just my own opinion, it is an empirically-measured fact. The more elements there are in a UI the harder it is to learn and the harder it to find things. That is simply how the human brain (and human eye) works.

Human working memory is fairly limited, the rate at which humans can shift their focus from one object to another is limited, the time it takes to process a new object is significant (especially when it is one you are not familiar with or it includes text), the visual area the human eye can focus on is very limited, and the speed at which the human hand can move a mouse from one area to another is limited (which is an issue for menus and panels/sidebars). In order for what you say to be true, all of the things I just said would have to be false.

If you feel it is necessary then please do hide obscure, barely used functionality behind submenu after submenu; thats fine with me. People can still configure their toolbars to access whatever suits them. But to remove that same functionality altogether and then to make out that it is some kind of design feature!? That really is ridiculous.

I could do with a button that downloads the most recent forecast straight from the magicseaweed website each time i click it. But of course I wouldn't expect something so obscure to be on the default toolbar!
In fact if you wanted to hide it 14 clicks away, only accessible by customizing my toolbars then great, i'd still be well happy that it even existed!
But don't tell me that because 99% of people wouldn't want it that means it would confuse them and therefore it is a good thing that it doesn't and will never exist and that none of us will ever have access to it. Crazy logic. Crazy example but its hey its' late...

Personally I don't see a reason to drop Dolphin. Many people use and enjoy it. I just wish that the functionality of Konqueror in KDE 3.5 was restored in KDE 4.4, since it's the file manager I use and am used to. In particular, I'm missing options like the system:/ kio_slave that have been ripped out.

When are Linux users going to " get it" about Linux?

One word, choice. Choose wisely grasshopper. If there is one way to do something in Linux there are quite literally a hundred. Sometimes, one solution works well for one user, and poorly for another.

I use Dolphin, I don't use Konqueror -- for anything. So what? That doesn't mean that Konqueror is bad software or that Dolphin is the "be all" and "end all".

I made a choice, make yours -- move on.

jglen490 wrote:When are Linux users going to " get it" about Linux?

One word, choice. Choose wisely grasshopper. If there is one way to do something in Linux there are quite literally a hundred. Sometimes, one solution works well for one user, and poorly for another.

I use Dolphin, I don't use Konqueror -- for anything. So what? That doesn't mean that Konqueror is bad software or that Dolphin is the "be all" and "end all".

I made a choice, make yours -- move on.

I don't think anybody here is really insisting that Dolphin shouldn't be available to people who want it... what we want is for Konqueror to be able to do everything it used to do, and we're afraid that with the bulk of development effort having been shifted to Dolphin, Konqueror is going to get left by the wayside.

A word on this quaint notion that removing features make software easier to use. It's ****. Removing features makes it HARDER to use, because now it requires more steps to do the same thing I was able to do with just one or two clicks before. What you really mean is that removing features makes it easier for noobs to find their way around... and the fact that this sort of thinking is starting to permeate the free software world is, to my mind, very disturbing. I realize that in today's computer world "user-friendly" really means "can be used competently by someone who has never seen the software before", but that's a dangerous definition. In my experience ANYTHING worth using comes with a learning curve. When you take stuff away to make things easier for noobs, you penalize users who have gone to the trouble to learn how to actually use the software.

Keep Dolphin around... fine. Make it the default... fine. But don't take our swiss army knife away from us. Konqueror development should be taken every bit as seriously as Dolphin.

@2handband

I don't disagree with that at all, just the OP's proposition to take away one product in favor of another. I have my disagreements with some KDE products, and have expressed my opinion, and exercised choices.

Of course, there are only so many resources available for all the KDE supported products.

TheBlackCat wrote:Sorry, but you are simply wrong. This is not just my own opinion, it is an empirically-measured fact. The more elements there are in a UI the harder it is to learn and the harder it to find things. That is simply how the human brain (and human eye) works.

Human working memory is fairly limited, the rate at which humans can shift their focus from one object to another is limited, the time it takes to process a new object is significant (especially when it is one you are not familiar with or it includes text), the visual area the human eye can focus on is very limited, and the speed at which the human hand can move a mouse from one area to another is limited (which is an issue for menus and panels/sidebars). In order for what you say to be true, all of the things I just said would have to be false.

But that is not a fact at all in all cases. Only in small amount if the situations.

If we have a panel what has one button, then it is not 100% more difficult to use device what has two buttons. We can have panel what has 7 buttons and it is not difficult to use. In contrary, it can be much easier to use.
And if we have over 100 buttons, it can be definitely much easier to use than using just 5 or 10 buttons. And still it is not about 10000% more difficult to use with so many buttons.

In some cases the UI can be such that there is no buttons at all. But even then it can be much easier to use in some situations than others.

Even that we have very limited processing memory (longtime memory is usually good), we can switch between two tasks (depending what they are) fairy well. More tasks and we are starting to have problems. But in the computer, we can not do anykind multitasking at all. We can not use two monitors same time, we can not use two applications same time. We can not use two mouse same time. We can not use two computers same time. We always need to focus only to ONE task by the time. Computers can do multitasking when they have at least two CPU's or one CPU with at least two cores (so they do not need to swap processes and threads).

And actually when we have very limited focus area in our sight, it is much better than situation if we would have wider (almost 100%) sight. Because thats why we can actually focus to tasks much better way than you think.

But all this is almost irrelevant for the Dolphin vs Konqueror situation. Because when KDE SC 4.0 was released, the Dolphin became as default filemanager. And Konqueror has not since then evolved almost at all. But dolphin has.

So what seems to be the actual wish from this discussion starter, is that the konqueror development would get started again so it would get same features as Dolphin has and it would get developers to get it better shape as web browser as well.

In the current situation, the Dolphin IS better filemanager. But only because it has the sidepanels (not sidebars like Konqueror), it has spacebar bottom of the view. But the breadcrumb is not automatically better. It does not replace the tree view. Thats why we even have tree panel in Dolphin because it is something what breadcrumb does not offer.
Konqueror can be set to have less buttons in the UI than Dolphin, have all the basic filemanagement features _new_ user needs.

But if we would add the sidepanels to Konqueror and the Nepomuk integration (and possibility to hide the bottom bar), Konqueror would outwin Dolphin right away and still offer features what could user take in use when needed. Instead trying to find another application to do their jobs.

For me, the simple fact is that dolphin is not as durable or functional as konqueror. Sadly, this issue is simply greater than file managers, in my mind. KDE 4 is that best thing that ever happened to Gnome, but that's a whole other argument. I've worked in IT professionally for over 15 years, so I have some background with computers. Dolphin is simply incomprehensible. It is a rectangular re-invention of a perfectly good round wheel. For example, I've tried everything I can think of, and have found no way to get a folder tree view similar to konqueror to appear on the left side of a window. And as far as using konqueror as a web browser, really? It's a file manager, not a web browser. I use Opera to browse, and I suspect most people use firefox.

So for me, the whole idea that dolphin is a simpler and easier file manager is simply not true. The key word in my opinion is me. I realize that many here like dolphin, but as has been plainly and accurately stated, Linux is about choice. Neutering konqueror limits choice.

0x29a wrote:For example, I've tried everything I can think of, and have found no way to get a folder tree view similar to konqueror to appear on the left side of a window. And as far as using konqueror as a web browser, really?

Do you mean the tree-view what only has the home directory as the root?
That is the only difference what I have noticed between Konqueror and Dolphin tree-view. Both you can get to left side but in Konqueror you have home and root views separated, while in Dolphin user has only the root view. But it has somekind reason to be such because we have other ways to compensate it. Like having a tree view or millers-view in dolphin mainview and then we have "places" for the quick shortcuts.

But what I really hate in the tree view (or list-view) in Dolphin and any KFilemanagement view (open/save). Is that when you select a folder, it does select the folder but it does not automatically open the root of it.

Like when you select "Documents". It has opened that root all the way from / to Documents. But the Documents is closed so you need to click "Documents" open to get a view of the folders inside it.