3

As many other file managers, on opening dolphin offer the user home directory as landing page. This idea proposal is inspired by the move of web browsers from a start page to a speed dial of several possible destinations [1]. The rationale is that the assumption that the user opens the file manager to deal with his/her home is increasingly wrong.

This UI change may not seem like much as this is close to a full window places panel, but for those who would turn on this optional feature it would improve UX and accessibility.

This user case comes from real user experience: Old timer Grampy bought a computer to digitize his vacation pictures, he's not really computer proficient so he asked the family go to IT guy to set up the computer for him and as his sight is on the decline he had trouble using the places panel. He has several large desktop icons linking to computer folders he uses or need to access. He has difficulties and often fails to find them by browsing the file hierarchy by himself.
He often asks why the local file browsing is so much more complex than surfing the web, which is simple to him as he only uses a handful of websites most of the time and all are readily available in speed dial in his browsers.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_of_the_Opera_web_browser#Speed_Dial

The case you describe can be handled by simply putting links or folder views for the specific folders directly on the desktop. In general he would use those links to access his files and wouldn't launch the file browser from the menu.

That being said, I can see benefit to having the default landing display of the file browser being a large-icons places view. It kind of reminds of how Windows explorer's default view shows a similar perspective with links to My Computer (+ various hard drives), My Documents, Network shares, etc.

You can replicate this effect by changing the startup location to a folder you made with symlinks. Set the icons to very large and you're done