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Kinda like konqueror since KDE 2 - just with the preview in a popup window...

That means, we have the technology, it is called KParts, and can view quite many file formats, so implementing that in KDE can not bee too hard!

molecule-eye wrote:The previews in the Information Pane needn't be small and one needn't always have Dolphin maximized to get large previews. What I've done is detach the Information pane from the main Dolphin window and set it rather large (but not overlapping with the Dolphin window since it stays on top of it)--in fact it fills up the remaining screen space that Dolphin isn't using. When I need a preview I just click the Information pane button I've added to my toolbar.

You can set the pane as large as you like (even having it overlap with the main Dolphin window). Select a file and then invoke the Information pane to get large previews. Close the information pane when done viewing.

It works, but then you really have to use the keyboard shortcut, because if you use the menu or a toolbar button, you'll hover over other images on the way there and won't get a preview of what you really wanted. However, I just discovered that it's quite easy to set space to be the infopanel button (in "set dolphin keyboard shortcuts"[1]), so by detaching and resizing huge you can quite easily fake the Quick Look functionality =D

When something as cool as this is possible by tweaking, I feel that tweak should be built-in … On the other hand, it would be much preferable to have a 'detached panel' that _just_ shows the image/document preview, not borders or window dressings, and if the rest of the screen dimmed when previewing. That would look better, as well be better suited to the simple purpose of a quick preview.



[1] Off-topic: I hate that they chose F11 for infopanel, that should be for fullscreen …

Oh, another bad thing about using the infopanel is that it shows the image your mouse was last on when last the infopanel was showing, so if you have the infopanel on for one image, turn it off, navigate into a new folder, then select an image and turn it on, it'll show the preview for the old image, and you have to use the mouse to force it to "reload".

I don't really see the point in the idea.

I see the point in showing previews in pictures or in videos, if I activate in Dolphin "Show preview of files and folders". But if I have to click first on a file, why can't I just open my player (Kaffeine, Vlc, etc.)?

It's pretty fast, I'm interested in the file anyway (because I clicked it), and I can watch the video. Why do I need a preview?

devent wrote:I don't really see the point in the idea.

I see the point in showing previews in pictures or in videos, if I activate in Dolphin "Show preview of files and folders". But if I have to click first on a file, why can't I just open my player (Kaffeine, Vlc, etc.)?

It's pretty fast, I'm interested in the file anyway (because I clicked it), and I can watch the video. Why do I need a preview?

I don't see the point in _video_ previews either, but it seems a lot of people do. Image previews, however, are really useful, and if you work a lot of hours every day with images, it saves a lot of time and frustration to have better preview capabilities as you're organising them in dolphin, rather than having to switch between programs.

unhammer wrote:

devent wrote:I don't really see the point in the idea.

I see the point in showing previews in pictures or in videos, if I activate in Dolphin "Show preview of files and folders". But if I have to click first on a file, why can't I just open my player (Kaffeine, Vlc, etc.)?

It's pretty fast, I'm interested in the file anyway (because I clicked it), and I can watch the video. Why do I need a preview?

I don't see the point in _video_ previews either, but it seems a lot of people do. Image previews, however, are really useful, and if you work a lot of hours every day with images, it saves a lot of time and frustration to have better preview capabilities as you're organising them in dolphin, rather than having to switch between programs.

Image, Video and even Sound files preview does have a point.

Example with images: If you browse images what you just downloaded and edited to be select for background, it is much faster just to go trough the specific photos without launching a full blown image viewer/editor for it. Or when selecting few images to be send as attachment in email. You need to have change to browse and select images, without keyboard shortcuts if needed.

Example with videos: You have collection of funny cat videos or ripped TV series. And you are searching the correct video. So you do not want to just to see a first frame of the video or some random frame of it either.
What you actually want, is a quick and speedup roll of the video so you can just find out what it were.
That is very handy when selecting video files to be added for video editor or to be stored to removable device.
Yes, user could just click once video file and open it to dragonplayer or VLC, scroll trought the video and close it and then open another video file. But it is more window management than filemanagement then.

Sound file preview: You have lots of different sound effects on folder and you want to search the specific click sound among long/low piched files. At that point, even a simple preview is huge help instead opening a Amarok or JuK and then adding all files to playlist and going trough them.
Even better, what GNOME 3.0 got, is sound file thumbnail where the thumbnails includes a sini wavelenght as thumbnail. Very informative. But sound files should have preview when hovering the file (only when window is active!) .

For videos, great way to do a preview would be with same idea as what Apple made first for iPhoto and Aperture. That you just slide cursor over the stack and you can see preview. Then they added that to iMovie and Final Cut.

I would still prefer my idea of right top corner to allow single click to preview and allow functionality with touch screens as well. Allowing bigger preview on file selector.

For those who really work whole day with media files, it is better to use specific applications for that task. Like digiKam for photos, Amarok for sounds and for videos just the Dolphin (until we get the cool video collection app).

It would be good if previews for videos were like previews for photos in Dolphin. We had that in Konqueror, instead of icons for the files you had the middle of the video as picture.

So just like we see the picture in preview mode, we could see the middle of the video (the first frame is no good, because it's often just black, so maybe a frame at 50@kb_pc of the video).

You do have a point that to open the video player you end up with lots of windows. But maybe here it's better to improve the window management of KDE, so that windows are placed smarter on the monitor, instead of blowing Dolphin up to a picture/sound/video manager.

I think most people like Dolphin more as the Konqueror, because Dolphin is just a file manager. It starts up fast, it reacts fast and you can manage your files very easy.

If you really need to manage stuff, open digiCam, Amarok, or something else.

The developers of the ROSA distribution have developed KLook for Dolphin, which is like Quick Look.
http://www.koryavov.net/2012/03/klook-new-utility-for-kde-and-rosa.html

Source code: https://abf.rosalinux.ru/import/klook
git repository: https://abf.rosalinux.ru/uxteam/KLook (with patches for Dolphin)

Götz wrote:The developers of the ROSA distribution have developed KLook for Dolphin, which is like Quick Look.
http://www.koryavov.net/2012/03/klook-new-utility-for-kde-and-rosa.html

Source code: https://abf.rosalinux.ru/import/klook
git repository: https://abf.rosalinux.ru/uxteam/KLook (with patches for Dolphin)

It is actually even tagged to be part of 4.10, as far as I know. Really looking forward to this functionality.