Dolphin is the best…
Today I found out that I’m way more productive with Dolphin then I was with KDE3 Konqueror’s file management.
I think it was at LinuxTag that Sebas showed that the single click method is actually implemented in a way that it is useable. After that presentation I decided to switch from doubleclick to singleclick. I must admit that I’ve struggling with it for a while, but now I’m slowely getting used to it.
The last remaining bit was that I found it difficult to rename files, I still want to click on it to select it and hit F2 after it to rename the name, but that always results in opening the file, which I then close and then I can rename. Today I found out that when you press F2 when you have multiple files selected, it even prompts you correctly so you can rename the files with a numeric indicator in the name. Totally cool.
Moving around on the filesystem can be done quickly with the favorites on the left, but also by holding the left mouse button on a part of the breadcrum path at the top, the other children fall down, so you can go to them quickly. I think there could be a debate if the pulldown shows what is expected, but that is not to me to decide. (I find myself clicking one level to high usually, so clicking on the folder I want to change, instead of on the parent).
O, and it was funny to read LinuxFormat claiming “Konqueror is still stacked full of file-management options.”, the reviewer obviously missed the tutorial about KParts ;-). Anyhow, if we remove the Dolphin kpart for Konqueror, we have mad users who want to keep using Konqueror for useing file management. If we make it possible for Konqueror to do filemanagement with a Dolphin KPart we get complains that there is no clear separation. In short: there is no way we can make everyone happy.
Wishlist about this opened: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=171654
I also dislike this behaviour and would quite like to change it. If Peter gives his blessing, then I’ll add it to my list of Dolphin TODOs :)
I have no idea how hard it will be, though – I doubt it will be trivial. I would guess that we’d have to mess with QTreeView::setSelection(const QRect& …), although it’s vaguely possible that writing a custom delegate would do the trick. This is all complete guesswork on my part, though – I’ve not really investigated it :)
> If Peter gives his blessing, then I’ll add it to my list of Dolphin > TODOs :)
It would be great if you could work on this issue (I also don’t like the current behavior). But as you already said: it is non-trivial to fix this in Qt4 and I fear quite a lot hacks are required… I discussed this issue already with Fredrik Höglund (he wrote KFileItemDelegate) and what’s missing in Qt4 is to specify a kind of custom shape for items.
>> For me, this is a mayor regression and makes using KDE4 rather impossible :-(
Since you know the workaround, it’s hardly impossible, but I agree that it can be annoying..
I think the problem is not so much the selection, but the fact that the name column in details view expands arbitrarily large. If I have the dolphin window fairly narrow, then the name column is narrow (just big enough for the names) and selecting things is not so bad (since starting from the second column is close.
But then if the window is big (maximized on a 1680×1050 display is pretty wide) the name column is suddenly massive. If I want to rubberband select something now in details view, I have to start drawing a box extremely far away from the files I want to select. At that point it becomes very annoying and not at all intuitive. Rubberbands are supposed to select things that are inside them, but now I have a selection even though my rubber band contains only white space.
So what’s the solution? Well just limit the width of the name column in details view. There is no reason it needs to be bigger than the width of the max folder/file name. So when the window is resized, it should just expand to that point, then start expanding the last column or something (or just add whitespace, not sure what would look best)..
Dolphin is fucking great!
Once you get used to single clicking, there is NO TURNING BACK!
Great :) It’ll be quite a long way off in the future before I have a chance to look at this, though :( I’ll be sure to chat you with and fredrikh when the time comes :)
Oh the time I could have saved if I had read that last week! You will be adding these tips to http://userbase.kde.org/Dolphin, won’t you?
If you want to use 2 directories at the same time it REALLY sucks with dolphin most of the time. Even Konqueror worked better.
You want to change one directory but dolphin does the change with both directories. WTF?! Samba is a little bit annoying, too, with Dolphin. Especially if you don’t use simple ascii chars for filenames (last time I had to click as much error messages as here I was still using Windows).
It’s sad but true – mc still works best. :P
Yes, mc is the fastest if you want to rearrange a lot of files, but for daily usage Dolphin works quite good.
I still have problems with Dolpin’s rubberband-selection in list/detail-viewmode (the same seems to apply to Konqueror in KDE4).
If you want to select multiple files/folders you have to start the selection at the first column after ‘Name’, because otherwise you would move the file.
In KDE3, you could start the selection right after the last letter of the file/folder. This is very much like the Windows Explorer used to work.
For me, this is a mayor regression and makes using KDE4 rather impossible :-(
Please tell me if there is any option I might have missed.
> You want to change one directory but dolphin does
> the change with both directories. WTF?!
This issue has been fixed in the meantime and was no intended behavior.
> Samba is a little bit annoying, too, with Dolphin.
The root cause here is not Dolphin, but in kdelibs. A lot of Samba related issues have already been fixed and we’re working on resolving the remaining issues too.
> If you want to use 2 directories at the same time it
> REALLY sucks with dolphin most of the time.
Generally speaking it would be more helpful if you’d submit a bug-report at bugs.kde.org and describe the “sucks part” in detail, so that we get a hint how we should fix something ;-) Thanks!