Bug 146533

Summary:	(error-)notifications are too small to be noticed immediately
Product:	[Applications] dolphin	Reporter:	S. Burmeister <sven.burmeister>
Component:	general	Assignee:	Peter Penz <peter.penz19>
Status:	RESOLVED FIXED
Severity:	wishlist	CC:	markg85, sreich
Priority:	LO
Version:	16.12.2
Target Milestone:	---
Platform:	unspecified
OS:	Linux
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed In:	4.9.0
Sentry Crash Report:

Description S. Burmeister 2007-06-08 11:56:02 UTC

Version:            (using KDE Devel)
OS:                Linux

I think that (error-)notifications in the status-bar are a bad idea if they aim to be noticed by the user. Colouring may help a bit, but they are still not in the focus of the user.

As an example: Try to open an archive that cannot be opened. you will end up with a blank page and a small notification in the status-bar telling you that zip://... could not be opened due to whatever reason.

The focus of the user however is in the middle of the blank page, so any (error-)notification that is meant for the user should be put there and not into that tiny status-bar at the bottom where the user's view gets only after searching the rest of the screen, i.e. following the Z (start top left, end bottom-right).

Better than the bottom of a window but still worse than the middle of it would be the top, since the user starts reading/viewing at the top, so the "first entry" in an empty list should be the reason why it is empty, i.e. the (error-)notification.

Comment 1 Shaun Reich 2009-03-10 02:29:38 UTC

I can agree with the moving it to the top, it -does- seem to be more noticed there.

However, if it is one thing I hate with a passion (besides Microsoft :P  ) it is modal dialogs. Something about them really bugs the crap out of me. If I had to choose between the two extremes, I would rather be oblivious.

I do agree that the error box should be moved to the top, however. It has gone unnoticed by me before. Perhaps the color changing would help too....

Comment 2 Mark 2010-09-02 01:38:39 UTC

I... agree
The errors at the bottom often do skip past me ending up being noticed minutes later. There should either be a more noticing way to put those errors at the bottom or they should move to a more noticeable position.

Comment 3 Nick 2010-09-02 02:08:46 UTC

What about displaying a nicely formatted error page like konqueror does?
Not a modal dialog, but definitely obvious.

Comment 4 Mark 2010-09-02 02:22:09 UTC

(In reply to comment #3)
> What about displaying a nicely formatted error page like konqueror does?
> Not a modal dialog, but definitely obvious.

That adds a popup...
It's clear though :) 

Anyway, I just don't know what would be the best way to do something like this.

Comment 5 Nick 2010-09-02 02:28:44 UTC

I meant in place of the document, not as a popup.

Comment 6 Peter Penz 2012-04-12 22:11:59 UTC

Git commit 213450d39704fc0154da5f0e45e4198af8239842 by Peter Penz.
Committed on 12/04/2012 at 23:57.
Pushed by ppenz into branch 'master'.

Use KMessageWidget for error- and information-messages

See http://agateau.com/2011/04/21/kde-ux-2011/ for more details.
This simplifies the statusbar in Dolphin a lot and allows to
do a proper eliding in case if status-messages are too long: In
this case a tooltip will show the whole status-message (thanks
to Wolfgang Mader for the initial patch!).

There is still missing some finetuning but the general approach
seems to work quite nice.
Related: bug 249638, bug 245618
FIXED-IN: 4.9.0

M  +14   -20   dolphin/src/dolphinmainwindow.cpp
M  +2    -2    dolphin/src/dolphinnewfilemenu.cpp
M  +79   -51   dolphin/src/dolphinviewcontainer.cpp
M  +28   -10   dolphin/src/dolphinviewcontainer.h
M  +93   -152  dolphin/src/statusbar/dolphinstatusbar.cpp
M  +32   -65   dolphin/src/statusbar/dolphinstatusbar.h
M  +9    -9    dolphin/src/statusbar/statusbarspaceinfo.cpp
M  +4    -2    dolphin/src/statusbar/statusbarspaceinfo.h

http://commits.kde.org/kde-baseapps/213450d39704fc0154da5f0e45e4198af8239842