Bug 237841

Version:            (using KDE 4.4.3)
OS:                Linux
Installed from:    Debian testing/unstable Packages

Dolphin is a very nice file explorer apart from some minor issues (*).

But I got very upset with the image metadata not showing up in the tooltip (or the information panel), since I work with lots of images and made heavy use of this in KDE3 konqueror.
I'm now aware that this is bug #193592 and is off to be fixed in KDE 4.5

Another way to have a solution for this would have been to have a plugin system for dolphin.
But even more, a plugin system would extend dolphin's capabilities beyond what we can imagine right now.
Another advantage would be that it would avoid forcing the user to migrate his KDE version everytime just because of a new feature in dolphin. Keep in mind that most users use a particular distro and sometimes this is not so easy (dependencies, stability issues, work environment, etc).

It is already possible to add services that show up when you click the right button.
But I'm talking about things that are more powerful and better integrated.
Namely power to control what shows up on the tooltip and on the Information panel. And also allow the user to add his own "actions" to the toolbars (also setting his own icon and shortcut for it).

Some uses that come to mind deal with the preview of particular files.
With archive files you may want to see a file listing, some people may want a simple list, other may want a verbose.
Other people may want to see a preview of a couple of files in there (eg: thumbnails of the first 5 images, or random pages).
Another one would be for movies. Right now mplayerthumbs is being used. But what if you want to do a quick skim through the movie? Thumbnail on the information panel could keep changing every 3 seconds and also include information on the time position it is in the video.
Other people may want to use mtn instead and get thumbnails for the whole movie at once that would display on a WxH grid defined by the user or show up as a big tooltip instead.

These are just a couple of examples. You can do a lot of things with this if you give some power to the user.
Why were widgets implemented in KDE4? :)

Thanks for reading this.



(*)
- when the user presses ctrl+T for a new tab it should automatically switch to editable location bar, so that the user doesn't need to get his hand on the mouse (killing the purpose of using the keyboard shortcut)

- when pressing ctrt+F, the cursor focus should be on the "named" text box instead of the search button, so that the user doesn't need to get his hand on the mouse (killing the purpose of using the keyboard shortcut)

- shortcut F4 should open a new konsole (like in konqueror), shift+F4 should be the one opening an embedded console (leaving things uniform across both tools)

- when using panels as tabs (ie, all of them are on the same side) and using the keyboard shortcuts (F9, F7, F11), focus should be given to the one selected.
This last one is not very important since the user will always have to use the mouse.