Bug 93192

Summary: up button should be more intelligent in web browser mode
Product: [Applications] konqueror Reporter: Siegbert Baude <siegbert.baude>
Component: generalAssignee: Konqueror Developers <konq-bugs>
Status: REPORTED ---    
Severity: wishlist CC: baorr, kde_bugzilla_2, missive
Priority: NOR    
Version: unspecified   
Target Milestone: ---   
Platform: Compiled Sources   
OS: Linux   
Latest Commit: Version Fixed In:

Description Siegbert Baude 2004-11-13 01:41:26 UTC
Version:            (using KDE KDE 3.3.1)
Installed from:    Compiled From Sources

If you follow the history of bug #70506, there was lot of discussion, if the up button should be removed in web browser mode, bugs #72062 and #57033 suggested special methods of its operation.

The initial idea of bug #70506 was that many users are confused, if the up button does nothing meaningful on many web pages; examples are included in the report. Many users however claimed that they regularly use this button.

So to make things less confusing for users and maybe adding an outstanding feature of KDE, we should try to reduce the situations which end up in undesired results. Undesired results from a normal users perspective are e.g. "error 403 You don't have permission to access /exec/ on this server" like on well-known website http://www.amazon.com/exec/

I think on most sites you will get "error 403" somewhere using the up button out of deeply nested structures.

So I want to start a discussion, what actions the up button should consider and which ones it shouldn't execute, because they would confuse users. As this will most probably be not unambiguous, I want to suggest at this very beginning to extend the up button to show the meaningful suggestions and let the user choose out of this. The default should however be something which works "always" like stripping the whole path (i.e. going to www.amazon.com in the before-mentioned example).

What could be in the list of suggestions?

LINK REL='up' tag
all the possible paths stripped from "/" to the next "/" _not_ including the results ending in "error 403"
only the domain without any path
...

As there is the possibility for the user to choose, I would also like to add my idea, that the ranking of suggestions could depend on konqueror's current view mode. The web admin of amazon could be indeed interested, if the visitors of its site really get the wished error 403 on certain levels, so if he goes up its hierarchy with the up button, he chooses to look at the URL in file browing mode (let's think as web admin mode in this case) and gets the "error 403" if he reaches http://www.amazon.com/exec/ by means of the up button,  whereas a normal user (i.e. using web browser mode) would get something different.
I hope that with this proposal even the power users who were voting against the removal of the up button in bug #70506 keep all the functionality they desire, but normal users get more out of the up button than it is the case at the moment.
Comment 1 Roland Seuhs 2004-11-13 02:43:08 UTC
If it isn't broke, don't fix it.

The current behaviour is fine, reproducable and absolutely not confusing.

An up-button that tries to be "smart" would be the worst of all possibilities.

Even the Google-Toolbar adds an "up" button to IE, so quite obviously there is demand for it on all browsers.

Please change to WONTFIX
Comment 2 aZaZeL 2004-11-13 10:03:45 UTC
This is dumb. I don't like having an up button in web browser mode, but the solution is really simple. Separate the toolbars for khtml and file manager mode. At the moment they both share the "main toolbar" that doesn't change between modes. So if you take out the up button in browser mode, it is no longer there in file management mode. This is annoying. Make the toolbars for these two modes completely separate so it is easy to remove the up button from konqueror web browser.

That's it. No need for complication.
Comment 3 Brendan Orr 2004-11-13 14:29:10 UTC
I assume we are talking about options for a first-time install.  Else, it doesn't need to be addressed, since the up button (more generaly, the whole layout) can be adjusted to your desire. Then just save the settings to the "Web Browsing" profile.  I did this once to show a friend on IRC that konqi could be made to look as simple as mozilla/firefox.
Comment 4 Brendan Orr 2004-11-13 14:57:08 UTC
Bah, sorry. Forgot to mention something else.  If it is changed, perhaps we add another drop-down menu (oh no) near the "Underline Links" and "Animation" options of the 'khtml_behavior' kcm module.  Possibly consisting of
"None" -- basically removing the Up button from the Web Browsing profile "Simple" -- traverse directories only
"Old method" -- current
"Smart" -- whatever algo can be considered truely smart.  

Of course, providing more in-depth information in the What's This.

A kde-usability prefered method probably would be to just have a checkbox toggling the smart method.
Comment 5 Michiel de Bruijne 2004-11-13 15:54:46 UTC
Just want to mention that I like and use the up-button in web browser mode. I really don't care if the up button is removed from the default webbrowser layout as long as I can still add and use it.
Comment 6 Marcus 2004-11-15 21:34:14 UTC
Gee what is so bad with that button? If you don't like it, dont click on it...
Besides, things like bug #8333 are more important, IMHO.
Comment 7 Nick Matteo 2005-04-06 03:27:07 UTC
I do like the up-button for web browsing.  But what I wish it would do, is when you are at http://sub.sub.domain.com/ with no subdirectories, clicking the up-button would take you up the subdomains, ie to http://sub.domain.com, then to http://domain.com.

I think that's intuitive.
Comment 8 missive 2005-08-22 16:42:42 UTC
I also use the up button regularly. I found this bug while starting a bug/wish for moving up through sub-domains. We should not have to click in the address bar and backspace through the name to go from bugs.kde.com to kde.com.

Is this an advanced feature? Probably. Is that one of the reasons I like KDE (plenty of advanced features and perfect configurability)? Absolutely!
Comment 9 Stephan Sokolow 2009-02-10 02:00:22 UTC
I also would like to see the up button go from http://sub.domain.com/ to http://domain.com/
Comment 10 FiNeX 2009-09-13 19:34:30 UTC
*** Bug 57033 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***