Created attachment 132867 [details] Proposal SUMMARY When using the split view it can get confusing to know where the focus is at even though there is the blue border highlight. STEPS TO REPRODUCE 1. Open Dolphin 2. Activate Split View I would suggest to grey out the unfocused region to better show where the focus is at. See attachment.
I wouldn't go quite so extreme with the visuals, but I think this makes sense overall. I too have difficulty distinguishing the active view sometimes.
In order to reach a possible solution for this item, I try to understand and sort the use cases in which spotting the focused panel is relevant, and in which it isn't. Focus-sensitive use cases - Close the currently active view by - clicking the icon, which in fact tells you which panel will be closed - using a shortcut, which I don't know if this is possible - Keyboard interaction in general like hitting F10 to create a new folder Focus-insensitive use cases - Generally speaking, all these use cases are hurt by obscuring the inactive panel too much - Drag and drop from one side to the other - You want to see where you are dropping to - Compare things between the two locations presented in the two different panels What else comes to your mind? What do you do in split-panel mode? # Possible solution In my mind, we shouldn't restrain from making interaction object, e.g. icons, previews, less visible or readable. We should communicate via color, background, and handles. This would lead to an easier recognition of the active panel while retaining a good user experience for use cases which are _not_ dependent on the focus in the first place. My proposal therefor is - Hide scroll bars on the inactive view - This gives the impression of an read-mode of that panel, i.e. you don't interact with that panel at the moment. - Scrolling should still be possible by either mouse-wheel or flicking (touch use case) but w/o the visual feedback of the scroll location - If the content of the view does not call for scroll bars in the first place, we loose that visual of course. - Present interaction objects, e.g. icons, previews, in black-and-white. - This doesn't reduce information content too much, but given an immediate impression of inactivity - Keep the background color of the panel as it currently is. I would love to get feedback on that proposal. Is this s.th. we could consider a way forward?
(In reply to Wolfgang Mader from comment #2) Greying out the would disturb users who tend to use transparency, although relaying on scroll bars and icons could be questionable for folders with few items to none. Maybe the easiest solution is just highlighting(underlining, etc.) the path above the split view.