Bug 490196 - Back button on application info pages is unncessarily small (doesn’t include heading text)
Summary: Back button on application info pages is unncessarily small (doesn’t include ...
Status: RESOLVED INTENTIONAL
Alias: None
Product: Welcome Center
Classification: Applications
Component: general (show other bugs)
Version: unspecified
Platform: Other Linux
: NOR minor
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Plasma Bugs List
URL:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2024-07-12 20:55 UTC by Karl Ove Hufthammer
Modified: 2024-07-14 12:43 UTC (History)
2 users (show)

See Also:
Latest Commit:
Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:


Attachments
Annotated screenshot (86.66 KB, image/png)
2024-07-12 20:55 UTC, Karl Ove Hufthammer
Details
Systemsettings screenshot (33.93 KB, image/png)
2024-07-13 09:05 UTC, Karl Ove Hufthammer
Details

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Description Karl Ove Hufthammer 2024-07-12 20:55:45 UTC
Created attachment 171616 [details]
Annotated screenshot

SUMMARY
After having clicked on an an application in ‘Powerful When Needed’ page to read more about it, I find it natural to want to click the ‘< Heading’ on the top to go back to the application overview. However, only the ‘<’ part is clickable, which makes it unncessarily difficult. See attached screenshot.


STEPS TO REPRODUCE
1. Open the Welcome Center
2. Navigate the the ‘Powerful When Needed Page’ (third page)
3. Click on any of the buttons.
4. Hover over the text in the heading on the top-left of the window.

OBSERVED RESULT
No back button outline appears. Can’t click on the heading to go back. Have to hover over only the ‘<’ part of the heading.

EXPECTED RESULT
The entire heading (‘<’ part + text) should be clickable.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Having a larger target area should make it faster and easier to to back to the overview page, cf. Fitt’s law:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts%27s_law
Comment 1 Karl Ove Hufthammer 2024-07-12 21:00:16 UTC
Also note that for the pages which include a button on the *top-right* (e.g., the KRunner page), the entire ‘icon + text’ (e.g., icon + ‘Open Settings…’) is clickable. So for consistency, the top-left navigation should behave the same way.
Comment 2 Oliver Beard 2024-07-13 02:06:26 UTC
Any changes made here would have to be made to Kirigami, as Welcome Center is using Kirigami's globalToolBar here.

Including the page's title as part of a larger button, in my view, wouldn't make sense as it is not part of the back button or related in any way. It would appear as a label for the button and that'd be confusing.

Layer pages previously featured a centered button beneath the text that acted as a back button, but I decided it was better to go with what Kirigami for greater consistency with other KDE apps and to allow us to expand the content of these pages, which is already partially complete.

N.B. The left arrow key shortcut works here. I think, for layers, it'd be a good idea to allow escape to be pressed, and for everything to also work with mouse back/forward buttons. This is on my TODO list.
Comment 3 Oliver Beard 2024-07-13 02:08:06 UTC
(In reply to Karl Ove Hufthammer from comment #1)
> Also note that for the pages which include a button on the *top-right*
> (e.g., the KRunner page), the entire ‘icon + text’ (e.g., icon + ‘Open
> Settings…’) is clickable. So for consistency, the top-left navigation should
> behave the same way.

Furthermore, what we see in the toolbar is a left-aligned title, which is why it is larger than normal ToolButton label text.
Comment 4 Karl Ove Hufthammer 2024-07-13 09:00:41 UTC
(In reply to Oliver Beard from comment #2)
> Including the page's title as part of a larger button, in my view, wouldn't
> make sense as it is not part of the back button or related in any way. It
> would appear as a label for the button and that'd be confusing.

I think the problem is that the title is right next to the button, so it *looks and feels* (at least to me) that it’s attached to the button. So I have (accidentally) tried to click it several times. If it was centred instead, this wouldn’t be an issue.
Comment 5 Karl Ove Hufthammer 2024-07-13 09:05:42 UTC
Created attachment 171622 [details]
Systemsettings screenshot

See also the system settings window, which looks *almost identically* (see attachment), but where the title *is* attached to the back button. Having two things which look almost the same but behaves differently is quite confusing, IMHO.
Comment 6 Oliver Beard 2024-07-13 15:16:37 UTC
(In reply to Karl Ove Hufthammer from comment #5)
> Created attachment 171622 [details]
> Systemsettings screenshot
> 
> See also the system settings window, which looks *almost identically* (see
> attachment), but where the title *is* attached to the back button. Having
> two things which look almost the same but behaves differently is quite
> confusing, IMHO.

That's a good point.
Comment 7 Nate Graham 2024-07-14 02:55:55 UTC
As Oliver says, this is a case where we're simply using the standard Kirigami navigation header style, and if we want to change it, we'd have to rethink, well, a lot of things.

It's a bit unfortunate that System Settings' sidebar having a larger back button (it's 100% custom) is habituating people to the idea of large back buttons that include the header text in the clickable area. It works in that context, but it would not work in all Kirigami apps due to the existence of forward buttons in multi-page page stacks.

We could change System Settings to use a smaller clickable area, but that would definitely be a usability regression even as it improved consistency. Sometimes these things are in tension.

I don't see a path forward right now.
Comment 8 Nate Graham 2024-07-14 12:43:35 UTC
I've started an open-ended discussion in Kirigami about it, FWIW: https://invent.kde.org/frameworks/kirigami/-/issues/85