Bug 86838 - Switch to icons-on-top mode by default for Short View
Summary: Switch to icons-on-top mode by default for Short View
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Alias: None
Product: frameworks-kio
Classification: Frameworks and Libraries
Component: Open/save dialogs (show other bugs)
Version: unspecified
Platform: RedHat Enterprise Linux Linux
: NOR wishlist
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: David Faure
URL:
Keywords: usability
: 29600 336132 (view as bug list)
Depends on: 334099
Blocks:
  Show dependency treegraph
 
Reported: 2004-08-09 11:43 UTC by Nicholas Allen
Modified: 2019-06-02 21:29 UTC (History)
6 users (show)

See Also:
Latest Commit:
Version Fixed In: 5.60


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Description Nicholas Allen 2004-08-09 11:43:10 UTC
Version:            (using KDE KDE 3.2.3)
Installed from:    RedHat RPMs
OS:                Linux

The file selector being used in short view mode is practically unusable and a complete abomination of user interface design. 
Using horizontal scrolling in preference to vertical scrolling is just plain silly (of course in some countries this may be prefereable depending on lacalization settings but certainly not in the west where people read things left to right and top to bottom). Perhaps you read books top to bottom and left to right but not where I come from (and I don't think I'm alone here!). Please don't copy Microsoft and especially not their extremely stupid user interface habits. I'm amazed Microsoft did this in their user interface and this is another area where we can have a usability improvement over Windows. 

So please make this localized or if that's too much work just simply always using vertical scrolling.

Please excuse my harsh tone here but this actually really annoys me if you couldn't tell....
Comment 1 Jens Dagerbo 2004-08-09 12:01:12 UTC
And this bugreport really annoys me. You honestly think this should be accepted as a bug on the grounds that YOU don't like it?

I don't. INVALID.
Comment 2 Stephan Kulow 2004-08-09 12:03:29 UTC
the problem is that most often file names fill 60% of the available screen space and then you can only put one file per line and have to scroll a lot, while with filling in cols you can already see that there is more available.

BTW: if this really annoys you that much, switch your file view to list view.
I think, we once switched to the other scoll mode and _many_ were confused, but
I'm not sure I remember that right.
Comment 3 Stephan Kulow 2004-08-09 12:03:52 UTC
the problem is that most often file names fill 60% of the available screen space and then you can only put one file per line and have to scroll a lot, while with filling in cols you can already see that there is more available.

BTW: if this really annoys you that much, switch your file view to list view.
I think, we once switched to the other scoll mode and _many_ were confused, but
I'm not sure I remember that right.
Comment 4 Nicholas Allen 2004-08-09 13:54:57 UTC
Ok sorry for my wording in my original bug report I should have been a little more professional.

The only reason I can assume some users were confused is because they are used to the windows way of doing it. This does not mean its the right way or the most efficient way. I have read show how much more efficient westeners are at reading left to right and top to bottom that any other direction (because that is what they are used to). I'm sure in other countries it would be different. A user interface should be adaptable to the user's own preferences and basing the default on the localization setting would make the most sense (perhaps even allowing them to override that). 
I can definately scan items in a list if they go left to right top to bottom much more quickly. It is also the way Konqueror works. Why is there an inconsistency between the file seletor and Konqueror? It requires the user to do a context switch and change the way they scan the list between Konqueror and the file selector. That is inconsistent and inefficient. At the very least they should both be the same.

If file names fill 60% of possible screen space then only use one column. If files names are less than 50% you can use 2 columns. This way you don't require any horizontal scrolling but can see as many files as possible.
Comment 5 Christoph Feck 2009-08-27 02:35:49 UTC
Moving from "kio/kfile" component to "kfile" product, helps sorting out duplicates.
Comment 6 Christoph Feck 2009-08-27 05:21:51 UTC
One thing I don't like about the "two column" suggestion from comment #4 is the ordering if items.

Should it be
  1   2
  3   4
  5   6
  7   8
etc.

or
  1   27
  2   28
  3   29
  4   30
etc.

Looking at both, they are confusing. "27" is the starting item of the second column, when you have, say, 52 items in total, but only 4 rows are visible in view.

What we have now is
  1   5
  2   6
  3   7 
  4   8
with the option to scroll further to the left, or a single column.

I will ask usability to decide if this is really a WONTFIX.
Comment 7 Christoph Feck 2014-06-12 20:13:26 UTC
*** Bug 336132 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 8 Nate Graham 2018-04-09 21:40:28 UTC
What makes more sense than the complicated ideas proposed here is to simply switch the defaults to use icons-over-labels mode (matching Dolphin's default presentation), or to use details view, both of which scroll vertically and present better usability in general.
Comment 9 Nate Graham 2018-04-11 17:32:00 UTC
*** Bug 29600 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***