The change to move Dolphin’s URL Navigator/breadcrumbs bar into the toolbar hasn’t been received as well as we were hoping, and I wanted to let people know that we’re aware and will find a way to address the concerns people brought up. Hang tight!
We’re working on Dolphin’s URL navigator teething issues
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Adventures in Linux and KDE 
CHeers. This is a notable difference between KDE and other projects. Giving people one or more additional toolbars to place their UI elements on seems like it’d work (albeit possibly a bit more complicated with split view).
Is this the sort of thing that the System Report Tool could help with, so that there’s more awareness of how people are using the software? I think I saw something about that being included from 5.18 onwards, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a prompt for it.
Text editors and file browsers seem to be two of the software categories people are most likely to have strong views on, with them being in constant use.
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Dolphin will have User Feedback in the next version: https://eang.it/user-feedback-dolphin-announce/
Toolbar arrangement is not included, though, maybe the developers could consider adding that?
I also have some additional buttons in my Dolphin toolbar with labels enabled for fast mouse access of features (enabling previews, change view and sort order, open split view and new tabs, restore closed tabs, up navigation), so there is not enough room for the address bar in my setup. On my parent’s laptop, I have put actions like Cut & Paste in the toolbar (including labels) because they cannot remember the shortcuts and are uncomfortable with context menus. So I am very happy you are addressing the user’s (our) concerns. Thanks a lot.
And personally, I would probably miss the empty space for “drag windows from empty spaces” (I have restored the now off-by-default status bar in Okular for this reason).
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Thanks Nate.
I have a little more of a high level concern, of which perhaps this is an instance. I’m concerned that the focus on tablet and particularly phone friendly features will lead the project down, dare I say, a Gnome type path where those form-factors are driving the GUI design. Another recent change that feels like it might have been driven by this kind of thinking is the ‘Status and Notifications’ area. IMO the grid view is less clean than the list view it replaced, but there is no option to configure it to the previous display.
Please consider the impact on the desktop and don’t let everything get dumbed down to the lowest common denominator.
P.S. I’m aware these things aren’t all your decision, but perhaps a conversation you’re in a place to raise?
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And, on the ‘Status and Notifications’ layout subject, (though only more usable for having a larger area) the new grid is way less usable: I have Clipboard, Audio and Network always hidden in there and now I find myself struggling to find where they went, as they move around on an extra axis (now vertically AND horizontally, versus just vertically in a list as it was) as new/old indicators come and go.
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On that point a list view with optional extra padding for tablet users would seem like a better solution than a grid, since the grid doesn’t have space for longer icon title text.
In general it’s hard if not impossible to use a single interface for desktop and mobile without compromising both. But an approach that gives mobile larger ‘click’ areas via a system-wide toggle stands the best chance of not alienating the 99% not using tablets IMO.
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FWIW this change has nothing to do with any kind of tablet/mobile/touch anything.
The grid layout in the system tray was motivated by multiple concerns, not just touch friendliness. It solved multiple bugs compared to the old list view.
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Dangit.. Just when I was starting to like the look where Dolphin was heading, it’s NOT anymore? The argument “looks too much like Nautilus” seems dumb to me. Kinda like “let’s be different just for the sake of being different” Well then, in that case the new taskbar is a carbon copy of Windows. Let’s revert that too. And while we’re at it, let’s put the start menu/launcher on the right side? BLEHHH.. I’m rapidly losing interest in all this, again. I will check again some time next year to see what has become of all this. Happy Holidays and Happy New Year everyone! Don’t drink and drive! Wear a mask! Don’t change Dolphin!
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If we’re talking design decisions, TBH I’d prefer Dolphin to look and work like Nemo. But expecting every other user to lose their settings and options would be kind of shitty, and installing Nemo isn’t any great hardship. The criticism people are making isn’t that Dolphin’s looking more like Nautilus, it’s that existing features are being removed or compromised like Nautilus was.
Being a KDE project, Dolphin has made a thing of letting users put their toolbar where they want, put additional icons into the toolbar, have a split screen view with two location bars, etc. And they’ll probably figure something out that lets people still have those options but also move the location bar. It’s not a zero sum game, it doesn’t have to come at the expense of other users.
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I have a solution for all the butthurt grumpies who love progress but at the same time detest change, which is hysterical, it goes like this: Use Debian or Kubuntu. That way some progress trickles down to your KDE versions but the UI stays the same, because it’s DEAD. Just the way you like it. Frozen in time. In case someone missed it, the KDE development train is very fast. Too fast for many, it seems. You can always jump off..
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Hi Nate,
i’m going to leave a copy of my thoughts posted on T11663 in case anyone wants to discuss it here as well.
I must i don’t like much of this “improvement”…
I have a few concerns:
1 – The buttons on my toolbar have text!
2 – I also added buttons to to the toolbar (which make the space available for the breadcrumbs much smaller)
3 – I don’t get the “tabs bellow URL” logic… from my point of view tabs should always be above URL!
4 – could Bug #343690 ( https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=343690 ) be considered to //help// solve 3?
5 – even forgetting all the above I find the layout very confusing (but it probably is just a question of time/getting used to it)
6 – Is there going to be an option to keep it as it is?
thanks
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Nate, Please keep this in the toolbar!
KDE is taking away much too much real estate already.
Thanks for keeping the desktop suitable for professional work, where we need to treat the applications as the premium users of the real estate, NOT the desktop environment.
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Yes, the plan is to have it in the toolbar by default. What we’re investigating are ways to make it optional or customizable so we don’t break people who like it where it is right now, or have tons of buttons on their toolbar, or use a side toolbar, or no toolbar.
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Super, thanks for the explanation. I really appreciate the work you do!
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Pro users have grown up computers and grown up monitors and don’t care about a few pixels for a toolbar. If they do they turn the toolbar off, which they can no longer do without losing the address bar.
Or you could say that real pro users are people like administrators, who don’t use graphical interfaces unless they have to.
They’re not fiddling around managing thousands of files they need every pixel to see at the same time on KDE using small form factor devices.
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This whole discussion about who’s a real pro user and how they use their computers seems like the True Scotsman fallacy. What I like about KDE is precisely that it does NOT pretend to know everything about who I am and what I want and how I should use my computers and how my monitor is or isn’t grown up. If I wanted to be told what to do, I would use Gnome.
I consider myself a pro user, at least I’m grown up and I use my computer and KDE to make a living, and my laptop has a 14″ screen, I do care about a few pixels for a toolbar, I like the change of having the address bar in the tool bar anyway, and I like the idea of having things customizable.
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Yeah, the idea that’s there’s only one way to do professional work is ridiculous. Having options and keeping features is good for a majority of users. Trickier for devs but that’s why Plasma is the best desktop environment out there for Linux IMNSHO.
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FYI: The reply from “John” above is not from the John who started this thread. But I am.
I do not want to start a war, I just wanted to say that I know from my extensive experience working in the machine industry that it is of paramount importance to maximize the amount of information that is on the screen. We had many problems using the Ruby on Rails platform to replace the script-based webpages they had, because of the huge amount of unnecessary white space everywhere (apart from resource consumption/sluggishness/cost of implementation/cost of upgrading all the time).
But let’s not stray too far off topic 🙂
Everything that helps to reduce (unnecessary) size of the interface itself is welcome. An example: if you count the number of lines of text on any “modern” webpage, it is mostly less than 25, even on a high res display. So in that respect we did not advance at all from 30 (!) years ago when I started using unix on a 80 characters/25 lines VT220 terminal.
To be even more concrete, I hope that the 75% wasted space (black/no text) in the application launcher and the 30% wasted space (just to display “no events today” – can I switch that off?) in the calendar will be solved. Apart from these things, great job everybody. I am using kde already since the 3.0 era and I plan to keep using it. But I am always more for fixing the fundamentals and getting out of the way than adhering to the latest fads w.r.t. styling.
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Another little idea, that stems from my “pimpin’ Windows 7 system files” days: The statusbar in Dolphin, there’s plenty of room for buttons like show preview, new folder, copy etc etc down there. There’s no need for that long text saying how much space is left and the folder size slider doesn’t need to be that long either, in fact it could be a small button with a popupslider instead. Now how much of a technical hurdle or massive undertaking coding-wise this would be is beyond me, I’m just throwing it out there. AND since we are apparently trying to do things differently than every other OS, wouldn’t this fit into that thought process like a glove? Oh and when I released my modified Windows 7 systemfiles in DeviantArt a few years ago, with the taskband (yeah it’s called that) at the bottom, the crowd went crazy! In a good way. It was surprisingly logical and easy to use AND it looked mighty fine as well, even if I say so myself. So there, whaddayathink, KDE people, is this a hit or miss?
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Yeah, if they can add the ability to have and configure more than one toolbar, then the idea of doing the statusbar as a toolbar that people can put what they want on is a logical extension of that. Sounds like something people would use.
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Hi Nate, they could not create any way for the two options to be had and the user to choose between having the address bar next to the tools bar or having it separately. The truth is I really miss the route of addresses in a longer space since I handle several buttons and when I have the window divided, the route is not displayed.
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