'Up' arrow in file browser, too?

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'Up' arrow in file browser, too?
by Tim on Friday 02/Mar/2007, @03:42

Troy, thanks for the terrific articles. And especially to all the kde4 developers!

I recently had a chance to use MacOSX, after being 99.9% KDE and 0.1% Windows for several years. Given OSX's reputation I was excited to give it a spin, but I confess that I really did not like the Finder. One of the biggest usability problems for me: it took me 10 minutes to figure out how to go "up" one level of the directory hierarchy. For me, the problem was that it looked like all the functionality should be available from the buttons in the finder window (so much of it was), but in fact one had to navigate into a menu in order to find "up". Even now that I know what to do, it still seems like a really horrible usability design mistake.

Now, perhaps the breadcrumbs (which look nice!) basically eliminate the need for an up button? But will an up button be available as an option? (In particular, do recent versions of Windows still have an up button? One could imagine this being something set by an initial "configure KDE to look like: 1. KDE, 2. MacOSX, 3. Windows" wizard.)

Also, what will the breadcrumbs code do when the file hierarchy gets so deep that it can't all be displayed in the window? Presumably there has already been thought given to this, but I'll offer my 2 cents (for what it's worth):
1. Having all of the breadcrumbs get more and more abbreviated (sort of like the tabs in konsole) might not be great, because then they really won't convey any useful information---a single character probably won't help most users figure out which directory is which.
2. One might want to prefer showing the directories that are immediately above the current location, if necessary at the expense of ones even higher up. After all, one can always click "home" to get there.
3. Alternatively, the algorithmist in me likes a "fully display every nth directory" (or perhaps choose the ones to display on a log scale, oooo!) because it insures that any higher directory is not many clicks away. But I fear that could be rather confusing to most users, so I don't really suggest it seriously...

Related Links

·   Articles on KDE Public Relations and Marketing
·   Also by Tim
·   Contact author

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Re: 'Up' arrow in file browser, too?
by Jucato on Friday 02/Mar/2007, @03:48

> But will an up button be available as an option?

In the KDE 3.5 Dolphin release, you can add an Up button by configuring the toolbar.

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Re: 'Up' arrow in file browser, too?
by Vlad on Monday 05/Mar/2007, @09:27

I would prefer your option 2 combined with Left/Right buttons similarly to the Left/Right buttons that appear when you have too much open tabs in Konqueror.

Speaking of tabs in Konqueror, I would like to have an option for setting the minimal width of the tab title (if you have many open tabs, the title currently reduces to "..." which is not very informative).

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