Simplified Konqueror menus cripple the app and makes support difficult
Affects | Status | Importance | Assigned to | Milestone | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
kubuntu-konqueror-shortcuts (Ubuntu) |
Fix Released
|
Medium
|
Kubuntu Bugs |
Bug Description
The Kubuntu customised menus in Konqueror (Breezy) are a really bad idea. Here's why:
1. Imagine a support situation where the user says they are running KDE and using Konqueror. Someone on the other end of a phone will expect certain menu items to be there, and if they are not, a great deal of difficulty and embarrassment can follow.
This is not hypothetical -- this has already hampered my attempts to help people do tasks with Kubuntu. e.g. A friend needed to search a CD. Easy, right? Just open up System/Storage media, click on the CD, then go to Tools/Find File. Except it's not there.
2. You are effectively crippling the app -- doing this is equivalent to hacking the source and removing all the features you have hidden. Why? Because 95% of users will never find those features now. Re-enabling them requires a fair amount of expert help (in fact I failed to do this over the phone -- I'm not sure why, I'm guessing it was partly to do with how Konqueror loads it's settings, or it could have been a typing error on their side). A user will assume a feature with a non-existant GUI is non-existant.
3. You have removed lots of useful features! My beef here is to do with the specific items removed. 'Find File' is crucial and so is 'Show Navigation Panel'. Without the navigation panel, you have lost tree browsing of the file system, history, searching through bookmarks etc. You've also lost split left/right, which is an awesome feature, and lots of others. The tree view for folders was the first thing my father wanted to view, and it wasn't there. His impression will be that Konqueror doesn't have a tree view.
4. You are crippling other apps too. For example, amarok has a plugin for the navigation bar. But the menu item to show the navigation panel is gone, so that plugin is gone too.
Please, please remove this customisation! Simplified toolbars are fine - you can restore them with the GUI, and everyone knows that there are only buttons for very common features actions, and so will look in the menus if it isn't on the toolbar. But if you remove the menu item, the feature does not exist.
Question: How many of the Kubuntu developers use Konqueror in the state in which a new user would see it? If the answer is > 0, I'm surprised, and can I ask how you search for a file? 'locate:' is great, but not at all obvious (and doesn't look in a specified folder), and clearly the command line 'find', while the first choice for a developer type, is not much good for most users.
Apologies for the rant. I love Kubuntu, and I appreciate all the huge amount of work the developers must put in. But this modification is a really bad idea, and has caused me lots of difficulties already, please revert it.
Changed in kubuntu-konqueror-shortcuts: | |
assignee: | nobody → kubuntu-team |
Changed in kubuntu-konqueror-shortcuts: | |
status: | Unconfirmed → Fix Released |
Before Kubuntu 5.10, Konqueror's menu and toolbars were far too complex for beginners. And for advanced users.
They were too complex and not usable at all. Simplifying Konqueror was a request wanted by most of Kubuntu users.
Kubuntu developers designed a new Konqueror profile for web browsing, much simplier and much usable. We don't have to search a command among innumerable commands any more, and we gain space with only one line of toolbars, like in Firefox.
All features that are not present in the menu any more have not disappeared. They all are back if you choose the filemanagement profile.
It's really easy to add an icon to launch Konqueror with filemanagement profile, or this profile is automatically chosen when a removable device is automounted.
So I think that the request should not be to revert to the old konqueror usability, but to have the filemanagement profile more accessible: an icon to launch it in kicker or K menu would be a solution.
I propose to close this bug and to open a new one: "make the richer profile 'filemanagement' more accessible".