Hello! Let me start by actually thanking the developers for all their hard work and fantastic software. KDE software is absolutely amazing and I love it - and have loved using it for years, on all my computers.
Now, it is exactly because I love KDE software that I would like to make an appeal, which is especially relevant with Dolphin in recent months: please stop changing the defaults from under people’s feet. While I understand that you are acting with the best intentions, it very often produces bad results that break people’s expectations and muscle memory.
I will provide three examples. The first is the fix for bug 508196, which completely broke user expectations on how “create a new folder” should work. This caused quite the stir and it broke very well established conventions and people’s muscle memory. The second is bug 492404, which highlights how Dolphin was changed so that, when you navigate from a subfolder back to the parent folder, the parent folder itself isn’t selected any more. There is also bug 494125, which describes how double-clicking on a file opens it, but also deselects it.
All of these issues have good intentions behind them: they came from an attempt to prevent data loss or confusion. The problem is that they also break expectations built over about 40 years on how these things should work. They go against what literally everybody else is doing, has been doing and will be doing. Now, I know that saying “but the others are doing it differently” isn’t a valid argument per se; however, when taken in the context of “what are the user expectations?” it is, indeed, a valid point, because if users find a certain behaviour everywhere else, it is legitimate of them to expect it in Dolphin as well. To provide a further example of this: clicking on an empty space deselects whatever is currently selected; if this was changed on the grounds that it makes it more difficult for people with motory disabilities to select things and keep them selected when using a mouse (which is a valid concern!), this would break a key assumption and a behaviour that has been established for basically forever.
Another good example of “do not change defaults” is the one with the status bar on the bottom. The intention was to make Dolphin leaner and cleaner, which is laudable; the update, however, should not have changed the behaviour of existing installations as that broke what people expected and were used to. A system which has already been set up should not be messed with by the developers, unless that is absolutely necessary - i.e. if a component needs to be removed due to security reasons or other catastrophic issues.
All of the above issues have caused significant discussion and created a huge blowback. While some of the commenters went way beyond what can be deemed acceptable, the vast majority of people seem to agree on one fact: defaults which have always been in place (in Dolphin too!), which are still in place in all other platforms and which will seemingly always be in place in other platforms have been tampered with, breaking assumptions and muscle memory, and therefore workflows.
I, like many others, am passionate about the software I use; however, I want to use the software, not to re-learn how to use it every few months because a feature has been tampered with. I want to use KDE software to do other things - work, play, create, enjoy content. I don’t want to use it to spend my time re-learning how to use it and to fight against seemingly random changes. I think I can speak for the vast majority of people when I write this.
If there is an issue or a worry, please try to think out of the box. The worry about “files could be accidentally deleted” expressed in bugs 492404 and 492125 is valid, but the answer is not to change the basic behaviour of a critical component of our systems, the file manager, to appease this worry. The answer is to change the defaults on new installs (and I can’t stress this enough!) so that when you press the “delete” button it shows a dialogue asking if you really want to delete that file or folder. That dialogue already exists and makes sure that tech-illiterate, older, younger, disabled and other folks (including those with cats who jump on their keyboards) who might be affected by the “might accidentally delete something” issue are protected, while everyone else can keep working happily like they always have. This is also a part of what people talk about when they discuss the differences between KDE and GNOME and say that GNOME has saner defaults: because you don’t have to dig deep into the settings and/or change the way you work for such basic things. (and I say this as someone who does not especially appreciate GNOME, nor the fact that they do often force a certain vision on how to do things on their users!)
Before making changes to a fundamental component of our systems like the file manager, therefore, I invite you to ask yourselves: how does this change impact users? How does it impact their assumptions and expectations? How does it impact their muscle memory? How does it impact their workflows? Is this change making Dolphin behave in a different way compared to what most other file managers do? Is this change actually changing things in “live systems” where things will find that their setup has been changed without their consent after an update?
You’ve created incredible software that makes lots of people happy to use their computers. Dolphin is widely considered to be the most powerful file manager out there, and for good reason. It really is an astounding piece of work. However, in order for it to stay like that, I invite you to not break the unspoken promise between you and us, the users: do not constantly make changes that make us put in effort to re-learn how to use your software on every update. Especially with well-established conventions. Everyone hates this and for good reason! We want to use your software as means to do something else, not as a means to itself. So please keep up on the good work, and try to put yourselves more in our shoes before effecting small, but important changes.
Thank you!
