Drag and drop UI/UX improvements

Brainstorm
1
  1. Object target areas

If you want to drag an object, e.g., a file, you can grab it anywhere on its row, but if you want to drop it onto another object, e.g., a folder, the file must be placed on top of the icon or the name of the folder:

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By changing the target area of the folder from its icon+name to its row, it would be consistent with the target area of the file.
The file-moving task would also become easier.

  1. Folder highlights

When hovering a file over a folder that you want to drop it onto, the folder highlights are too subtle:

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Odd ordered rows go from white to a light grey that’s regrettably comparable to the one found on even ordered rows…

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…and even ordered rows go from light grey to a slightly darker shade of light grey.

Changing these highlights to a dark grey or deep blue colour would be consistent with the colour scheme of Dolphin and would make the destination folder easily recognisable.

  1. Drag and drop context menu

If you drag and drop an object to an empty space within the same folder, a context menu will appear:

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This happens even with the context menu disabled (System Settings > General Behavior > Drag and Drop > When dragging files or folders: Move if on the same device).

I don’t know if this is intentional or a bug, but in any case, I would appreciate if it didn’t happen.

3 Likes
Can I change this color in Dolphin?
2
  1. ur right, that would be better
  2. goes with 1. but is also very much theme dependant
  3. that setting is not intended to disable the context menu, only to choose a default between move and copy… you still might want to make a link, for instance.
3

re: 1: there is some dev reasoning for that current behaviour: Revert "KItemListController: Use entire row for drag and drop if highlightEntireRow is true" (!1228) · Merge requests · System / Dolphin · GitLab i was linked to that MR on my bugzilla ticket complaining about it

that reasoning does make sense but the result is indeed unintuitive when pretty much all other kinds of actions work across the entire row. i suppose it may end up being changed again to be configurable if it keeps getting brought up :stuck_out_tongue:

4

I went through all of these themes and they all have the wimpy highlighting:

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Fair enough, but then I’d like to have a setting that does disable it.

I can do that by holding down shift and dragging the file somewhere else.
There’s no need to have a link in the same folder as the file the link is linking to.

5

So the current inconsistent and unintuitive behavior is intended because someone found the old behavior inconvenient with multiple windows, tabs, and split views?
Seems like it would be wiser to get basic functionality right and then find ways to accommodate the advanced features.