Revision as of 00:03, 22 December 2009

Current State

Based on KDE SC 4.4 Beta1 I'd like to do a little tabbing usability testing.

Comparing Konqueror, Dolphin and Konsole I found 3 (three) different handling methods for tabs.

Konqueror:

In Konqueror I sometimes want to rearrange tabs, but that is not that easy as one might think. When clicking on a tab and dragging it arround the cursor changes to a websitesymbol with a plus. But the tab is not moving. So I end up adding another tab near the place I want the new tab and use this "copy url" method. This method is far from perfect for rearranging tabs.

While playing around I found out that when dragging to the desktop one can simply add a plasmabrowser with this! :-)

Dolphin:

Now this is what I call natural tab-handling. :-) Click on the tab you want to move and drag it around. The tab moves with the mouse - fixed to horizontal position - and the tabs rearrange while moving the tab.

It'll be cool to be able to drag a tab to the desktop to create a plasmawidget of that directory.

Konsole:

Clicking on a tab in Konsole and dragging it around makes a copy of the tab follow the mouse, but with the mouse showing the "dissalloed"-sign. When reaching a possible new place an indicator - green arrow - is appearing near the new tab position. Releasing the mousebutton moves the tab to its new position. There is no other place the tab can be dropped.

Again, it would be cool if the tab could be moved to the desktop to create a new plasma-konsole-widget (with the command running in it)

copy vs. move

Konqueror by default copies tabs by moving a tab with left mousebutton. Middle mousebutton was supposed to move the tab.

Dolphin seems not to have a modifierkey or other way to copy a tab.

Konsole also has no way to copy a tab.

Text in kate/kmail is moved by marking it and draging by left mouse, no modifier required. It gets copied with <CTRl> as modifierkey.

An app gets moved by left mousebutton, no modifier needed.

Programatical history

to be done...

Improvement thoughts

-	move	copy
content (in kate/kmail)	LMB NM	LMB + <CTRL>
tab	LMB NM	LMB + <CTRL>
app	LMB NM (Titlebar); LMB + <ALT> (in Appwindow)	LMB + <CTRL> (Titlebar)
app in group	LMB + <Meta>	LMB + <Meta> + <CTRL>