BUG: 384999
Draw borders around dock widgets by default, which resolves some usability issues and supports the addition of additional default-visible dock panels in the future, e.g. https://phabricator.kde.org/D7700 -- when the future Tags panel is added and made visible by default, the usability issues resulting from having no frames will become much more obvious and user-facing. This fixes that in advance.
Tested in KDE Neon.
Here's Dolphin's main window with multiple vertical panels with the current default setting:
Here's Dolphin's main window with multiple vertical panels with the patch:
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-1 on the side panel frame
This was explicitly done to remove the amount of frames you have. I went through great lengths to achieve an identical look in Plasma applet config dialogs...
I can remove the side panel change from this patch so we can focus on the usability issues resulting from having Dock frames disabled.
-1 for the current version as well.
We've had those frames before. The benefit of locking docks is no frame (for me that is the benefit).
Without frames the splitter is invisible, which is a clear usability issue. It also presents an aesthetic issue since when content on either side of the splitter is cut off, it looks like a visual glitch:
I can't support a change to Dolphin's default layout that has two adjacent panels without sorting out the invisible separator issue. If this isn't the right way to do it, then so be it, but we will need to resolve it.
I understand that Breeze is a minimalistic theme, but we shouldn't be so minimalistic as to cause usability issues. Sometimes borders and frames are important to communicate boundaries between separate things.
Watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0Jj4lUm_p8
Apple really has done a marvelous job in making tags useful!
Anyhow, we can learn a couple things from there implementation of the sidebar.
To elaborate some more on point 1. Yes, that will pose an issue with people adding in a folder tree and opening a folder with a _lot_ of sub folders. That means a lot of scrolling in the panel.
I don't think that is really much of an issue.. But even if it is, a panel can still choose to have a max height and show a scrollbar if it exceeds it's limits.
As a 24 year Mac refugee and former Apple engineer, I agree with you that Finder's Tags implementation is excellent, and I think we should copy it. But the macOS Finder approach (everything scrollable in the same sidebar) is what was rejected in https://phabricator.kde.org/D7700. But getting there by putting all the Panels inside a scrollview with titles always visible is an idea I would fully support.
I'll see if I can re-work the patch to add separators when frames are off, rather than turning on all frames by default.
The shadow seems a bit gratuitous to me, but I have to say I do like the extra borders and the nice explicit separator between Panels.
Maybe another idea, instead of shadows is changing the colors between those containers. After all the bottom portion is a list like the one on the right. The background could be whiter.
I would avoid the shadows and frames personally - it would be better to focus on better spacing between the two areas and a clearer font usage to define them. Like Broulik mentions it was removed more or less by active choice.
A subtle line when something is truncated would also make sense (just having a single line at the bottom of the truncated list)
