Why do people dislike Dolphin?

[Tony Sivori]

On Tue, 04 Nov 2008 15:05:26 +0200, Dotan Cohen wrote:

> 2008/11/4 nepal <nepal.roade at googlemail.com>:
>> On Monday 03 November 2008, Herman Holmström wrote:

>>> Why is it that so many hates Dolphin?


>> 3. It is cluttered and poorly thought out to look at,
>>
> I need more detail than that. Something specific.
> 
> 
>> 7. Just for good measure, its pig ugly!
>>
>>
> Could you be more specific? What would you change to make it not pig
> ugly? What components do not look good to you?

I'm not the person you addressed the above comments to, but until you say
differently I will assume that you are willing to consider anyone's
constructive comments.

I disliked Dolphin the instant I saw it. As another poster noted, you only
get one chance to make a good first impression. To me, due to the way it
wasted the right hand third of the monitor, Dolphin looked like something
straight out of AOL.

A less than serious comment: An amusing thought occurred - there is a
history of any new application named for a mammal needing a killing. Kat -
a resource hogging GUI search / index application. Then Beagle, yet
another search / index application that I didn't like, and now Dolphin!

Now back to serious feedback. What I disliked about Dolphin: It wasted a
lot of screen space. No address bar. No "up" button. Any file manager that
makes it difficult to maneuver in my files is, as far as I'm concerned,
Dead On Arrival.

I immediately changed all relevant file associations from Dolphin to
Konqueror.

One last admittedly biased dislike. Dolphin isn't Konqueror. I know it
sounds ridiculous, but some users don't like change for the sake of
change. I have some time invested in learning and customizing the
Konqueror user interface. Konqueror has and is serving me very well, so I
have no desire to change.

My general attitude is that my computer is a tool, not a toy. I want to
spend my time using my computer, not playing with my computer. Enhancing
functionality in new versions is great, provided that the old
functionality is not removed.

Asking users to throw out proven software for different software that has
similar (and possibly reduced) functionality, and then throw in a learning
curve to boot (KDE 4.x and Plasma suddenly comes to mind) is like asking
the established user base to just go elsewhere.

Dolphin might have got a better reception if it had automatically imported
Konqueror's settings and applied Konqueror's settings to itself.

All that said, due to your comments in this thread, I've had another look
at Dolphin. After changing a few things (adding the "up" button and the
location bar, removing the right panel, showing hidden files, and of
course the detailed list view), I admit it does not look bad. Not bad at
all. In fact, after one last tool bar adjustment, I actually like the way
it looks. But I haven't really used it for anything, other than some brief
file browsing.

-- 
Tony Sivori
Due to spam, I'm now filtering all Google Groups posters.