A cursory look into KDE 4 file management: Dolphin beta
New features in Dolphin
After a quick restart, I started to poke around to find new features. And I did:
The column view
Not everyone has a huge stash of files at home (or at work). But for those of us who do, wading through millions of files is a daily event. So I was pleasantly surprised when I discovered that the Finder’s column view had made an appearance in Dolphin:
The Dolphin column view is a bit weird, in that at the beginning I didn’t know how to move around, but after discovering that the ENTER key opens a folder in a new right-hand column, and the left arrow key “returns” to the next-left column, I was set.
Of course, the preview feature works too, though it’s kind of futile at the default row/icon height of this view.
Split views
I abandoned Nautilus because of one reason — I constantly found myself mumbling “God damnit, I need to put this file in another folder, and I have to open the folder first”. Once I discovered Control+Shift+L in Konqueror (the keyboard shortcut that splits the view in two independent views), I was forever sold to KDE again.
Dolphin takes it one step further, putting a large button in the toolbar for splitting the view by default. And putting a better, easier to access hotkey to activate the feature. Once you’re in a folder, and you discover you need to organize a file, you just hit the key shortcut, navigate to the new location, drag the file from the old pane into the new pane, and then hit the shortcut again. Presto — you’re back where you started and you can carry on. No need to go to the desktop. No need to open a separate folder view. No nothing, no nonsense. Results.
Panels
What used to be split views and sidebars in Konqueror makes a new appearance in Dolphin. I’ve focused on two of them that I bet will become favorites. The information panel, and the Konsole panel:
Both can be activated and deactivated (much like the rest of features in Dolphin) with easily accessible keyboard shortcuts.
The filter bar
A small filter bar has been sitting atop my Konqueror file manager for a few weeks now (courtesy, I guess, of one of the Kubuntu updates). I just don’t use it as much as I should — for some reason, actually picking the mouse up and clicking there, then typing, is annoying.
No more. In Dolphin, the filter bar shows up much like Firefox’s Find text feature, when you hit Ctrl+I. Type “jpg”, and you’ll be seeing exclusively all pictures. Anything you type prunes from the view all the files that don’t contain the string in their name.
Strigi desktop search and NEPOMUK technology
Regrettably, I couldn’t find any integration with the famed Strigi desktop search yet. I understand that, at some point, Dolphin will make use of both the NEPOMUK framework and the Strigi desktop search technology, but it appears not to be in there yet. Not just yet. Therefore, the Find file feature in Dolphin invokes good old KFind:
Option panels
Here are a few option panels. It’s refreshing to see that Dolphin configuration has been made much more straightforward than Konqueror’s. I understand that Konqueror, due to its complexity, needs to expose many more options to the user than Dolphin — but this is precisely why I think Dolphin will be a winner for the desktop user.
Conclusion
Dolphin’s refreshing simplicity is a big win for KDE desktop users. I understand a large minority of the KDE user base may come to regret the decision to move to Dolphin as dictatorial, but they need to understand that Dolphin is the right call, for the sake of future KDE desktop adoption.
And it’s not like they can’t associate inode/directory back to Konqueror, can’t they? 
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October 18th, 2007 at 15:26
One very important thing is missing in Dolphin : - sort by type.
I can’t understand how the developpers did forget such a functionality…
October 21st, 2007 at 20:03
[...] Rudd-O.com recently posted a look at the new KDE 4 window manager to replace Konqueror. Although there is nothing really exciting about a new window manager, it is very nice to see the old one, Konqueror, replaced, because I always found it to be one of the few annoying features of KDE. [...]
October 21st, 2007 at 20:06
Great article! I am really glad to see Konqueror being replaced by Dolphin. I can’t wait for KDE 4. I just wrote about this article on my site.
October 21st, 2007 at 21:21
click on “Details” in the toolbar, right click on the headers in the file listing (the ones that say “Name”, “Size”, “Modified”…) and select Type. now click on the newly displayed Type column. presto: sort by type.
a minor usability bug atm is that the View -> Additional Information entry only works with icon views not detail views.
these are sorts of little bits of refinement we’ll see between now (4.0beta3) and 4.1.
October 21st, 2007 at 21:24
click on “Details” in the toolbar, right click on the headers in the file listing (the ones that say “Name”, “Size”, “Modified”…) and select Type. now click on the newly displayed Type column. presto: sort by type.
a minor usability bug atm is that the View -> Additional Information entry only works with icon views not detail views.
these are sorts of little bits of refinement we’ll see between now (4.0beta3) and 4.1.
regarding strigi/nepomuk integration, the information sidebar uses them for metadata such as ranking and tagging. but yes, it’s not as integrated as will eventually become. the really good news is that this integration will largely happen using the xesam spec (which was spearheaded by the strigi team on freedesktop.org) which means that one will be able to use it with any search back end that implements the xesam query language system.
October 22nd, 2007 at 5:36
KDE rocks.. I am eagerly waiting for the version 4. Hope dolphin will be much faster than konqueoro
October 23rd, 2007 at 6:32
I upgraded to Kubuntu Gutsy and found that the file manager is changed to dolphin. I was happy with it for a while (because faster startup), until I started to work seriously with it.
-In the preview view I cant change the size of the images large enough to use. -Too much space between the images. -At the right sidebar there is a preview, but too small and without image resolution info. (Konqueror shows a larger preview image in a tooltip with more info) -In Konqueror easy to switch the “show hidden files” item, it’s in the menu. In dolphin it’s much harder. I need this all the time.
Sorry, but it’s one step forward and two (or more) steps back.
October 23rd, 2007 at 9:02
To increase the size of the previews, go to the preferences in Dolphin.
The preview resizes itself with the width of the sidebar.
Show hidden files can be added to the toolbar as a toggle button.
The next dolphin 4 changes the preview/icons behavior to one you’ll like even more.
October 24th, 2007 at 5:49
Seems like Kubuntu Gutsy (I upgraded from Feisty) has an older or buggy version of Dolphin. If I change the preview images largest size it’s still the same. The same applies to the sidebar preview images, they don’t resize. One time it showed me resolution info at ONE image, but no more since then.(???)
I found the show hidden files icon, thanks for it!
October 29th, 2007 at 1:07
@sede
Kubuntu includes the old version of Dolphin, based on Qt3. It is very different from the one that will be included in KDE4. However, if you are looking for a good Dolphin for KDE3, check out D3lphin. It’s the KDE3 version of Dolphin, with a few bugfixes (show hidden files is in the menu for example, and other things).
October 29th, 2007 at 7:30
“And it’s not like they can’t associate inode/directory back to Konqueror, can’t they?
“
Actually, I believe I read that you will be able to change this preference in KControlCenter/Personal settings.
November 9th, 2007 at 17:46
Ive used dolphin3 and like it quite a lot, the only things are, i cant resise the preview icons (with ctrl scroll)
and there dousent seem to be a tree view available,
tree view > breadcrumb trail IMHO
November 13th, 2007 at 6:16
It’s really quite important to point out that Kubuntu Gutsy does not have dolphin. It has d3lphin, which has a symlink from the command dolphin (do a ls -l
which dolphin). d3lphin is a neat little backport of an earlier version of dolphin with some features disabled. It’s certainly worthy of review, but it also is not dolphin. This is a review of d3lphin.November 14th, 2007 at 1:31
No, this is Dolphin 4. Pay attention to the theme. It’s Oxygen.