Home / KIO Wizard

An article on the dot showed how KDE protocols are so great and useful. Comments added that the underlining technology, KIO slaves, is under used, and even unknown to the users. As pointed out by Bob Page, a good UI principle is to put enough visible clues of a features for it to be used. He proposed a wizard thing. And I think this is a very great idea. I also want to add my own idea: make it available pratically everywhere where a URL can be entered. Let's see how:

That's simple: a wizard icon in Konqueror address bar

Here is the new layout of the address bar:
Konqueror address bar with KIO wizard button

A proposal for the wizard

Clicking the wizard icon would then popup a... wizard dialog:
KIO wizard dialog, page 1: select protocol
I just took a screenshot of Protocols part of KInfoCenter: the description is uggly and long (and users don't care of the translators, etc...).
A better choice would be to just give a short description (a simple label on bottom of the page) since parameters would be filled graphically on the second page. A button near the short decription would say More help... and launch an help window for the protocol.
And in any case, the list should provides "comprehensive names" of protocols when possible. Such as "Audio CD contents" instead of "audiocd:/", or perhapse two columns with icon+protocol and a short description at right.
Eventually we could show only most popular protocols, with a More protocols button that will show all protocols (and the dialog would remember if it was pressed between two launches).

Then, if requiered, the dialog would have a second page to provide parameters to protocols:
KIO wizard dialog, page 2: providing parameters to the protocol
For example, FTP protocol could ask a server, user name, password and folder...
If a protocol don't have any (audiocd:/, for example), the wizard should replace Next by Finish, so the user would get only one page of wizard (consision is good).

Then, perhapse a message box with "Don't show again" checkbox could say that:

The address bar has been changed to the location you asked. Notice that you can type the resulting address everywhere you can type address in KDE, or remember it to don't have to use the wizard the next time if you use this location frequently. If you want, you can bookmarks the address.

The Location field of Konqueror would then be changed to the generated address:
The resulting address Konqueror toolbar when wizard is completed

The file open / save dialog

The idea can be extended to KDE file open / save dialogs: it just add a tiny button to them, but it greatly enhance usability by making KDE IO slaves visibles for the users. They then can remember they've saw this icon in Konqueror, press it and "Ho! Wahoo, that's magic, I can open a FTP file directly in KWrite and edit it!". :-)

Conclusion

The usability of KDE isn't changed at well (contrary to this proposal) and it make the feature really visible where user need it (and not in a hidden submenu of KMenu / KInfoCenter / ...)
Oh yes, it eat 22x22 pixels on screen, horrible! :-D