Previews: allow to disable in the UI

[dragotin]

With current master, the file list with preview icons waste way too many vertical space. This turns ownCloud file management to an inefficient tool for file management, especially since the preview images are of limited use for many mime types.

Please urgently provide an option in the Web UI to disable the preview mode and switch to a mode with file listing within a reasonable row height.

[MorrisJobke]

cc @jancborchardt

[jancborchardt]

As said in #5170 the margin is not a waste of space but rather it helps to tell the different rows and files apart.

The limited use for many mime types is not exactly true. Bigger file type icons also help to distinguish files better. In ownCloud 5 everything felt crammed and way too tiny, we need to break it up a bit. This also makes everything much more usable on tablets and bigger screens, where previously everything was tiny and hard to click or tap.

@owncloud/designers @karlitschek

[dragotin]

If I only see 12 (!) rows on my big screen there is no real need to distinguish file types any more ;-) Really. It's too much space wasted.
But the subject of the bug is: Please provide a Button or something to switch to a more useful view rather than pushing this to every user.

[PVince81]

How about a push button in the file list toolbar bar called "Show previews" and/or with an image icon on it ? The button would be pushed/enabled by default and its state could be saved in a cookie or user settings (not sure how whether there is a precedent for such view settings).

[dragotin]

@PVince81 yes, exactly that's what I was hoping for.

[DeepDiver1975]

maybe we need to add a second view mode like desktop file managers do this as well?
One view with the small icons (non preview) as we had this in oc5 and the new one as of today

@dragotin @jancborchardt @MTRichards @karlitschek ideas objections? THX

[karlitschek]

perhaps. Let's discuss after ownCloud 6 is out :-)

[MorrisJobke]

@karlitschek I changed the milestone to OC7

[jancborchardt]

Sorry I didn't comment on this before but yes, I object against a view-mode switch. The current view is a balance between list and useful previews and a good size.
It's not only for tablets, but also to male the interface more approachable.

Also, it would be difficult to need to support two views.

[dragotin]

No, please... If you only see 12-15 items on a reasonable screen its neither a good list nor a useful preview pane. It really is not: For a list there is too much space wasted and for a good preview the preview images are too small. Yes, we aim the software to unexperienced users but that must not mean that it becomes hardly useable for experienced users with more than 25 files.

A switch between list- and preview view is a good compromise.

[DeepDiver1975]

I'm moving this back to oc6 - mainly not to forget that this discussion is not over yet

[jancborchardt]

I definitely don’t see us doing this for ownCloud 6 because a view switcher is a really big feature we need to maintain. Moving to ownCloud 7 if at all. We need to have a thorough talk about this.

[jancborchardt]

After discussing with @dragotin we concluded that the existing changes which make multiselect easier (bigger clickable area) and coming changes introducing a sidebar for easier filtering will probably fix the underlying problem. Also a neatly integrated search (inline-filtering style) would be cool. @butonic @andrewsbrown :)

[abrown]

@jancborchardt, I already have inline-filtering working locally but I can't do anything until #4553 is merged...

[jancborchardt]

@andrewsbrown nice! Looking forward to it. :)