and can be configured to be a tree view:
Some settings in Dolphin, like 'Show Hidden Files', 'Show Preview', 'Sorting' and 'View Mode' are remembered per directory, which means that e. g. directory A can be configured to always show previews, while directory B can be configured to show just icons.
Other settings are global. For example the icon view can be configured to have a specific font. When changing the font, this font will be used for all directories where the view mode is an icon view.
The decision which setting is global and which setting is directory dependent is not easy. Currently the setting whether the details view offers collapse/expand-items for the tree functionality is a global setting and is called "Expandable folders". We are unsure whether there are use cases to remember this setting per directory or not and if we should change this in KDE 4.3.
Remembering the "Expandable folders" setting per directory would make it possible to have a tree view for directory A, while having a details view for directory B. I would be very interested to have some feedback for this topic by providing a use case that makes it useful remembering this per directory.
Generally speaking remembering the settings per directory has the benefit of being very flexible, but this flexibility also has it's drawback: Each time a new directory is created or entered the first time, more view dependent settings have to be adjusted.
So what do you think?
PS: All users that have activated the option "Use common view properties for all folders" I'd kindly ask to give no feedback, as with this setting all options are global settings and not directory dependent :-)
