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I have a very
simple feature I would like to see added to GNOME which I believe will add great power to the interface, but I have been unable to track down someone interested in implementing it, and I don't have time to myself. In fact I don't just believe that it will add great power to the UI, I know, because I have used this feature for a few years in Acorn RISC OS. Once you've used it you'll wonder how you ever did without it. Whom can I contact about at least building a prototype to see if it's something that the community wants? The feature is as follows: Quite simply, a file icon is added to the Save As dialog box which may be dragged to (a) a File Manager window, or (b) another application. In the case of (a), if you already have a File Manager window open somewhere that is viewing the directory you want to save the file to (a very common occurrence), why should you have to navigate the entire directory-structure using the Save As dialog box, in order to find the same directory again? It's right there in your open FM window, and you might have to navigate 10 levels deep of directories to find it again-- all for no reason. Just Drag'n'Drop--that's what it's for in the first place. In the case of (b), I can't begin to tell you how useful this is. Imagine editing a drawing in SodiPodi then saving it directly into a specific frame of a DTP document by drag'n'drop, no intermediate save necessary. Then drop an image from the GIMP in, again by dragging across from the Save As box. You don't like the DTP program's text editor so you use your favourite GNOME editor and save the text straight into the text frame when done. Of course you can do all this with Copy/Paste (or you'd hope you could), but the main problem with this mechanism is that there's usually no visual feedback as to what has happened when the selected item is copied, which makes it hard for some new users to work out what has happened, as the state of something hidden (the clipboard) has changed. From experience I can tell you that once you get this drag-save feature in a desktop it will redefine the meaning of "Drag'n'Drop" for you, you will be draggin' and droppin' all over the place and you'll create far fewer intermediate files. Please could someone give this a chance and try producing a prototype, or direct me to someone who will. I would do it if I had time, but unfortunately I don't as I'm moving country. Thanks in advance, Luke Hutchison. P.S. Another couple of features I'd like to see in the Save As box are a "Save selection only" option (think of how powerful that would be in combination with the above feature) and a way of specifying an email address rather than a destination directory, so that all GNOME apps are email-send enabled (pretty useful feature these days I'd say)... I realize though that visual clutter must be absolutely minimized. Perhaps "Send as Email" could be a button on the side like the "Home" etc. buttons in Ximian GNOME 1.4. Then the Save entry in the File menu could be renamed to "Save/Send"... Just a thought... |