Re: Drag and drop is dead, long live drab and throw :)

[Herbert Szumovski <hszumovs cisco com>]

The idea sounds good, but to make this a widely accepted feature,
it should work without  possibilities to create undesired
results.  I could imagine to mark a target-icon with ALT and
left mouse-click to give it some gravity.  If there is only
one target marked, throw could be started by just pressing
ALT and right mouse-click, if there are more targets marked,
throw could be started by ALT/right mouse-click and a small
throw-motion in the right direction.  However, even the latter
would work only if the targets are not to close to each other.
However, I confess, I would like such a feature !
Cheers, Herbert

At 01:19 PM 6/18/99 Friday, Alastair B Roberts wrote:
>On Fri, 18 Jun 1999, Mark R. Bowyer wrote:
>
>> 
>> >From: Toby Jaffey <psystrj@unix.ccc.nottingham.ac.uk>
>> >On Thu, Jun 17, 1999 at 01:40:05PM -0300, Victor Bogado da Silva Lins
wrote:
>> >> 	1) open 1 or more "black hole"'s objects. Once there is one or more
>> >> black holes open the drag operations with icons are interpreted as a
>> >> throw not a a drop anymore. Each black hole has a event orizon that
>> >> would decide if the icon fell in the black hole or not.
>> 
>> Why do we need to differentiate between throws and drops this way?  *That* 
>could 
>> lead to confusion of the form "Why can't I drop any more?", "Because you 
>need to 
>> close that funny little thing over therer, first".  Not good.
>> 
>> Surely we can take a leaf from Gesture research here.  For a drag, the 
>mouse has 
>> started to decelerate before we release the button.  For a throw, the 
>button is 
>> released while the mouse is still accelerating.  This is how we drop and 
>throw 
>> in real life, it should work that way on-screen, too.
>
>Sounds like a good idea, but
>
>(a) how easy would this be to implement?
>(b) it was mentioned previously in this thread about the inaccuracy of
>    the modern mouse (especially after its been used for a while). I
>    fear that the average mouse will not accelerate and deaccelerate
>    accurately enough to reliably detect. Remember the basic HCI
>    (human computer interaction) principle: speed and accuracy are
>    tradeoffs. If one has to accelerate the mouse to throw an icon,
>    the accuracy of the placement will be very much decreased. Just
>    a thought.
>
>A previous poster mentioned holding down ALT to enable "throws". This
>sounds like the best idea so far.
>
>Just my two cents worth :-)
>
>Cheers,
>Alastair
>
>--
>+====================================================================+
>| Alastair Roberts    abr@tardis.ed.ac.uk   PGP key on request       | 
>| Software Engineer   http://www.tardis.ed.ac.uk/~abr                |
>+====================================================================+
>
>
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