Re: drag and drop saving.

[Calum Benson <calum benson sun com>]

Liam Quin wrote:

> Sun started something like this in OpenWindows 3.2 or so, with every
> program having a rectangular "drag source" representing the current
> document, and a "drop site" for receiving documents.  But then the
> product was dropped, so I don't know if there were any usability studies.

Well, I haven't been able to dig out any usability studies so far. 
However, the feature was/is certainly very popular with OpenWindows
users; once you establish the convention, it's easy to learn and
remember.  It's clearly there because it's often hard to find something
draggable that represents the whole document/appointment/mail-message,
and the
drop target means that the entire window doesn't have to be listening
for drop requests.  

Sun argued hard enough for its continuance in CDE that you still find it
in dtcal (CDE's calendar app).  But not having it in every app makes it
much less usable.

Cheeri,
Calum.

-- 
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum benson ireland sun com    Desktop Engineering Group
http://www.sun.ie                      +353 1 819 9771

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems