Re: [HIG] REVIEW of Mini-HIG draft - Section 8

[Calum Benson <calum benson sun com>]

> 50. `Mouse Interaction Basics' > `Drag and Drop':
>
>   Tooltips have, up to now, only been provided when the mouse button
>   is not down. I predict that if tips were provided during a drag and
>   drop operation, users would find it extremely disconcerting.

Perhaps; we had a modicum of success with the idea on a project I worked
on long ago, but I doubt it would ever be a killer feature.

> 51.  Mouse Interaction Basics > Drag and Drop
>
>     The behavior of opening a menu when a drag is dropped is described
>     in the /User Interface Hall of Shame/ (in the case of
>     right-click-and-drag in Windows Explorer) as `perhaps the *least*
>     intuitive operation ever conceived in interface design'
>     <http://iarchitect.com/explore.htm#EXP2>. I agree.

It's not supposed to be intuitive, it's supposed to be an advanced
feature, as is anything involving pop-up menus.  You can quite happily
perform the equivalent copy/move/link tasks without ever seeing a popup
menu by holding down the correct combination of modifier keys during the
drag, but if you're anything like me you'll never remember which ones to
hold down.

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