Re: [HIG] Re: Viewports or equivalent

[Seth Nickell <snickell stanford edu>]

[For Havoc, this is a discussion about the pager's cross-workspace DND
behavior]

> The continuos misunderstanding of the behaviour of the gnome pager, is
> good enough proof on how user friendly it is not.

The current feedback from this operation is poor and seems to suggest
that the operation will allow you to position windows (when in fact it
does not). You're correct in observing that this is a source of
confusion and poor usability. Direct manipulation in the form of a move
with no feedback that "something else will happen" (for example, folders
highlight when you drop over them to indicate that the icon will not
move to that position on the screen, it will drop into the folder) means
"move this object on the screen to the place where I released the
mouse". This needs to be fixed...

However, that said, I think the current feature is more useful and/or
productive than allowing for precise positioning. Precise positioning
just isn't necessary, and more often than not users will avoid an extra
move operation (caused by imprecise mouse movements + allowing precise
positioning, thus putting windows in quirky places).

What we need to do is not revert the current feature, but modify its
visual language so it does not accidentally suggest precise positioning.

-Seth