Re: [Nautilus-list] selection

[John Sullivan <sullivan eazel com>]

on 5/29/00 12:51 AM, Mathieu Lacage at lacage email enst fr wrote:

> John Sullivan <sullivan eazel com> writes:
> 
>> 
>> Hi Mathieu,
>> 
>> What you are describing is very much on purpose. The third state, what you
>> are calling "highlighted", is what is often called "prelighting". The idea
>> is that active areas of the screen light up in a subtle way as you move the
>> cursor over them, to indicate that they are active and that clicking will do
>> something. It is a lightweight, transient sort of feedback. Real selection,
>> such as you get with dragging a box around icons (or shift-clicking them, or
>> just clicking them when the double-click-to-activate preference is set), is
>> a more stable state that does not change based on mouse location.
>> 
>> Many widgets behave this same way. For instance, GtkCheckButtons light up
>> when you're moving over them, but are not "selected" until you click.
> 
> I am not too sure that is equivalent. The main difference is the
> presence of the pop-up menu... I really find the nautilus way
> disturbing and non-intuitive for me. Although I have found out
> not to trust my user experience in these matters, I remember
> very well how uneasy I felt when I discovered this.
>
> One question: if I select some icons, are the other ones highlighted
> when you pass above them ? If so, can you right click and get the
> coresponding context-menu without unselecting the rest ?
> 
> 
> Mathieu

The pop-up menu works on the selected items, not just on the clicked item.
It uses the normal rules of selection -- i.e., if you just (right-)click,
only that one item is selected, and any other selected items are deselected.
If you shift-(right-)click, the clicked item is added to the selection.

So to specifically answer your question, yes, you can get the context menu
without unselecting the rest, but if you do this (by holding down the shift
key) the context menu will apply to all the selected items. Some items in
the menu that only make sense on a single-item basis will be insensitive.

Thanks for the feedback that you find the prelighting disturbing and
non-intuitive. We haven't heard this feedback from other people yet. Every
little bit of feedback helps, and maybe your messages will inspire others to
let us know what they think about the way prelighting, selection, and the
context menus work in Nautilus. These behaviors are by no means locked down
and the more feedback we can get, the better.

John