Re: [Nautilus-list] Canceling a drag.

[Calum Benson <calum benson ireland sun com>]

Jussi Hagman wrote:
> 
> Quoting John Sullivan (sullivan eazel com):
> >
> > Note that you can already cancel a drag by dropping the items anywhere that
> > doesn't accept them -- such as the window title bar, or the menu bar/tool
> > bar/location bar, etc.
> 
> Good to know, that works to me. Wether it is a easy for a beginner
> to see this possibility or wether it is a good UI design is another
> question.

Well, drag-and-drop has traditionally never been a feature intended for
the complete beginner anyway, although I guess the times they are
a-changing.  I think the most important thing is that once someone
learns how to use drag and drop, it works the same way in every
application on their desktop.  Which should include being able to drag
anything with the left or right button (popping up a menu that includes
Cancel in the latter case), obvious drop-target highlighting as they
drag the object around (perhaps with an explanatory tooltip if they
hover the mouse over a valid drop target), being able to press Escape to
cancel mid-drag, and perhaps most important of all-- having a good Undo
command available if they screw up completely!

Personally, I always thought it would be sort of neat to be able to
cancel a drag by shaking the mouse violently, as if you were shaking the
thing off the end of your pointer, but I'm just a violent sort of person
I guess :)

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