Re: DragNDrop to an unopened folder (without springs) and a nice accessibility side-effect

[Alan <alan ufies org>]

On Mon, Apr 04, 2005 at 10:11:55AM +0900, Ryan McDougall wrote:
> problem:
> 
> Many times I grab a file to DnD without having the destination folder
> already opened, so I have to drop it back where it came from, then open
> the correct folder, then restart the DnD. 
> 
> It is natural to grab something before you know exactly where to put it,
> since you can do it in real life, but stopping and restarting a DnD is a
> waste of time and error prone (accidentally moving your file if you just
> let go of the button).
[snip]
> 
> When the user holds a DnD for a certain period of time, perhaps 3
> seconds, the drag object goes to a "Moving Clipboard" attached to the
> mouse but offset a little, and the pointer reverts to its normal usage.
> This allows users to navigate via nautilus as normal while retaining the
> object on the "Moving Clipboard". When the user clicks on an empty space
> in a opened window he is asked if he wants to paste the file.
> 
> As I mentioned this method also helps people who find it difficult to
> hold a mouse button down for more than 3 seconds.

This sounds a bit odd to me, but maybe a slight tweak would help.
When a user starts dragginf a file, a floating pseudo file-clipboard 
appears (maybe a popup from the panel).

The name would be something to help discoverability of course, but I
can't think of a good one now.  Anyway, if the user chooses to drop the
file there they can (if the destination folder isn't visible).  The file
doesn't "move" yet, the file-clipboard just knows that something will
happen with this file.

The user can then navigate to the destination folder and drag the file
from the file-clipboard to the destination. 

Nice side effects from this would be that you can select multiple files
and put them on the clipboard, and move them all to the same folder (or
go and open up multiple destination folders to drag multiple files to  
multiple destinations).

The analog equivelant of this would be pulling some papers out, putting
them to the side of the desk, rifling through your file folders till you
find the right one, and picking up the papers from the desk and putting
them in the folder.

Not nearly as nice as spring loaded folders of course, but a thought.

alan

-- 
Alan <alan ufies org> - http://arcterex.net
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"Backups are for people who don't pray."                 -- big Mike