document icons as DND sources

[Christian Neumair <cneumair gnome org>]

Am Dienstag, den 10.06.2008, 13:10 +0100 schrieb Calum Benson:
> On Mon, 2008-06-09 at 20:30 -0700, Dylan McCall wrote:
> 
> > Has anyone considered having the
> > tabs work like the breadcrumbs currently do in Browser mode, where they
> > can be dragged and dropped as files, or have files dropped into them, to
> > quickly manipulate files? It would be a nice boost to functionality, and
> > at least the dragging part should be relatively simple to implement.
> 
> To generalise that idea, what you're really talking about here is having
> some part of any window (e.g. the icon in its tab or titlebar) act as a
> proxy for the document(s) it contains.  Sun's OpenWindows desktop used
> to do this quite extensively[1]; MacOS X still does it today in a rather
> more half-hearted fashion.
>
> 
> [1] <http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/806-2901/6jc3a4lqj?l=en&a=view>
> [2]
> <http://theappleblog.com/2007/07/20/quick-tip-window-title-bar-icon/>

I am a huge fan of DND concepts, and making icons represent documents is
totally intuitive from a user perspective, and a major step forward.

If this is adopted, it should be done across the entire desktop. I often
wanted to to directly trash a downloaded PDF documents, or move it to a
particular folder.

Some random notes:

* [If we re-use the Sun concept]: Where to place the icon / drag
handle. The RHS of the toolbar, or an area overlapping both the menu bar
and the toolbar seem to be a good choice - where we put a spinner for
file and web browsers:

[ file edit ... ] | ******
| T O O L         | *icon*
| B A R           | ******


* What other drag handles can we come up with. For instance, window
lists could also be used as a drag source.

* What actions to offer. move/copy DND is fine, but for PDF documents we
may also offer dedicated file operation shortcuts on right-clicking
(Trash, Cut, Copy).

It would be amazing if you do some UI studies how this could actually
look, then we can discuss about getting this into GNOME. :)

best regards,
 Christian Neumair

-- 
Christian Neumair <cneumair gnome org>