[Usability] Mouse-Gab Scrolling

["P G" <pg_gnome mail com>]

While we're on the topic of scrolling, let me
add an idea I've had for a long time.  
Scrolling is one of the most frequent window
operations, along with Close and Minimize, because often window contents are bigger than
the windows.  Making scrolling easier would be 
a great help.

My idea was inspired by the "Mouse grab" 
modifier key in X (default: Alt), and the 
mouse-grab scrolling I first saw in Adobe's 
Acrobat Reader.  

When X's mouse grab key is pressed while 
clicking Button1 inside a window, the pointer 
"grabs" the window so that subsequent dragging 
moves the window with the pointer.  No other 
mouse event is passed to the window or the 
application.  Similarly, Button2 resizes the 
window.

With Adobe's Grab, when the mouse is clicked in
the window, it grabs the window contents so 
that dragging the mouse moves the contents with
the pointer around the window, effectively 
scrolling the window.  This is convenient 
because it avoids having to target the 
scrollbar buttons with the pointer, or let go 
of the mouse.

It would be VERY conveinent to be able to 
switch into Contents-grab mode with any window,
by depressing a modifier key.  

You can   imagine  in a filer like Nautilus, 
pressing a key and dragging the mouse to scroll
around, then when you've found your desired 
file, releasing the key and clicking on the 
icon;  similarly in an editor, image editor, 
ect.

It's true that the purpose is somewhat similar
to the mouse wheel.  But I suspect the majority
of mice currently have no wheel, and maybe
never will:  mouse-grab solves the problem in
the software.  Also, Mouse-grab allows 
scrolling in an arbitrary direction while, as 
far as I know, a horizontal scroll action is 
not implemented (though it should be defined in
the HIG!).  Lastly, it seems that in some cases 
mouse grab may be a more intuituve way to 
scroll than the wheel.

In addition, if the mouse-contents-grab key 
was the same as the keyboard-contents-grab key
mentioned several days ago, this setup would be
even more intuitive to learn and use.

How does the idea sound?

Is this something that should be implemented
on the window manager level, or the windowing
environment (like X)?

Philip
-- 

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