Re: [Usability] Interacting with open folders

["Adam D. Lopresto" <adam pubcrawler org>]

On Thu, 10 Feb 2005, Christian Neumair wrote:

> Am Donnerstag, den 10.02.2005, 14:52 +0100 schrieb Maurizio Colucci:
>
> >    [Proposals for improving spatial folder window interaction]
> >
> >    I am not sure if this also allows to drag an open folder to another
> >    place.
>
> We definitly need a drag handle for spatial windows somewhere.
> Some brainstorming:
>
> a Use whole statusbar as drag handle (is this sane/intuitive?)
> b Use menu in statusbar on the left as drag handle
> c Middle-clicking background and moving starts drag
> d Use menubar as drag handle
> e Add special area to menubar on the right with a folder icon, use this
> as drag handle
> f Have a folder icon at the edge of (always displayed) scrollbars as
> drag handle (cp. gimp)
>
> b and c could turn out to work nicely. Should I give an implementation a
> try?

B sounds like it would be wonderful.  Actually, I think it should be extended
a little, and the entire menu in the status bar should be treated as real
folder icons.  That is, the menu item should probably have a small folder icon
next to it, and when the menu is opened all of the items in it should have
icons.  They should all respond to right click (by calling up the context
menu), drag (like normal), and middle click (open that folder, close this one)
in addition to just left click.  No additional widgets (well, an extra icon),
but a lot more utility.  Whether or not it's discoverable would have to be
tested, but I know I would have discovered it (I tried it when I first tried
Nautilus, and was rather disappointed to find it lacking).
--
Adam Lopresto
http://cec.wustl.edu/~adam/

Silly human, tricks are for me.