Re: [Usability] Drag and drop in Web browsers

[John Keller <jkeller matchbox fr>]

Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
> (Removed nautilus-list, since this bit is about Web browsers.)
> 
> On 9 Feb, 2006, at 5:56 AM, Alan Horkan wrote:
>> ...
>> On Wed, 8 Feb 2006, Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
>> ...
>>>> I agree, it's not a Nautilus specific problem, I think web browsers
>>>> suffered from the same problem until they started using tabs.
>>>
>>> Web browsers have never suffered from this problem,
>>
>> never say never
> 
> No, really, they haven't. Hotmail briefly experimented with an ActiveX
> control where you could attach a file by dragging it into the browser
> window from Windows Explorer, but that's the only example I've ever
> seen, and it worked only because it was ActiveX. More to the point,
> apart from dragging text into a textarea, there's been no situation
> where you could drag stuff *from one browser window into another*, which
> is what would make panels useful.

This is very much a corner-case example, but I seem to remember a
web-based bookmarking system that allowed you to use drag-and-drop to
create a new bookmark. You'd navigate to a page, and drag the url from
the address field (above the page) into the extra popup window. I think
it used Javascript, but I can't remember for sure - or the site, to be
able to see if it's still in existence.

As I said, very much a corner case. And that was in the pre-tab days
(except for Opera). I don't really think it counts as causing
"suffering", but it does show that some people will do unexpected things.

- John