[Usability]Desktop stay-on-top

[Josh Hoyt <joshhoyt yahoo com>]

On Thu, 2002-11-14 at 01:49, John F Dixon Iv wrote:
> Why is the trash can located on the desktop? Why is it not located on 
> a panel?

On Wed, 2002-11-13 at 23:58, Gregory Merchan wrote:
[lots of snipping]

> There is another point, but it's not so much a problem solved as it is
> something afforded.  That is that Pick Up could be used discontinuously.
> One may pick up any number of items over time and any number of times,
> then finally drop them elsewhere. With Cut/Copy you are limited to what
> you can select in one selection ring. Mistakes of recutting or recopying
> are very slightly less forgiving.

> > So as we said above, the problem cut/copy/paste and pick up/drop share
> > is that a picked-up file or cut file doesn't go anywhere when it's cut
> > or picked up. It stays on the file system. I think a proper resolution
> > would be to show the user this.
> I absolutely agree that the limbo state needs to be indicated. The
> Windows-style desaturation seems a good way to do this. With Pick Up/Drop,
> I think there should also be an indicator following the cursor. The indicator
> can be done as the DnD indicator is done - with an override-redirect window.
> To avoid conflicting PickUps between files and other pick-up-able things,
> there can be a _GNOME_PREHENSILE_FOOT selection.

These messages both remind me of a thread in the Gnome 4 pie-in-the-sky
discussion about replacing the panel with a part of the desktop that
stays on top. This would obviously address the problem of digging for
the trash, since one could put it on this visible desktop part. It would
also address the problem of moving/linking many files, since it could
act as a clipboard.

Actions for a file could include copying, linking, moving, all of which
have a target of this scratch area. This is like picking up a file. To
put it down, the user could drag it to another folder. This provides
good feedback to the user, since the files are not in limbo, but just
temporarily in this scratch space.

Without altering nautilus, this could be implemented by a panel applet
that acts like a spring-loaded folder in the MacOS finder, popping up a
nautilus window when a file is dragged onto it. If the trash was in this
folder, accessing the trash would be easy too.

Thoughts?

Josh