Re: Drag and drop is dead, long live drab and throw :)

[Alastair B Roberts <abr tardis ed ac uk>]

On Fri, 18 Jun 1999, Mark R. Bowyer wrote:

> 
> >From: Toby Jaffey <psystrj@unix.ccc.nottingham.ac.uk>
> >On Thu, Jun 17, 1999 at 01:40:05PM -0300, Victor Bogado da Silva Lins wrote:
> >> 	1) open 1 or more "black hole"'s objects. Once there is one or more
> >> black holes open the drag operations with icons are interpreted as a
> >> throw not a a drop anymore. Each black hole has a event orizon that
> >> would decide if the icon fell in the black hole or not.
> 
> Why do we need to differentiate between throws and drops this way?  *That* could 
> lead to confusion of the form "Why can't I drop any more?", "Because you need to 
> close that funny little thing over therer, first".  Not good.
> 
> Surely we can take a leaf from Gesture research here.  For a drag, the mouse has 
> started to decelerate before we release the button.  For a throw, the button is 
> released while the mouse is still accelerating.  This is how we drop and throw 
> in real life, it should work that way on-screen, too.

Sounds like a good idea, but

(a) how easy would this be to implement?
(b) it was mentioned previously in this thread about the inaccuracy of
    the modern mouse (especially after its been used for a while). I
    fear that the average mouse will not accelerate and deaccelerate
    accurately enough to reliably detect. Remember the basic HCI
    (human computer interaction) principle: speed and accuracy are
    tradeoffs. If one has to accelerate the mouse to throw an icon,
    the accuracy of the placement will be very much decreased. Just
    a thought.

A previous poster mentioned holding down ALT to enable "throws". This
sounds like the best idea so far.

Just my two cents worth :-)

Cheers,
Alastair

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| Alastair Roberts    abr@tardis.ed.ac.uk   PGP key on request       | 
| Software Engineer   http://www.tardis.ed.ac.uk/~abr                |
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