Re: Usability problem, and solution proposal

[Nathaniel McCallum <npmccallum gentoo org>]

On Thu, 2004-09-30 at 21:33 +0200, Daniel Poersch wrote:
> On Thu, 30 Sep 2004 17:32:42 +0000
> paul hendrick <paul hendrick gmail com> wrote:
> 
> > I've written up an idea for a bug in nautilus usabilty. 
> I also would really like to see something happen here. The actual
> procedure with hover the tasklist-entry is really annoying, it takes too
> much time its confusing with too much windows and there are people out
> there which use one.
> 
> However your solution would really be nice, eye-candy and impressing.
> But nautilus is already slow enough and I think it would be somehow
> confusing if suddenly your windows start to fly around if you start a
> drag.
> 
> We should maybe think of simpler solutions (hopefully not less
> powerful). One solution would be allow DnD on the directory button (in
> the left lower corner). But this offers you only windows which are above
> your actual.
> 
> OK, an another idea:
> When start dragging, offer a menu of all opened nautilus windows with
> icon and title, if you hover without dropping the window raises and will
> lower again after dropping. It should also be possible to drop directly
> to the list element. This would be something similar to rox spring up
> directories. This shouldn't be too hard, is it? Nautilus must already
> keep a list of open windows, so that its activates one if you click on
> the directory icon.
> 
> However, I think this must be customizable, because I already know that
> it will annoy some people. Maybe the menu should only appear if the
> pointer gets outside the window.

What about very simply this: when you start to drag, send the nautilus
window to the back/bottom until you let go?  You don't really need to
see where you are draging from (at least in spatial mode).

Nathaniel