Re: Usability problem, and solution proposal

[Julien Olivier <julo altern org>]

Le jeudi 30 septembre 2004 à 17:32 +0000, paul hendrick a écrit :
> I've written up an idea for a bug in nautilus usabilty. the writeup is here:
> http://www.student.livjm.ac.uk/cmsphend/gnome/nautilus.html
> 
> i hope it's useful. 
> 

I think it's a great idea, but with a few conditions:

 - the windows can move (to arrange themselves on the screen) but the
mouse and the dragged icons must remain at the same position. Else, it
could confuse users.

 - the re-arranging of the Nautilus windows must occur after a short
timeout (half a second without any mouse movement for example) so that
you can easily move a file inside the same window, or to an
easily-visible folder without being disturbed b the animation.

 - if, after the windows re-arranged themselves, you don't move the
mouse cursor at all, releasing the mouse button shouldn't result in a
drop. Else, you could have situations where a user starts dragging a
file, gets surprised by the animation, and just releases the mouse
cursor without understanding what happens, and just loses his file
because it doesn't know where he dropped it.

And there is also an interrogation: what about other apps than
Nautilus ? Shouldn't all the visible windows re-arrange themselves (not
only nautilus ones) as many applications can receive drops ? And
wouldn't it be even better to implement this solution in metacity itself
so that any application would trigger the re-arrangement of all the
visible windows when a drag is started (from Nautilus, or from any
application) ?

-- 
Julien Olivier <julo altern org>