In the HIG there is a section on the Query Drag: http://library.gnome.org/devel/hig-book/stable/input-mouse.html.en#drag-drop-query
10.1.3.1.2. Query Drag Allow the user to drag objects with the middle button , or with Alt left button. Pop up a menu when the mouse button is released, offering the choice of Copy, Move and Link (or whichever subset of those actions is available), and Cancel. Dragging in this way is known as query drag because it prompts the user before changing anything. I'm proposing that we change it to a right button drag. This is how I see it: 1) On a mouse with a wheel (especially one of those new horizontal scrolling tilt wheels), it is actually quite difficult to do this operation. 2) It might be useful to support the scroll wheel during drag operations in the future (e.g. dragging a selection in a document, using the workspace switcher when dragging a file) 3) There is already a strong association with right click and popup menus. If I were to guess which button to use to drag a file and be presented with a menu, then based on the fact that right clicking a file brings up a menu, I would guess that a right click drag would do so. On the negative side: 4) This raises the question of what to do when the right mouse button is depressed, should we show the context menu, or wait a bit to see if they are dragging? (waiting for mouse up isn't ok, because of 5) 5) I can imagine that there are people who will use a right click drag to select an item in the context menu (e.g. right mouse down on a file, then while keeping the button down, mouse over the menu item you want and release) In spite of these issues, I think it would be quite possible to find a solution which doesn't surprise you. I haven't played with any mockups or anything, but I'd imagine that if there was a (fairly generous) timeout on the button down event (which also brought up the context menu - possibly after a (fairly short) delay, and if the cursor leaves a 'certain area' before that timeout then it is a drag operation and the context menu disappears. Otherwise it is a context menu operation. The 'certain area' would be a bit bigger than the context menu, and maybe a little bit bigger than the thing being dragged. Does anyone have any further thoughts or comments? Andy _______________________________________________ Usability mailing list Usability@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/usability
