Fold 'n' Drop Window Interaction

Mints writes "Following up on recent "Desktop Innovation" stories that have left some disappointed, I thought Pierre Dragicevic's exploration of Fold 'n' Drop warranted mention. Described as "a new interaction technique for seamlessly dragging and dropping between overlapping windows", Fold 'n' Drop allows the user to interact with layered or overlapping windows in a very intuitive manner. Refreshingly, Mr. Dragicevic provides both a sample implementation, in Java, and video demos. Mr. Dragicevic is a researcher in Human-Computer Interaction at Intuilab, Toulouse."

Seems to be running slow already... mirrordot link

[wo1verin3]

http://www.mirrordot.org/stories/bf5e7607538684c45 385314562c610b0/index.html [mirrordot.org]

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Mac OS X Expose and Drag & Drop

[Killer Eye]

I think Apple's existing implementation of Expose is quite powerful. Not everyone realizes that drag-and-drop works with it, and more unfortunately Apple does not default to using a "screen corner" to activate Expose (yet this, too, is possible).

I have it set up so that I can literally "yank" the mouse in the general direction of the lower-right corner to show all windows, perhaps after picking up a file with the mouse. This then allows me to drag the file to any window. Further, I can use spacebar (like in spring-loaded folders in the Finder) to immediately choose a window instead of pausing for a second to have it selected automatically.

This action is so natural and powerful, I use it all the time. And though I use Linux at work and it is fantastic in many ways, I sorely miss features like Expose in Mac OS X.

Re:It's already a solved problem. - Me Too!

[Segway Ninja]

On windows, we can do this with the start bar.

Start a drag, move the mouse down to the title of the window on the start bar, drag over the formerly-obscured window.

Interesting way of doing things ...

[gstoddart]

I found the demo to be a little clunky, but he did have to implement it himself.

Once I figured out how it was worked, I found myself wondering how useful it would be to be able to just fold back the corners of a window when I wasn't dragging a file.

The general idea of peeling back the corner of a window seems like it might be actually useful at times. Sometimes the rigidly rectangular window can get in the way.

Of course, I'm sure it would eat CPU like all graphical candy, but cycles are cheap I guess.

taskbar

[stoutpuppy]

OK this is retarded, someone is just trying to make another stupid pretty UI. Drag your file over the taskbard, over the folder you want to dump it in, this window will become active and dominant, prepare to dump your file without 5 rediculous folds. come on people.

Re:Keyboard Navigation Mouse Navigation

[cheesebikini]

For navigating between already-open windows, when you have more than, say, 4 apps open, I've not seen any keyboard-only technique (or any other technique) that comes anywhere close to the speed of navgation via Expose on OSX (which uses mouse-only or mouse+keystroke) (Expose = mouseclick or keystroke reveals all open windows and lets you choose between them quickly) if you know of a faster keyboard technique, please do tell.. and I'll use it. (but.. before osx i was w/ you.)

Re:Keyboard Navigation Mouse Navigation

[Linus Torvaalds]

So when was the last time you used a keyboard shortcut to drag and drop something?

This isn't merely for switching between windows. If you can't RTFArticle, then RTFSummary at least.

Not so useful for me.

[TheLink]

Windows's taskbar already lets me drag and drop amongst arbitrary windows. You just drag the stuff to the task's button on the taskbar, wait till it goes foreground, then you drop it wherever you want.

I usually have more than 10 windows open, I don't want to waste time peeling through them one by one, especially when I know exactly which window it is (I just recently clicked its task button after all).

Once I have a taskbar, I don't often have to remember which windows are "below" or "above" each other. I just need to remember which task button represents the window to get to it.

Which comes to a related point - KDE orders the tasks on the taskbar top to bottom, left to right. This means that if you remove a task, the ALL of the tasks to the right of it will change their vertical positions. This is bad UI IMO. However the person in charge prefers it the way it is[1].

Windows does it left to right first then top to bottom. This means that only leftmost and rightmost tasks change positions if you remove one, so it's not as much of a mess trying to remember where a window is.

[1] Nope he doesn't go check with the "people in charge of Usability", because there aren't any. Which probably explains why Linux still has a mediocre GUI in terms of usability.

Re:the server has folded up and dropped dead alrig

[takeya]

for the java demo:
http://kafene.org/foldndrop.jar [kafene.org]

That should give you an idea about the functionality. That's all I snagged before it got slashdotted.

Re:Keyboard Navigation Mouse Navigation

[Mozk]

Exposé actually shows the windows, not small previews. It organizes and resizes them on the screen temporarily so you can see all the windows and their content.

Re:Keyboard Navigation Mouse Navigation

[NemoX]

a few minutes ago...
Ctrl X/C
Ctrl (Shift) Tab
Ctrl V

For me, it's actually faster (but I'm also ambidextrous, so I am equally efficient with my left hand), plus you have more control over exactly what you want in windows. When you click and drag something, in windows it will move it if it's on the same partition, or copy it if it is across partitions. Using the control keys, you don't have to second guess what partition the folder you are dragging it to is on. KDE (IIRC) will ask by default when you click and drag, if you want to copy or paste (via a pop up menu). In windows, this is possible, too, but you must click and drag with the right button. Plus, in windows, if you have a bunch of software installed, you will have to scroll past a million items in the context menu before getting to copy/cut/paste options.

Re:More trouble than it's worth?

[meowsqueak]

If you're using X Windows, use a non-xinerama multi-head configuration and put plenty of virtual desktops on each one. Then you can pick-n-mix windows as you please. The downside is you can't move windows from one screen to another (unless you can get that GTK window migration thing working...).

Re:Keyboard Navigation Mouse Navigation

[omninull]

The Ion window manager [cs.tut.fi] for X is quite fast for keyboard only navagation. It tiles and tabs window. I've never used Expose so I can't say for certain if Ion is faster, but I usually have around 10 apps open and I have no problem getting to the one I want quickly with the keyboard.

expose

[Fusen]

http://www.apple.com/macosx/theater/expose.html [apple.com] link to what everyone seems to be rabbiting on about.

Re:Keyboard Navigation Mouse Navigation

[JetTredmont]

Yes, ten Word icons followed by "C:\Docu..." is a REALLY great way to drag stuff from window to window within an application (or multiple apps)!

The problem with the Task Bar is that it relies upon the window title, which is overloaded with the application and document name typically, and provides no clue as to the actual content of that window. Expose provides a visual thumbnail approach for finding the "right" window, and allows for "tooltip"-like document names to pop up if you hover the mouse.

Re:Keyboard Navigation Mouse Navigation

[SilentSheep]

If you install the windows XP powertoy, which improves the alt-tab switching you get a preview of each window before selecting it!

Re:Keyboard Navigation Mouse Navigation

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're doing 3-D design work or lots of other types of work, the mouse is already in your hand. In particular, if you're trying to do DRAG AND DROP, which is when this capability is useful, then the mouse is almost certainly already in your hand. Learn to think.

Re:Keyboard Navigation Mouse Navigation

[jacksonj04]

I think the original idea was that you could drop the file onto different bits of the window, but I'd still rather just drop the file onto the taskbar and have it do the most logical activity.

Re:Keyboard Navigation Mouse Navigation

[Anonymous Coward]

View > Options > Options tab > Toggle off "Automatic word selection"

"Smart" highlighting annoys me too.