Tuesday, August 15, 2006

T-6: Almost dragging between windows, propsed detailed plans for new tab overflow interface nearly ready

I have spent most of the day battle with trying to get a deeper understanding on the NSDragging protocols. When a user drags a tab from one window and into another the tab needs to be simultaneously removed from the source window and added to the destination window.

I could remove the tab from the tab bar when the user drags it out the bar, and then add it into a tab bar when a user drags it into a tab bar, or create a new window if the user releases the mouse button when they let do of the tab when they are not in the tab bar. Somebody just pointed out to me that they would expect this to remove the tab item.

Any thoughts?

4 comments:

Ludovic Hirlimann said...

I would drag something out of the window to remove it. Not to create another window.

Anonymous said...

You mentioned that the tab needs to simultaneously be removed from the source window and added to the destination window.
When you drag-and-drop in the Finder, the item does not disappear from the source until the mouse up event in the destination. I would expect a drag-and-drop tab to behave in the same fashion.

I watched the video you posted the other day and I found it very confusing to visually to tell what was going on. Personally, I like the idea of drag-and-drop tabs, but I would rather see the behavior mimic dragging and dropping items in the bookmark bar, i.e. you see an "I" bar appear in the location where your drag will leave the item should you choose to release the mouse button there.

Anonymous said...

On the contrary, I would expect that to create a new window. Perhaps I've gotten accustomed to that behavior from using Adium. There is a close button for removing tabs, but sending a tab to a new window involves menu selection, so a faster way to create a new window from a tab would be more beneficial in my opinion.

Desmond Elliott said...

james,

I'm a little bit confused...

When I drag at item in from the side toolbar in Finder - Desktop, Applications, etc - in a way that takes the item I am dragging out of the side toolbar, the item in question is removed from the toolbar while I am dragging it.

If I let go of it then it deletes it. Otherwise, I can put this item back into the side toolbar at a location of my choosing.

Once I get the hang of animating movement things should be come much clearer.

Daniel Dickison,

The problem with that is that it is not what people have come to expect from OS X based applications and I'm a little wary of changing from the norm.