Drag-and-drop saving

Posted Mar 10, 2010 11:54 UTC (Wed) by epa (subscriber, #39769)
In reply to: Sigh. Don't they look mac-like? by nix
Parent article: Try the Linux desktop of the future (TuxRadar)

A big part of the problem is window managers which force an application's window to the front whenever you click on any part of it. I really can't understand why that is considered the best behaviour. Even nontechnical users can understand the idea of one window being behind another, as in the real world we often see one object partly obscuring another.

Also, it does depend on having what GNOME calls a 'spatial' file manager, where you can have one window open for one directory and a different window for another directory. Then if you are doing some work in a directory, you almost certainly have a file window open for it anyway.

(I used to be strongly in favour of this multiple-window style, and found the lack of it on Windows and other clunky interfaces highly annoying. I assumed the lack of a spatial file manager must be a side-effect of the colossally stupid 'multiple document interface' where each application has one big window inside which you can rearrange other windows, and also a side-effect of the aforementioned window manager problem making it impossible to overlap windows, and other Redmondian blunders. But nowadays, with the popularity of web browsers which display a single page at a time and offer 'back' and 'forward', I am not quite so certain. Perhaps a browser-style file manager might have some value after all.)

Note that you only need to drag-save once, to choose the destination directory; after that you just hit 'save'.

What *should* happen, IMNSHO, is that the app should pop up a new window on *your existing file manager*, in the app's current directory. So no horrible per-app file managers and no mad alt-tab horror.

That's not a bad idea.