Usability of using icons to illustrate DnD

[Cristian Tibirna]

On Sunday, 28 April 2002 15:48, Wilco Greven wrote:
> It isn't the iconsize that's the problem here, but rather the icon
> obscuring the cursor's hotspot. That's something that should be avoided at
> all times. One solution is to make the icon semi-transparent, like you
> said. Another one is to use a mouse pointer like gtk+ does for dragging,
> having the hotspot in the topleft corner.

Despite all previous explanations, I still favor the second.

For Mark's comments, centering the icon to the cursor in order to suggest we 
drag something would better make sense if the mouse cursor was a grabbing 
hand, not an arrow.

As of drop zones signaling that they were selected, this is useful for drop 
zones larger than the icon collated to the mouse cursor. Try to drop 
something on a tiny kicker and you will understand why signaled dropzones 
aren't substitutes for a clean mouse cursor pointer.

Icons collated to the mouse pointer should perhaps obey the default size hint 
chosen by the user for the toolbar icons. These being the most intrusive 
icons, in my experience these are the most often bothering me into 
configuring them to a proper size.

Anyways, I didn't want to spawn a 3 months discussion (yet, it seems I found 
another controversial sensible spot in our team), I just wanted to speak up 
MHO.

Thanks
 
CT