Fwd: idea for a KDE UI feature

[Eric Christopherson]

On Fri, Jul 12, 2002 at 11:00:19AM -0700, Waldo Bastian wrote:
> I wonder if we can do this reliable since the action that the application 
> takes may differ depending on *where* the icon gets dropped.

I've been thinking about that lately too. Is there anything like a "default"
drop action in the DND spec? If so, I would think that dropping something on
a taskbar button would just invoke the default drop action on that app.

Actually, the current way works pretty well, except that when I try to drag
something to the taskbar, the taskbar tends to shrink. Apparently it does so
anticipating that I'm going to drop the item on the kicker rather than the
taskbar. It's then quite tricky to position the cursor just right to drop it
correctly.

> We could of course do a restore when you hover over a minimized taskbar entry 
> while dragging. Just as we do with the desktops.

I recently learned of a neat thing in MacOS (9 I believe; absent in OS X <
10.2). I think they call it "spring-loaded folders." Here's how it worked:

You drag something to a folder icon and hold it there.
The folder opens so you can place the drop where you want it.
When you drop the item, the folder closes automatically.

It'd be nice if KDE had that functionality, except that it would apply to
minimized taskbar buttons instead of folders (maybe folders too, I dunno).
Here's a way it might work:

You drag something to a taskbar (or kasbar, etc.) button and hold it there.
The window becomes visible; this means that if it's minimized, it becomes
unminimized; and if it's on another desktop, it either warps to the current
desktop, or the whole desktop changes to the home of the window.
You drag the item to wherever you want it in the window, and drop it.
When the dragging and dropping is finished, the window goes back to the
state it had been in before. E.g., if it was unminimized, it would remain
so (but maybe if it hadn't been on top it would go back to its previous
depth); if it was minimized, it goes back to being minimized; if it was on a
different desktop, it goes back to its desktop and the user ends up looking
at the original desktop.

The key point of it is that it leaves window placements as they were before,
so you don't have to go to the trouble of resetting them yourself. Of
course, it could be turned off :)

-- 
Eric Christopherson, a.k.a. Contrarian Conlanger Rakko ^_^