Re: Ease of use (was: Re: Idiot (I know that's redundant) spammer

From: Bill Todd (billtodd_at_metrocast.net)
Date: 08/04/03 

Date: Mon, 4 Aug 2003 01:15:34 -0400

"David J. Dachtera" <djesys.nospam@fsi.net> wrote in message
news:3F2DCA54.BDE80260@fsi.net...
> VAXman-, @SendSpamHere.ORG wrote:
> > [snip]
> > ...and the files were of the form P#######.JPG. A simple DCL COPY
P*.JPG *.*
> > would have taken me about 10 seconds or less -- not 45+ minutes and
umpteen
> > different rebott gyrations.
>
> Dunno if this helps or is even relevant, but CTRL+click in WhineBloze
> Exploder (and at other times, as well) will allow you to select multiple
> items. To Copy then, CTRL+drag will make copies of the files in the
> desired location - but not reliably. Early perpetrations of W/9x would
> create "link" (.LNK) files in the target location rather than actually
> copying the data. Sometimes still see that.

I think that's an aspect of simple drag rather than CTRL-drag. Simple drag
behavior is extension-dependent: .exe files are linked (and other files are
moved if the destination is on the same device, else copied if it's on a
different device).

If you right-click-drag instead, you're presented with a small menu from
which you can select move, copy, link, or cancel (the last being useful if
your hand twitched during the drag and you wound up targeting the wrong
destination - though if you notice before releasing the mouse button there
are other ways to abort). IMHO that's safer than relying upon the default
action mess, which I would *not* set forth as an example of good interface
design (even though it would have worked for what VAXman was doing):
whether it's good to have a bunch of subtly different ways for experienced
users to do all this stuff is perhaps debatable, but the *base* way should
be dead-simple and predictable even if it takes an extra step, such as
choosing from the small action menu. My impression is that this drag&drop
feature is one of many that 'just grew' (at least in some of these
special-case behaviors) rather than got formally designed: as I noted
earlier, while a GUI *can* be a better interface for such actions, it
requires decent design (and perhaps especially discipline - something
Microsoft has never seemed to have in abundance) to achieve that.

- bill

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