Re: [rox-users] Re: Re: Re: shift select

[Anthony <or...@no...>]

Stephen Watson wrote:
>>The problem is that rubber banding doesn't work in all modes - it fails in
>>list view, for example.
> 
> 
> It doesn't actually fail, but it is trickier than usual.

OK, but semantics aside, from the point of view of an end-user "it don't work!"

>  You have to start the selection between items

Not so... when it feels like working, I can start at the very bottom of a 
mostly-empty window.  I'm doing that repeatedly right now.

> and the gap is a little too small.

But even if it did work all the time, two things about the design are 
counter-intuitive to me (though I suspect not to everyone).  In list view, 
the items are over on the left, and then there's 6 columns of data *about* 
those items to the right.  So when I want to select a few items, I put the 
mouse near the items I want (that is to say, on the left) and drag a box 
around them.  But the result isn't just selected items, it's highlighted 
rows.  In fact, I can drag my box around just the the size of a few items -- 
or the owner, or the timestamp, or whatever -- and that still qualifies as 
selecting the actual items.  This is a large part of the reason it's such a 
pain to use this selection method: since it's not actually the items 
themselves getting selected, but rather the entire row, you cannot simply 
start your selection anywhere in the rightmost 70% of the window, because 
even there you've got to aim for the tiny cracks between "items" (actually, 
between item properties).  If it were just the actual items that were 
getting selected -- not the whitespace after them, and not their properties 
-- it'd be a ton easier to use drag-select.  You could start anywhere to the 
right of the first/last item you want (because clicking in whitespace 
shouldn't select anything), and drag from there.

The second thing that's not really ideal IMO is that the items don't get 
highlighted as you select them, only after you've let go of the mouse 
button.  I think that real-time feedback would improve the interface immensely.

> It does break the existing behaviour for single click users where shift
> click is open as text/open appdir.

Sure, but if it's implemented as an option, with the default being the 
current behavior, then nothing is broken or lost.  The only change is an 
increase in the number of options available to the users.

-Anthony