Alternative to Spring-loaded Folders

Posted by stephen on Wednesday, 20th July, 2005 @ 18:22

There's was a rather interesting idea highlighted on Slashdot today. If you've ever dragged and dropped files about the place on Windows, you'll know about the frustrations of having to open up the window you want to get something from and the window you want to move/copy it too, and line them up so you can see both to do the drag'n'drop. Please correct me if this has changed lately, I'm not really a Windows user these days!

This methodology tends to result in minimal use of drag'n'drop. In fact, most of the way Windows is designed inhibits this rather intuitive interface concept. Instead, you get around it by finding what you want, cutting or copying it, finding the destination, then pasting it. Personally I think that's a little kludgy.

Apple's solution has for many years is the idea of spring loaded folders. I believe KDE and GNOME have inherited this too. Pick up the item(s) of interest, drag it over the hard disk icon, or any of the other shortcuts available, and in second, the folder will spring open, and you can root down to your destination and let it go.

It's surprisingly quick and easy, despite needing a lot of mouse work, it certainly feels very intuitive to me.

Which brings me to this new idea, fold'n'drop windows. Certainly seems like an interesting idea, not sure how natural it would feel. Have a look, there's a demo video, needs DivX plugin or Mplayer or similar.