Rubber band selection and not triggering drag/drop instead

[Ged]

I've been using RMB selection for years, but I'd love to disable it to make RMB work normally with just a short click, since I find myself long-pressing RMB in other apps when I don't need to.

So I welcome the idea of rubber band selection, and I'm trying to get used to it in 9.0 beta 6, but I find myself triggering drag/drop instead about half the time. Any tips on how to consistently trigger one or the other?

I'm mostly talking full details view here as I rarely use anything else.

A couple of suggestions:

1. When you start dragging vertically you could always trigger selection/unselection in a similar way to the RMB selection mode, and when you start dragging horizontally you could always trigger drag/drop. Or the other way around if you think that is more logical (I don't).

2. I nearly always use TC, so I'm not that familiar with how Windows File Explorer handles this, but it seems I can get consistent selection mode in Explorer if I start dragging in the empty space to the right of the rightmost column in details view. Maybe make it possible to leave this kind of empty space to the right of the Attr/rightmost column in TC. Meaning the marker etc. won't go that far right, so that area won't trigger drag-drop, only rubber band selection.

[petermad]

Maybe make it possible to leave this kind of empty space to the right of the Attr/rightmost column in TC.

Just click on anytning BUT the name part of the file name (i.e. click ext, size, date, attr, etc.) before starting the rubberband selection.

If you want blank space to the right of the file attributes, just make that column wider.

[Lefteous]

2petermad

Just click on anytning BUT the name part of the file name (i.e. click ext, size, date, attr, etc.) before starting the rubberband selection.

This only works if the file isn't already selected.

If you want blank space to the right of the file attributes, just make that column wider.

That doesn't help at all as it behaves the same as the non-name columns.


As mentioned in another rubberband thread it would be really great if it would work as you described. This is exactly what I suggested here:
http://ghisler.ch/board/viewtopic.php?p=313096#313096

[petermad]

2Lefteous

I see, you are right.

(Actually I haven't tried it out much, because I don't plan to use the rubberband selection, since it is only supported in the the Left mouse button mode, where you can loose all your selections by just one erroneous click with the mouse).

[Lefteous]

2petermad

in the the Left mouse button mode, where you can loose all your selections by just on erroneous click with the mouse

This is of course also part of my suggestion. Non-destructive selection is a must!

[Ged]

Lefteous has basically answered for me. I also fully agree with both of you and your nice wiki chart that simply clicking should not destroy selection.

But I'd also like to revisit my first suggestion of differentiating vertical/horizontal initial dragging too.

I got this idea from the old abandoned Opera where you can select part of the text in a link easily by making the initial dragging motion horizontal. If you want to drag/drop the link you start dragging vertically instead (of course you can then move in any direction after the initial dragging motion).

Selecting part of a link as text, like just the word abandoned in my link above is much more difficult in modern browsers than it is in Opera 12. Feel free to download and try for yourselves. It works very well IMHO.