2010/5/21 Mark Shuttleworth
<mark@xxxxxxxxxx>
We already have mechanisms for multiple selection, with dragging to
lasso a set of icons, ctrl-click to select an arbitrary set, and
shift-click to continue a selection along a list.
I don't see a need for the checkboxes at all. And I definitely don't
like the "de-select" button, which appears to be arbitrarily placed.
The problem with all of those is that they are hard, and complicated. Lassoing is somewhat fine for files next to each other, but not for a distributed selection. For everything else, it becomes a two-hand operation and I need to keep track of CTRL and SHIFT properly or I mess it up.
As a single-clicker since quite a few years, this feature was absolutely fantastic the short while I had to use Vista at a previous work - it's really straightforward and easy to use, not to mention easy to understand. I would recommend everyone that has the option to try it out (don't know if it's in Win 7 as well) before dismissing it. It works really well in both icon and list view, and as a bonus, it works equally well in double click mode if that would stay the default.
/ Kristoffer