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["frederik.nnaji@xxxxxxxxx" <frederik.nnaji@xxxxxxxxx>]

A Unity novice complained to me that since he started using Unity he can't
drag and drop properly anymore.
Drag and Drop is broken for him, so he stated. "This bar doesn't allow
dragging my songs into the player anymore, i want the old bar back"

The reason is simple:
The Window List in the old GNOME Panel would allow a user to drag e.g. a
file from a maximized Nautilus window down onto the Window List button of
e.g. Totem, which upon drag-hover would then autoraise itself to the front,
affording the application window with all its desireable drag destinations.

I see 3 ways of implementing this in Unity:
a) auto-raise the respective application window on drag-hover, similar to
the Window List method
b) pop-out an elegant menu next to the Launcher item offering semantic drop
destinations
c) auto-raise the respective application window on drag-hover and highlight
possible drag destinations elegantly

about a) :
been there, had that, nothing much to explain.

about b) :

e.g. for an .mp3, dragged from nautilus, hovering the rhythmbox launcher
item, the following options could be displayed in the proposed pop-out menu:
1 play
2 play after [title of current song]
3 add to [name of my default library]

I suggest to keep the number of popped-out drop-destinations as small as
possible; this will keep interaction simple and fast.

about c) :
quite similar to a, except that it goes further and requires meddling with
the application window itself.


would this be a reasonable idea, or are there already other plans for
launcher drag-and-drop operations?
i also noticed that you can drag a file from the dash, but holding the drag
over a Launcher item doesn't do anything, dropping it onto a launcher item
doesn't do anything either iirc.