4 ms·

I would have probably used this a lot years ago, but now what I yearn for is tab-autocomplete, emacs-style, for attachment fields. This is a much faster way fo

I would have probably used this a lot years ago, but now what I yearn for is tab-autocomplete, emacs-style, for attachment fields. This is a much faster way for me to attach files, and it doesn't frac my wrists making me touch the infernal mouse.

jrockway 17y ago
Why not just send your email from Emacs then? message-mode is great.
joe_the_user 17y ago
Drag-and-drop is one of most over-rated features ever: * It requires excess wrist motion to accomplish some which could be done in few keystrokes. * Only in a few situation is it ever entirely clear what dragging and dropping will do. * Outside of, again, a few situations, it is unclear which objects to drag and where to drop them. In anything but file manager, it becomes a frickin' game of Carmen San Diego.
- jonknee 17y ago
  But yet I bet people have been attempting to drag and drop for attachments since Gmail started. For non technical users this is a big help.
  - joe_the_user 17y ago
    This "non-technical user" seems to be a beast similar to the boing-boing quote of William Gibson: "something the size of a baby hippo, the color of a week-old boiled potato, that lives by itself, in the dark, in a double-wide on the outskirts of Topeka. It's covered with eyes and it sweats constantly. The sweat runs into those eyes and makes them sting. It has no mouth... no genitals, and can only express its mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire by changing the channels on a universal remote." see: http://www.boingboing.net/2010/04/02/why-i-wont-buy-an-ipad-and-think-you-shouldnt-either.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:%20boingboing/iBag%20(Boing%20Boing) http://www.boingboing.net/2010/04/02/why-i-wont-buy-an-ipad-... This non-technical user does nothing and understands nothing. They have no fear of tenotinus since they won't be using any functionality for more than ten minutes.
- hopeless 17y ago
  Unfortunately, most web browsers and sites are impossible to navigate by keyboard. So, as you've already got your hand on the mouse and are using it to click links, I think this is actually one situation where it can be justified (unlike, for example, a text editor).
  - joe_the_user 17y ago
    That is why the laptop keyboard/trackpad combo is actually far better than the desktop keyboard/mouse combo. My fingers never leave the asdf jkl; position when mousing around a site. Each finger and thumb gets about the same usage. These things matter a lot if you do a lot of computer interaction. The vim plugin for firefox is another route that might be good if you were on a desktop machine - I plan to NEVER a desktop for default development again. And dragging is still hard even if mouse/trackpad is immediately available; the trade-off is a dozen fine-motor motions for about one byte of information input to a computer. My ideal one rough motion = one byte of information to the machine. The only time I'd want to home-in on a target is playing a video game, not choosing a file whose name the machine already knows. Hands, hands are important. Use your hands gently...
camwest 17y ago
Yet my girlfriend drags and drops onto Gmail every time before realizing she is making a mistake.

jrockway 17y ago

Why not just send your email from Emacs then? message-mode is great.

joe_the_user 17y ago

Drag-and-drop is one of most over-rated features ever: * It requires excess wrist motion to accomplish some which could be done in few keystrokes. * Only in a few situation is it ever entirely clear what dragging and dropping will do. * Outside of, again, a few situations, it is unclear which objects to drag and where to drop them. In anything but file manager, it becomes a frickin' game of Carmen San Diego.

jonknee 17y ago
But yet I bet people have been attempting to drag and drop for attachments since Gmail started. For non technical users this is a big help.
- joe_the_user 17y ago
  This "non-technical user" seems to be a beast similar to the boing-boing quote of William Gibson: "something the size of a baby hippo, the color of a week-old boiled potato, that lives by itself, in the dark, in a double-wide on the outskirts of Topeka. It's covered with eyes and it sweats constantly. The sweat runs into those eyes and makes them sting. It has no mouth... no genitals, and can only express its mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire by changing the channels on a universal remote." see: http://www.boingboing.net/2010/04/02/why-i-wont-buy-an-ipad-and-think-you-shouldnt-either.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:%20boingboing/iBag%20(Boing%20Boing) http://www.boingboing.net/2010/04/02/why-i-wont-buy-an-ipad-... This non-technical user does nothing and understands nothing. They have no fear of tenotinus since they won't be using any functionality for more than ten minutes.
hopeless 17y ago
Unfortunately, most web browsers and sites are impossible to navigate by keyboard. So, as you've already got your hand on the mouse and are using it to click links, I think this is actually one situation where it can be justified (unlike, for example, a text editor).
- joe_the_user 17y ago
  That is why the laptop keyboard/trackpad combo is actually far better than the desktop keyboard/mouse combo. My fingers never leave the asdf jkl; position when mousing around a site. Each finger and thumb gets about the same usage. These things matter a lot if you do a lot of computer interaction. The vim plugin for firefox is another route that might be good if you were on a desktop machine - I plan to NEVER a desktop for default development again. And dragging is still hard even if mouse/trackpad is immediately available; the trade-off is a dozen fine-motor motions for about one byte of information input to a computer. My ideal one rough motion = one byte of information to the machine. The only time I'd want to home-in on a target is playing a video game, not choosing a file whose name the machine already knows. Hands, hands are important. Use your hands gently...

camwest 17y ago

Yet my girlfriend drags and drops onto Gmail every time before realizing she is making a mistake.