Thread: Drag & Drop and Touch...2.0?

Originally Posted by tymora

I think drag & drop is such a natural aspect of Windows that it makes me feel like a limb is chopped off without it.

As a long time user of MacOS, I just about did a double take when I saw this. Drag and drop is an alternative, more flexible, and often quicker way of moving data than using cut-n-paste. But it's not well implemented in most Windows apps. Everyone uses copy-n-paste in Windows for everything. I don't see "drag-n-drop" a "natural" part of Windows at all. You can drag, just not drop.

What does drag and drop have to do with Windows 8 anyhow? And why would you think "touch" is an extension of drag-n-drop? Touch devices have been around for years. I mean Tablet PCs running Windows have around for a decade. Drag-n-drop was introduced in System 7.5 for the Mac a decade before that. There is no connection.

Originally Posted by tymora

As for "touch" as an extension of drag-n-drop, I meant it in the way that you can drag & drop with your finger as much as with the mouse. Even if the history of introduction is otherwise and the 2 are completely different input mediums, in terms of usage, apart from the addition of gestures, you pretty much still do the same things.
"Tap with finger" = Click
"Tap, hold and drag" = Drag & Drop

You want touch without gestures and act just like a mouse? Why not just use a mouse? Adding "touch" as a novelty feature is rather silly, don't you think.

Incidentally I dislike OSX and this game doesn't run in OSX anyway hence Windows 8 as example of support for touch devices. Not that I think people will play with touch devices, but someone might just come up with some inventive and productive way to play the game with them. And then things will change...

I hope things do change. I would like to see more gesture support in Windows. At the moment though, Windows 7 supports touch and gesture support too. No one has taken advantage of it. MacOS X has devices like the magic mouse and touch pad. I don't see touch happening (at least for desktop and laptop PCs) simply because none of them ship with the necessary hardware to take advantage of touch and gesture support. PCs are stuck in a vicious cycle where software developers won't add support for new types of hardware and hardware developers don't want to risk including hardware that there is no software for. It's very hard to break that cycle. Perhaps someday they will. Truth is I see this much more like on the PS3 or Xbox. Not the PC.

Originally Posted by Laraul

You want touch without gestures and act just like a mouse? Why not just use a mouse? Adding "touch" as a novelty feature is rather silly, don't you think.

No, I wrote that to answer your "extension" of the mouse question.

I've read in the official parts of the 2.0 on loadstone that drag and drop and the "standard" MMO UI is/will be/should be adopted for 2.0. I don't know any more and am currently in search of a concise list of all 2.0 adds and changes.