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Drag and drop for tabbed Explorer Idea

Submitted by Nidonocu on June 19, 2008 to Usability

In suggestion http://www.aerotaskforce.com/view/726 it was suggested that a tabbed explorer should be implemented for Windows, however, purefusion pointed out that drag and drop copying would be a pain.

This is an idea I mocked up in Paint.net. When you've selected a bunch of files and start to drag them, live previews of the other folders appear down from the tab bar. These would act as drop zones where you could drop your files.

Dragging over the tab its self would flip to that tab so you could drag the items in to something inside that folder (like an application, zip or a subfolder).

Obviously there needs to be some work regarding what to do when there are loads of tabs open, but I'd like to know if people think this is a good idea or not.

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Discussion (11 comments)

GRiNSER wrote on June 19, 2008, 8:45am

nicely done - with some additional thought this would be really cool!

Halcyon wrote on June 19, 2008, 1:42pm

Agreed this is a good idea!

europrg_09 wrote on June 19, 2008, 10:09pm

very very very good idea. this is top notch solution +1

tino wrote on June 20, 2008, 1:59am

I am not a friend of tabs in Explorer because Windows itself is the Explorer so tabs should stay in the taskbar. Adding a new hierarchy level does not solve something IMO.

brian.shapiro wrote on June 20, 2008, 3:49am

tino

I agree it doesn't solve anything, it would be more useful for explorer to be able to have a splitter than tabs, where you can drag something to create a second view, and navigate to a different folder in the second view. Like the splitters in MS Word and Visual Studio.

brian.shapiro wrote on June 20, 2008, 3:52am

OH! especially because sometimes you have to drag something from the top of the folder to something at the bottom of the folder

tino wrote on June 21, 2008, 12:29am

They could solve a lot of drag and drop annoyances with enabling it inside of the breadcrumb bar. Another issue that could be better is the ability to arrange different windows by right-clicking the taskbar. There should be shortcuts for it and maybe if you right click on a Windows Explorer button in the taskbar, you could arrange all windows of that program.

Or another suggestion: Holding down CTRL and selecting different windows via the taskbar would automatically arrange these windows. "WIN + A" is still unused ;)

mcarbenay wrote on June 23, 2008, 11:00pm

arrrrrggghhh no, not another "put tabs in, they rock !" application, please ! :p

Nidonocu wrote on June 25, 2008, 11:25pm

@mcarbenay: This isn't a request for tabs, just an idea about how to fix a problem that would exist with a tabbed design.

Ensign Joe wrote on September 1, 2008, 12:17am

Just drag them onto the tab and they will be copied/moved? No need for stupid previews.. Even with Aero we don't need preview :)

eikonoklastes2 wrote on November 21, 2008, 1:44am

What if you want to drag it to a sub-folder in another tab? A preview might help there, but would introduce so much complexity to the workflow that it hardly seems worth it.

Maybe drag to the tab title, which activates the tab and then you can drop it where you please.

I have mixed feelings about tabs, but am leaning towards not having them. With wide screens prevalent, there's less urgency to consolidate the taskbar buttons.

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