Comments on: Faster text dragging in Cocoa apps (like Mail)

By: Mike Abdullah

Mike Abdullah — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 17:07:33 +0000

Oh, it works correctly for me. I click the text and after about half a second, the text cursor changes back to the normal mouse pointer. No dragging required.

Perhaps it is because I’m on a Trackpad, whilst you’e using a mouse?

By: Margaret

Margaret — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 16:57:04 +0000

I wonder if this is the trouble I have when I try to drag a bit of text to the desktop as a clipping. I used to do this regularly — usually for snippets of text that I needed only to reference for a few hours. Because I keep my desktop totally clear, keeping there meant that it was accessible immediately and I was reminded to dump it (or, if circumstances had changed, to put it somewhere else to track it).

In OS X I couldn’t get the dragging of selected text to work reliably, but now I think it’s because of this annoying delay.

As for Mike’s comment that there’s visual feedback about when the delay is over, that’s not exactly true. On my system, if I select text, and then click and hold, the pointer doesn’t change until the delay has elapsed AND I move the mouse. Of course, if I move the mouse before the delay has elapsed, the selection is changed. The result? Without realizing it I became trained to hold the mouse steady, and thus never got the all-important visual feedback.

I’m going to try shortening the delay to see if things work more as I expect them to.

By: craz

craz — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 00:32:12 +0000

They should start having more conventions in australia. Then I’d be able to afford to go

By: Adrian

Adrian — Sun, 22 Oct 2006 13:41:34 +0000

Tim: “Iâ€™m just a simple blogger. :)”

And Steve Jobs is just a simple saleman…, ____ just a simple ____, etc…

By: Tim

Tim — Sun, 22 Oct 2006 13:21:41 +0000

Mike - no such luck for me. It’s a long way from Melbourne to Chicago.

Even if I went, I don’t think that I would have understood anything past the opening hello, and maybe not even that — [world hello];

I’m just a simple blogger. :)

By: Mike Abdullah

Mike Abdullah — Sun, 22 Oct 2006 13:07:21 +0000

The logic behind this is that if you simply made an error and wish to select a different bit of text you can, because the delay hasn’t kicked in.

It’s also worth noting that the mouse pointer icon does change after that short time interval is up, so there is some visual feedback as to what is going on.

That said, on my PowerBook I generally find that the delay is too short for me to make use of it with the trackpad. I guess Apple needs to review things :)

P.S. I didn’t know you were at C4 Tim - wish I could go!