Oleg, well spotted - all auto-scroll implementations indeed do suck.
While I can't recall any such example of the top of my head, a good alternative would be along the OS X Dock (enlarging focused icons) or some kind of loupe UI - ie. keep the whole context in one page in a scaled down version, and zoom a selected partial area to full-resolution to allow the drop. This removes the "variable speed" and "opposite end of window to reverse direction" problems you outlined. Jakub On Mon, Dec 1, 2008 at 12:05 PM, Oleg Krupnov <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>wrote: > It's been a classic design principle that any scrollable view should > auto-scroll when an object is dragged outside or close to boundary of > the view. > > Here's what Alan Cooper wrote in his "About Face" book: > > "Auto-scroll is a very important adjunct to drag-and-drop. Wherever > the drop target can possibly be scrolled offscreen, the program needs > to auto-scroll. Any scrollable drag-and-drop target must auto-scroll." > > However I've suddenly realized that I've never seen any implementation > of auto-scrolling (including my own :) that would not SUCK. > Auto-scrolling is perhaps the most awkward feature associated with > drag-and-drop that I would name. > > IMHO, auto-scrolling sucks because: > > 1. It lacks control over precision. Variable auto-scroll rate sucks > because when I want to scroll faster (and I always do :), I often > over-scroll. Then I need to drag the object to the opposite side of > the screen and auto-scroll back. > > 2. It is not informative nor it is flexible. At the beginning, you > don't see how far you may need to scroll, so I usually pick the > fastest rate and over-scroll, as in 1. or have to wait too long if I > take a low scroll rate. The transition from lower to faster scroll > rates appears abruptly and often cause over-scrolling. > > 3. It is slow. First, you have to wait until it starts in vicinity of > the view border, then wait until it scrolls with a particular speed. > > This all ends up in that with auto-scrolling I never feel comfortable > and confident, but often strained and lacking control. > > This made me think about good alternatives to auto-scrolling. What do you > think? > ________________________________________________________________ > Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! > To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe > List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines > List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help > ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
