Given the workspace is empty at the beginning I would suggest filling
it with an explicit message ('Drag items from the menu to work in
them') in a nice, big (perhaps greyed-out) font.
This serves as giant inline help (similar to
http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?687) as well as adding balance to a
virgin page. The text would disappear as soon as an item is dropped
onto the workspace.
Have a look at Bill Scott's 'Designing Web Interfaces'
presentation
(http://www.slideshare.net/billwscott/designing-web-interfaces-book-oreilly-webcast?src=embed)
which I found hugely accessible due to its visual nature. In it he
covers drag and drop affordances.
Or check the Yahoo! Design Pattern Library
(http://developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns/parent.php?pattern=dragdrop).
Of course you'll need a non-javascript alternative.
Questions:
- How many items in the hierarchical menu?
- Is the menu completely open? Or partly collapsed?
- How many items do you expect users to drag to the workspace?
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Posted from the new ixda.org
http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=38207
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