On Feb 7, 2008, at 9:06 AM, William Lachance wrote:
... A while back I fixed up a patch originally written by Novell to GNOMEpanel, which makes it impossible to move without unlocking it first (the default setting is locked). This prevents the user from inadvertently moving the panel when (e.g.) they're just trying to open an application.... This really is a serious usability problem: it's tripped up mygirlfriend at least once, and you can see lots of complaints in the bugs about this happening to other people as well. I'd really love to see it fixed.
Unfortunately this is not a good solution to the problem, because it introduces an unnecessary mode -- unlocked versus locked. Modes should be avoided whenever possible, because remembering which mode you're in takes extra mental effort.
A better solution would be to introduce a quasimode, a temporary mode based on a physical action. We already have an example of this for dragging in Ubuntu: holding down the Alt key currently lets you move windows by dragging anywhere, even on areas where dragging would normally do something else.
The panel could copy this behavior: Alt+dragging could move the panel, while normal dragging does nothing. That way people would be much less likely to move the panel by mistake.
Cheers -- Matthew Paul Thomas http://mpt.net.nz/
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