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Show HN: my Mac app just got fireballed

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Re: Show HN: my Mac app just got fireballed

#111

Post by hellrich »

amartya916 wrote: post #68
ynniv wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading the description, I felt that waiting for the overloaded page to load was going to be a waste of time. Having seen the video, I am contemplating tossing him some cash. Drag, think... doh! wiggle, store. Dig, dig, find, unstore, drop. That wiggle makes all the difference. Come to think of it, I might unconsciously wiggle things while I'm trying to remember where I meant to drag them to.

Absolutely correct, the wiggle does make it happen. One of those "Why didn't I think of it" interaction technique. Kudos to the developer. Just a (very) minor change will make it better for me: slightly less opacity for the pop up window. On an 11inch Macbook Air, I think it'll help. I just bought the app, it's fantastic and worth every penny.

I have problems performing a "correct" wiggle, especially on my trackpad. Corners would be more reliable.

Re: Show HN: my Mac app just got fireballed

#112

Post by robomartin »

jacobolus wrote: post #106
robomartin wrote: post #96

Looks like a cool utility. I will probably be well received by those who rely on dragging and dropping. I personally never drag-and-drop unless it is the only way to get something done. Copy and Paste via the keyboard is faster and far easier to use. It also gives you all the time you need to navigate wherever you need to go. Further to that, because I switch between platforms multiple times per day I just can't deal…

The problem with keyboard or menu cut/copy/paste (hereafter c/c/p) is that it’s a mode (or at least a sort of quasi-mode), and modes are a fundamentally inhumane user interface approach that shift cognitive burden from computers to humans. The traditional c/c/p includes no visual feedback whatsoever, is an extremely overloaded concept (many types of objects can be copied, the result of pasting depends on context and…

Well, drag and drop isn't any more discoverable than c/c/p. For example, when I first started to use a Mac I had to Google to figure out how to import ebooks into my iPhone. It turns out that you have to drag-and-drop into iTunes. Just like c/c/p, once someone tells you that this is the way we are going to play the game it all makes sense.

The grab-something-and-move-it interface is OK for "normal" users. I would suspect that most techies might be far more inclined to figure out how to avoid miles of drag-and-drop action by using the keyboard.

There's another element to this. Our systems have, at a minimum, two 24 inch monitors and most have three 24 inch monitors. Drag-and-drop gets pretty old once you start to have to cruise around so much real-estate.

Beyond that c/c/p, per your own data point, has been around since the early 70's. That makes it a convention that's been around for possibly over 40 years. I think people get it.

This, of course, extends to operating almost any software. If someone is using it with any regularity it'd be crazy to mouse all over the menu system to get things done. The keyboard is far more efficient. This is particularly the case when macros can be programmed and invoked.

In general terms, I agree: For grandma, drag and drop is great and she is not likely to learn any keyboard shortcut at all. For anyone who is not a casual or lightweight computer user there's a whole other layer to the UI --via the keyboard-- that makes for better driving.

Dragondrop is a great tool. I was sincere when I said that Apple should buy it and integrate it into the OS. Not for me and those like me, but for the benefit of others for whom the grab-and-do-something interface is the only option.

Re: Show HN: my Mac app just got fireballed

#113

Post by jacobolus »

robomartin wrote: post #112
jacobolus wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with keyboard or menu cut/copy/paste (hereafter c/c/p) is that it’s a mode (or at least a sort of quasi-mode), and modes are a fundamentally inhumane user interface approach that shift cognitive burden from computers to humans. The traditional c/c/p includes no visual feedback whatsoever, is an extremely overloaded concept (many types of objects can be copied, the result of pasting depends on context and…

Well, drag and drop isn't any more discoverable than c/c/p. For example, when I first started to use a Mac I had to Google to figure out how to import ebooks into my iPhone. It turns out that you have to drag-and-drop into iTunes. Just like c/c/p, once someone tells you that this is the way we are going to play the game it all makes sense. The grab-something-and-move-it interface is OK for "normal" users. I would sus…

I never said we shouldn’t try to make a system accessible from the keyboard, or that drag-and-drop as typically implemented is the best solution here. I merely said that c/c/p is at once too difficult/brittle and too limited.

Personally, I wish we used some kind of mashup/spinoff/extension of DragThing, Quicksilver, drag-and-drop for this sort of thing: flexible, letting us do more with the stuff in it than just paste it back, accessible from both keyboard and mouse ideally from anywhere on the screen, persistent and non-destructive. It’s a non-trivial problem, because we need something that scales from novices up through experts. But there’s a very large design space here, and most of it has been ignored for 30 years because the existing non-ideal conventions have ossified.

It’s exciting to see even tiny new ideas, like the utility being discussed in this conversation.

To follow your thought here: with all that tremendous quantity of monitor space available, we really should be devoting some chunk of it to showing what’s on the clipboard, or at least that there’s something there.

Re: Show HN: my Mac app just got fireballed

#115

Post by drostie »

markchristian wrote: post #47
MikeW wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will you post traffic stats and any other measurements you can come up with?

Sure, here's a screenshot of my hourly report for the past day. Note that the site hasn't gotten much traffic in general since most people come to it directly through the App Store — that is, despite pretty decent sales, the site has historically only had a few hundred hits a day. http://idisk.me.com/shinyplasticbag/Public/Pictures/Skitch/V... Let me know what else you'd like to know. :)

Just for reference since a lot of people get this backwards as you did, i.e. is Latin for "which is to say" (literally id est, "that is"), while e.g. is Latin for "for example" (literally exempli gratia, "free example"). There is another cousin which doesn't get so much use, namely viz., literally vide licit or "clearly seen", which is a sort of drop-in replacement for "namely" -- it's used to enumerate or clarify an indirect reference, as opposed to id est which clarifies an indirect implication.

Re: Show HN: my Mac app just got fireballed

#116

Post by haar »

dazbradbury wrote: post #88
solutionyogi wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. This is not about copy/paste at all. Windows and Mac lets you drag objects and drop them on target. This works in normal scenario where the object you are trying to drag and the target are easy to identify. It gets very difficult if your target is hard to reach. This app has a brilliant new UI which makes those drag-n-drop operations super easy. Please see the demo video to understand the app: http://www.youtub…

Sorry, what I meant to say isn't this simply equivalent to copy and paste? In windows at least: http://superuser.com/a/252104 I can think of only a few scenarios where dropping is the only option and pasting isn't available - but clearly those scenarios were real pain points for people!

An alternative use-case would be when using a program such as Adobe Photoshop, rather than launching Photoshop, clicking File, open, navigating to your desired directory, selecting which files to open the pressing open; if you already have the directory open, drag the files onto the Photoshop icon and it'll open them.

Re: Show HN: my Mac app just got fireballed

#117

Post by rorrr »

kareemm wrote: post #77
markchristian wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that's me — and a very high-end microphone that I managed to borrow from someone. ;) The mic made all the difference.

A hack for getting good audio on screencasts: sit in a closet with a blanket over your head while you record the audio. It makes even a built-in Mac mic sound good.

Alternative way is to surround yourself with cardboard (the thick brown box type). It really helps eliminate most outside noises and reduce the echo.

Re: Show HN: my Mac app just got fireballed

#118

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

markchristian wrote: post #67
eps wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm on iPad and even though I tried to see what this app is, I still have no idea.

I'm sorry, my server metaphorically melted due to the traffic. :( The site's back up now, and here's the screencast: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1M0PAiiJLlo

I suggest you add a link to the website in your YouTube video description, for people who find it through YouTube.

Re: Show HN: my Mac app just got fireballed

#119

Post by jwr »

chime wrote: post #33

Having been a beta-tester of DragonDrop from the start, one thing I'd like to add is how important the concept of user-interaction truly is and how Mark really innovated in this regard. Lots of Mark's friends, including myself, suggested using one of the screen corners as a hot-zone. But since most people usually have other actions associated with the corners and the extra distance required to drag the icon far from…

I heard about the utility on MacBreak Weekly, but missed the "wiggle" part. I thought it's yet another hot-corner or dock-app solution.

Then I watched the video and now I'm taking out my credit card. I want this. It is actually useful.

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