a way to turn of Lasso selection?

Discussion & Support for xplorer² professional

Moderators: fgagnon, nikos, Site Mods

Post Reply
mhenry1384
New Member
Posts: 6
Joined: 2002 Aug 20, 16:45

a way to turn of Lasso selection?

Post by mhenry1384 »

About a hundred thousand times a day, I select a single file in xplorer2 and go to drag it to another application.  And 99 thousand times a day, xplorer2 thinks I am trying to do a Lasso selection.

Please please please please please o please give us a way to disable this incredibly irritating "feature".  I am not doing a lasso selection, I never want to do a lasso selection, if any human being implied that I ever knowingly attempted to do a lasso selection, I would, in all seriousness, punch them in the face.

I searched the forums and registry and FAQ and knowlege base and didn't see way to disable it.  

Note that regular windows explorer has a lasso selection, but it doesn't seem to have the problem Xplorer2 has where it commonly thinks that you are trying to do a lasso selection when you simply intend to drag a single item.

I am using Xplorer2 Professional 1.1.0.1 [Unicode]
User avatar
fgagnon
Site Admin
Site Admin
Posts: 3737
Joined: 2003 Sep 08, 19:56
Location: Springfield

Post by fgagnon »

I have encountered this, too -- but only rarely.

It has not been a problem for me, maybe because of the view settings I prefer: details with gridlines and full row selection.
So when I click on an item it is always selected uniquely at once (unless I click initially in 'whitespace' to the right of the last column or below the last item in the active pane).
Other view modes have significant 'whitespace' areas which make it easy to start a 'lasso' if your intended click-to-select lands there instead of on the item you want. :(  

PS: I know of no way to disable the 'lasso' selection feature.
User avatar
fgagnon
Site Admin
Site Admin
Posts: 3737
Joined: 2003 Sep 08, 19:56
Location: Springfield

Post by fgagnon »

... continued ... after trying to find the difference between windoze explorer (which seemed to have the same 'lasso' behaviour as x2, except that it doesn't have a 'full row selection' feature).

And after idly click-dragging a bit, back in x2 details view with full row selection, now I think I see the problem !!!
Starting a drag from a point in the first column to the right of the text will always start a 'lasso' -- even with 'Full row selection' enabled. :shock:
It doesn't happen for a drag starting from anywhere in any other column when 'full row selection' is enabled.  

There appears to be some unintentional 'lasso'-starter space between the last character in the first (left-most) column and the edge of the second column (unless the first column text is truncated with an ellipsis "...").
And the first column can be any column parameter, not just "Name".

So maybe the 'solution' would be to close the 'lasso'-starter hole (vs. trying to turn off the 'lasso' feature -- especially if it's shell-inherited); unless this is really a different issue than what is bothering mhenry1384.
User avatar
nikos
Site Admin
Site Admin
Posts: 15771
Joined: 2002 Feb 07, 15:57
Location: UK
Contact:

Post by nikos »

in any case the morale of the story is "always click on part of the name when you want to drag it"
User avatar
fgagnon
Site Admin
Site Admin
Posts: 3737
Joined: 2003 Sep 08, 19:56
Location: Springfield

Post by fgagnon »

While that is a valid workaround for those who can easily learn new habits; it doesn't fit with the consequences of "paradigm shift" discussed elsewhere; wherein the idea is to pay more attention to the needs of grandma-style users, who are less careful about the details and just want things to work.

i.e. nextgen x2 should try to work with users who have the expectation that "The computer should be smart enough to figure out what I meant."

(I am NOT suggesting that mhenry1384 is a grandma-style user; he has just pointed out an opportunity to better serve that type of user.)
User avatar
nikos
Site Admin
Site Admin
Posts: 15771
Joined: 2002 Feb 07, 15:57
Location: UK
Contact:

Post by nikos »

but lasso selection is also a useful feature!
User avatar
fgagnon
Site Admin
Site Admin
Posts: 3737
Joined: 2003 Sep 08, 19:56
Location: Springfield

Post by fgagnon »

yes ... but only when that's what you want to do.

My suggestion is to remove the undocumented lasso-action-space in the first column of details view (which I suspect is the source of mhenry1384's annoyance), rather than to create an option to remove the lasso feature.

I suppose an alternative would be to document the 'feature' in a prominent way, and leave the behaviour "as-is". :shrug:
User avatar
nikos
Site Admin
Site Admin
Posts: 15771
Joined: 2002 Feb 07, 15:57
Location: UK
Contact:

Post by nikos »

why create problems ex nihilo?
i never heard of people having problems with drag or lasso before
and i bet it's down to the nature of the thing: the name is usually the largest portion of the first column and as such an easier target -- it is lasso-wielding cowboys that may have a counter argument :)

mchenry will hopefully not have this problem again now he knows how it works
mhenry1384
New Member
Posts: 6
Joined: 2002 Aug 20, 16:45

Post by mhenry1384 »

I suspect I run into this so often because I tend to run xplorer2 in "single pane" mode, so I have tons of whitespace.  This creates a problem when you combine it with "full row selection" which leaves the impression, in me anyway, that you can drag from anywhere on the selection.  I would suggest that you not enable this lasso behavior if "full row selection" is on, but for now I will just turn off "full row selection" so my poor brain doesn't get confused.
User avatar
devic
Member
Member
Posts: 37
Joined: 2004 Jul 19, 22:08
Location: Europe
Contact:

Post by devic »

I would suggest that you not enable this lasso behavior if "full row selection" is on, but for now I will just turn off "full row selection" so my poor brain doesn't get confused.
sorry, I'm against this. I use "full row selection" and "lasso" and is a useful feature! Also I never had above problem.
I would, in all seriousness, punch them in the face.
please don't punch me :)
User avatar
mimeryme
Bronze Member
Bronze Member
Posts: 107
Joined: 2003 Apr 29, 18:38
Location: Brooklyn
Contact:

Post by mimeryme »

Yes, please don't punch in the face either.

I think the way it works now is a nice compromise to allow lasso selections to be made easily while in full row selection mode.
Post Reply