[Bug 70419] Wish: Improve drag&drop: raise window on mouseup & drag&drop

[José M. López-Cepero]

Public bug reported:

Binary package hint: metacity

I suggest having windows raised not on mouse-button-down (as they are
now), but in mouse-button-up; making that the default behavior and/or
adding an option to turn it on.

Furthermore, I suggest raising windows if the cursor stays over them for
a few seconds when in a drag&drop operation.

Rationale:

 - There are two main "click" operations which can be done in a window:
click (button down, button up) and drag (button down, move mouse holding
button), as in drag&drop operations.

 - If the user clicks in a window, the new behavior would be almost the
same as it is now, with no noticeable differences other than the (very
small) delay between mouse-down and mouse-up.

 - If the user wants to do a drag&drop operation, the new behavior would
allow him to do the drag&drop between _all visible items_ the moment the
operation begins, whereas the old behavior does not.

Say you have two partially overlapping Nautilus windows open. In the one
in the foreground there is a folder, and in the one in the background
there is a file which is not obscured by the foreground window. You want
to drag that file to the folder. With the current behavior, clicking and
dragging on the file immediately raises the background window, changing
the screen distribution (counter-intuitive) and obscuring a significant
part of the foreground window (likely including the intended drag&drop
target). With the new behavior, you just drag the (visible) file to the
(visible) folder and that's it.

Let's say now that the situation is reversed. You want to drag a file
from a foreground window to a folder in a background window. The
background window is obscured by the foreground window, so the target
folder is not visible. With the current behavior the best way to
drag&drop is either moving the windows (so the drag&drop is not direct)
or using the task bar (rather inconvenient). With the proposed behavior
it's just drag the file to the visible part of the background screen -
linger for 2 seconds with the button down - the background screens is
raised - drag to the (now visible) folder and release the button.

The suggested behavior would make dragging & dropping more convenient
and more intuitive, and I have seen it implemented to good use in
several other file managers. I have filed the bug against Metacity
because I suppose that it's possible to control this policy in the
window manager.

Thanks for your time and keep up the good work.

** Affects: metacity (Ubuntu)
     Importance: Undecided
         Status: Unconfirmed

-- 
Wish: Improve drag&drop: raise window on mouseup & drag&drop
https://launchpad.net/bugs/70419