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Al Fasoldt's reviews and commentaries, continuously available online since 1983

T e c h n o f i l e
How 'drag and drop' can turn you into a pro


Sept. 12, 2004


By Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2004, Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2004, The Post-Standard

   It's a drag. But I love it.
   That might seem like an incongruous description of the hours I spend each day at my computer, but it's exactly how I feel. I use an old interface technique called "drag and drop" so much it's become the standard method for most of my work.
   You can do it, too. Unlike a lot of other techniques, drag and drop is both intuitive and easy to learn. Best of all , it's a snap to show to others. Learn this method and you become an instant expert. Your coworkers will love you -- especially when you show them a secret drag-and-drop method that most computer users have never heard of.
   "Drag" means clicking your mouse on something and holding the button down while you drag the object around the screen. (You can tell how simple this operation is by the fact that it took me three times as long to describe it as it takes to do it.)
   "Drop" means letting go of the mouse button when the item is on top of something else.
   You knew all that, right? And everyone else did, too. But I think most people don't extend the idea far enough. They know they can drag a file to the trash (or to the Recycle Bin, for you Windows sticklers) and drop it there -- after all, that's drag and drop in its most basic form -- but they don't think of dragging a document to their word processor icon, for example.
   So let's back up a little and get nerdy for a minute. Computer programs work hand in hand with document files. You might think the only way to get Program A to open up Document B is to run the program, click on the File menu, click "Open" and hunt around for the file you want.
   No way. The nerd method works this way: You locate the document file and drag it to the icon for your word processor and drop it there. The word processor runs and opens the document file.
   (Don't cheat. I realize you could just double click on the document icon, but that wouldn't help me make my point. So stick with the plan.)
   Drag and drop works so well because it turns the old idea of program-centric computing on its head. Computing is about creating and working with documents. Open a Web page? That's a document. An e-mail? That's a document. An iTunes music track? Document. The report you wrote for history class? Document.
   You end up with documents, so why not start with them? If you keep your document folders handy by making shortcuts (or aliases) to them on the desktop, you can quickly open a folder and click on any document and then drag it somewhere for an instant drag and drop. (And, yes, music files and videos are documents, too.)
   And now for the big kahuna of drag and drop. You have a special way of dragging and dropping that can turn reluctant programs into willing accomplices. Just about everybody knows that programs sometimes put on airs and refuse to open certain documents. They get an attitude, and nothing can get them to cooperate.
   Unless you use my special method. I'd call it the secret method, but once I tell you it's no longer such a big secret. Here's the Windows version of this neat trick; I'll have the Mac version in a minute.
   First, run the program that's giving you the I-won't-cooperate stance -- the one that won't open the document you want it to accept. Then drag the document icon over to the program window and drop it on the title bar of the window -- the area along the top where you see the name of the program.
   Your program will open that document immediately. If the document is something the program can't figure out, you might not see anything but wierd characters on the screen. But if there's even a remote chance that the program can figure out what the document is, it usually will open it and deal with it reasonably well.
   Here's a practical example of what I mean. Let's say you downloaded a document off the Web and discoverred that nothing will open it. When you double click on the document icon, Windows gives you a baleful look and tells you to select a program to open the file. You know it's a word processor file, but you don't know anything else. The document is an orphan; none of your programs want to take it in.
   Drag and drop to the rescue. Run WordPad, the junior word processor already installed on most Windows PCs, and drop the oddball document onto the WordPad title bar. WordPad should open it and do its best to show you the contents. (Hint: At that point, click the "File" menu and choose "Save As" and give the document a new name and a new identity.)
   Does this trickery work on Mac OS X, too? It sure does. But you use a variation. Hold down Option and Cmd while dragging the document icon to the program icon in the dock. If the program has any chance of opening the document, it will respond by loading it into a window.
   Technical sidelight: Dropping a document icon into a document window instead of onto the window's shoulder is a bad idea in Windows. In many cases, Windows interprets this as an instruction to embed the dropped file into the already open document. Dropping the icon onto the shoulder tells Windows to open the document, not embed it.