I'm writing a windows based program where you need to be able to select 
and move around objects.  I wanted the behaviour to be like standard MS 
Office products in terms of what combination of shift and ctrl click / 
drag you can do etc.

Two things came to my attention:

1) It was actually surprisingly tricky to get it working the same way, 
especially how to take into account all the different combinations of 
shift/ctrl clicks, drags etc that the user might do.

2) It totally SUCKED as a GUI with even a tiny difference to the 
selection/move logic.  So either I got totally used to the Office GUI 
and can't stand anything else, and/or MS actually did find a very good 
solution.

So, if you're developing an app for windows where you need to select and 
move about stuff, I highly recommend making it behave and feel like 
Office...

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On 6/1/2012 5:47 AM, scott wrote:
> I'm writing a windows based program where you need to be able to select
> and move around objects. I wanted the behaviour to be like standard MS
> Office products in terms of what combination of shift and ctrl click /
> drag you can do etc.
>
> Two things came to my attention:
>
> 1) It was actually surprisingly tricky to get it working the same way,
> especially how to take into account all the different combinations of
> shift/ctrl clicks, drags etc that the user might do.
>
> 2) It totally SUCKED as a GUI with even a tiny difference to the
> selection/move logic. So either I got totally used to the Office GUI and
> can't stand anything else, and/or MS actually did find a very good
> solution.

It's likely more the case of what you're used to.  The advocacy wars for 
the various Unix/Linux text editors are a case in point here.

> So, if you're developing an app for windows where you need to select and
> move about stuff, I highly recommend making it behave and feel like
> Office...

Without the bloat.

Regards,
John

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