Dragging web images to the chat area

df0notfound · Post by **df0notfound** » Tue Dec 20, 2005 7:55 pm

In earlier versions of Adium I believe it was the pre-webkit view ones, if you dragged an image out of safari to the text entry area in a message window then it would paste the url to the image, this is a brilliant feature and standard behaviour in osx (MSN does it still, although that now randomly crashes when you drag things on it in the new version the older one never crashed) because you can quickly send pictures of interest to your friends for discussion.

However at one version of adium this feature broke and no one seemed to notice or didn't care and now the way to do it is to right click the image, select open image in new window then drag the url from the toolbar to the adium window. If a user just drags the image they get the green + pill but adium does nothing.

Please if possible bring this feature back, it may seem small and insignificant to some people but I seriously do this like 50 times a day and MSN is driving me mad with its random crashes and now adium losing features i grew to love

I'm not saying I'm gonna be running to another client if this feature isn't back but its small things like this which set Adium and good mac programs/macs in general apart from the mediocre competition.
Thats what macos is all about to me when you want to do something you think "how would it work in a perfect world?" try it and thats the way to achieve something

df0notfound · Post by **df0notfound** » Fri Jan 06, 2006 5:32 pm

No one care about this?
I've used Adium from the early days, past the dodgy brushed metal phase and right up to current day and this is one of my favorite features of macosx in general and I feel like kicking myself every time I drag an image over to my conversation and then remember "No Adium doesn't do that anymore, even though its showing the right cursor" and thne have to right click, open in new tab and copy the url of the image over instead.

Post by **bgannin** » Fri Jan 06, 2006 5:48 pm

I would not consider this a system standard behavior as dragging an image from Safari to another application typically copies the image itself, not a URL. This is typically a nicety that developers can add... (to be more technical: dragging adds image & URL [in a couple flavors IIRC] data to the pasteboard and the receiving application chooses how to accept the dragged item)

As to the "it's showing the icon and it's wrong"... nope. It shows the + (copy) drag badge because it is copying the dragged item. You have a problem with how the drag is interpreted, not the action itself. You'd prefer the URL be copied, not the image.

Final addendum - directly showing the image makes just as much sense in case of direct connect to contacts to share images back and forth. It may be broken [at various times] but it is still a facet of IM (on certain protocols at least.)

df0notfound · Post by **df0notfound** » Fri Jan 06, 2006 8:12 pm

Well when you drag an image to textedit in text only mode it will display the URL so to me that says its a standard enough behaviour for when an application only accepts text in a text area then the URL should be pasted. The day Adium can do direct messages then yes maybe it should send the actual file but it doesn't do that yet.

And it is wrong to display the copy icon because its not copying anything at all, the copy logo appears when I can drop an item somewhere but when I drop in the text area it no longer does anything.

I don't see the need to try and justify why this is a negative feature, its brilliant and great for talking about things happening on the internet.

Post by **evands** » Fri Jan 06, 2006 9:03 pm

If not direct connect (on MSN, for example), it should send the image as a file, not as a link.

df0notfound · Post by **df0notfound** » Sat Jan 07, 2006 1:50 am

Why should it?
I'm not dragging a file I'm dragging a selection off a document, by that logic if I drag a paragraph of text out of word into Adium it should be turning that paragraph into a word document and sending that.

Why waste processor, disk space and bandwidth sending a file to a user when you can send a little bit of text?

Post by **evands** » Sat Jan 07, 2006 2:02 am

df0notfound wrote:Why should it?
I'm not dragging a file I'm dragging a selection off a document, by that logic if I drag a paragraph of text out of word into Adium it should be turning that paragraph into a word document and sending that.

Why waste processor, disk space and bandwidth sending a file to a user when you can send a little bit of text?

By dragging an image, you see an image underneath your cursor, you drag and an image (partially transparent) follows you, and you release. WYSIWYG demands that it be an image moving from point A to point B. If you intended to drag the link to the image, you would be dragging a link to it, selecting "copy image location to clipboard" from the contextual menu, or viewing source and finding the image URL there.

MBHockey · Post by **MBHockey** » Sat Jan 07, 2006 2:06 am

I agree. It's just more logical this way. Dragging text, gives you text. Dragging a picture, gives you a picture.

df0notfound · Post by **df0notfound** » Sun Jan 08, 2006 10:49 pm

"selecting "copy image location to clipboard" from the contextual menu"

Don't have that in safari, I understand the concept of WYSIWYG I'm just saying dragging from the APPLE (no offensive, but we all know they're pretty much the best we've got usability wise in the commercial computer world) application Safari to the APPLE application Textedit gives me a url. Clearly Apple saw how time saving this was and made it as good as standard behaviour, it was available in an earlier version of Adium and was brilliant but now its either been broken or taken out for this rather poor reason your providing.

This isn't like say a word processing document with a url in, both users are online at the moment of usage so whats wrong with sending a little bit of text instead of a file. I mean someone on the Adium team clearly though this was a good thing to leave in at some point, and to break it or remove it without putting a decent replacement in seems pretty counter productive.

Post by **bgannin** » Sun Jan 08, 2006 11:19 pm

Wrong answer.

Dragging an image to a document in TextEdit adds the image unless you are in plain text mode, which would make the text logical.

MODALITY IS IMPORTANT! (you obviously use plain text, thus images would NEVER show up... in RTFD [rich text] this behaves as we behave)

Note: we act just as Apple does... and in the end, it doesn't matter... we have to define a solid behavior for our users, not slavishly recreate whatever APP XYZ/COMPANY N does.

EDIT: To further clarify - by definition, our text entry is rich text, as it accepts multiple font styles, images, attachments [files].

Post by **evands** » Mon Jan 09, 2006 1:17 am

df0notfound wrote:"selecting "copy image location to clipboard" from the contextual menu"

Don't have that in safari

In Safari the menu item is entitled "Copy Image Address".

df0notfound · Post by **df0notfound** » Wed Jan 11, 2006 1:15 am

shock horror bgannin if you read my earlier post properly you'd find I said "you drag an image to textedit in text only mode" as Adium can not yet add images to its actual message view (and thus the entry is plain text) this makes sense by your logic and thus you agree with me, cheers! GET COOKING!

Not in my version of safari (1.2, not broke don't fix it) evands, only have copy image to clipboard also isn't that against the whole apple philosophy, allowing a feature only to be accessed via a right click menu.

Anyway I won't debate it anymore, theres no point arguing with open source developers as they're some of the closed off to criticism people you'll ever meet (although maybe thats why they get stuff done). I mean we all remember when the Adium developers were stating how Adium should be brushed metal to fit in with Apples philosophy (or in other words "cos iChat did it") and other such nonsense. I was totally against that at the time and look at you now, white aqua goodness all over your faces!

MBHockey · Post by **MBHockey** » Wed Jan 11, 2006 1:33 am

which is the beauty of open source, if you don't like it, go ahead and change it instead of carrying on and on...

Post by **bgannin** » Wed Jan 11, 2006 1:55 am

I actually had an entire post to reply to this, but I'd rather be civil and kind. I think this thread has sufficiently addressed your concerns, a lock would likely be appropriate.

Post by **evands** » Wed Jan 11, 2006 2:00 am

df0notfound wrote:Anyway I won't debate it anymore, theres no point arguing with open source developers as they're some of the closed off to criticism people you'll ever meet

That's an interesting claim. I'm curious as to why we maintain the Adium forums and have an open bug reporting / enhancement request system, both of which we as a team spend a significant amount of time manning and managing when we could otherwise be coding or doing activities of our real-world lives, if that's the case. I claim that both these things exist precisely because we value open discussion and care intimately about the wants and needs of our users. N.B.: That does not make us slaves to users, particularly rude ones.

You have an opinion; nobody agrees with you. That means either:
1) We (developers and users posting in this thread) are "closed off to criticism" and don't know Truth when it is right in front of us
or
2) You are wrong and/or in the minority in an opinion-based functionality issue.

You believe (1). The 'we' mentioned in (1) believe (2). This is likely an irreconcilable difference.

Post by **bgannin** » Wed Jan 11, 2006 3:17 am

df0notfound wrote:shock horror bgannin if you read my earlier post properly you'd find I said "you drag an image to textedit in text only mode" as Adium can not yet add images to its actual message view (and thus the entry is plain text) this makes sense by your logic and thus you agree with me, cheers! GET COOKING!

Actually... I shall reply. Concessions, I did miss that you were in text only mode, but the noted caveats from the prior post and following do still apply. Caps added for emphasis.

1. Shock, horror, you DIDN'T read what I said... we use RICH TEXT with FULL FONT STYLING & ATTACHMENT support. PLAIN TEXT DOESN'T. The message entry is NOT plain text simply because images don't display in messages via some sending/receiving mechanism.

2. Personally (can't speak for others), when volunteering on open source projects, I don't take such direction from Joe Random User. There's two sources: personal motivation or assignment from project manager. EDIT: I'll leave determination of its inclusion to minds other than myself, as it's Not My Job (tm)

EDITLOG: tone down jack***iness and speak only for myself, generally wiser.