[Thunar-dev] French Thunar article

[Benedikt Meurer]

Danny Milosavljevic wrote:
>>He also mentions the mouse gestures for navigation (humm, I
>>
>>>>didn't know that myself!), but that sounds rather positive.
>>>
>>>Mouse gestures? Someone care to point me in the right direction?
> 
>>In the file window, if you click on the middle button (not on a file, on 
>>the background), you can navigate with the mouse in your tree.
>>I discovered it yesterday too.
> 
> Sigh.. I don't get it why apps use the middle mouse button for mouse
> gestures... by far the most widely used mouse is 2 buttons + wheel (the
> latter doubles as "middle" mouse button when you hold really still).
> 
> Holding the wheel while moving the mouse (and not moving the wheel) is
> really hard ...
> 
> Having a 5 button mouse, I don't need gestures that much, but... what's
> the deal with that?
> 
> I know that using the right mouse button somewhat clashes with the popup
> menu when you use the popup menu in a
> hold-mouse-button-down-move-to-menu-item-then-release-mouse-button way
> (which I like), but even breaking that would be better than wheel
> magic...

It's a hidden feature (actually only available to people who care to
read the FAQ file), if you want to use it, do it, if not, ignore it (you
should have no trouble ignoring it).

The choice for the middle mouse button is simple: (a) both left and
right button movement is already taken for dnd and rubberband selection
(afterall that's what people will expect, so no need to confuse them).
So that leaves only the middle button (the wheel button). It's usually
not used within the file manager (atleast in sane file managers) except
for opening folders in new windows (-> double middle click), so chances
are good that people will not press the button on the icon view
background and be confused because they expected a different behaviour.
Instead, people will be happy that they have discovered a hidden feature
(an easter egg), and can afterwards decide to ignore it and just
continue as usual, or use it.

Afterall the feature is probably only useful if you are (a) too lazy to
press Alt+Up or move the mouse to the pathbar, or (b) disable the
location bar completly and are again to lazy to press Alt+Up. ;-)

> cheers,
>   Danny

Benedikt