Drag and drop icons from web pages are too large; difficult to use

[Dylan McCall]

Binary package hint: mozilla-firefox

In Firefox 3, I have noticed that dragging content from a web page is made to feel more "natural" by having the drag icon identical to the displayed content, scaled down after a very generous threshold. The result is very, very big icons attached to the cursor during the drag and drop operation. While this is great from the perspective of dragging, the idea does not take into account the ultimate goal of this operation: Dropping.

Basically, because the icon is huge, it is impossible to see beneath the cursor. This leads to a usability problem when one wishes to drag content from Firefox to another program, or even to one of Firefox's tabs.

I am submitting this report downstream because I do not believe the problem is as significant in other platforms, or at least that it may be dealt with differently elsewhere. In GNOME, drag and drop is a rather common operation. On our end, the dragged icon is entirely opaque, whereas in the Windows version of Firefox the icon is semi-transparent.

Having smaller drag icons would also be beneficial in terms of consistency, given that no other programs here do drag icons as Firefox does now. For that matter, I believe the HIG has recommended sizing for these...
Besides, does dragging half a table - the background colour really look that nice?
The drag icon should be a hint, not a hindrance.

Steps to reproduce:
-Drag a large image (around 400x400 pixels in size), or a large block of content such as a table, from a web page
-Attempt to drop this content on another application, for example a Nautilus window that is populated with many folders. Note that it is difficult to aim at a particular spot on the window; this frustrates most users by requiring them to think about the interface rather than the task at hand.

-Do the same with another application, such as F-Spot. Observe how the drag icon is a small emblem, usually positioned to the bottom right of the cursor, which allows for unhindered targeting.

[John Vivirito (gnomefreak)]

Thank you for taking the time to file this bug report with us. Closing due to age. If this is still a problem in 3.0.7 please reopen this bug.
Also please reopen with all new information on how to reproduce this bug by giving us step by step instructions.
We also need what happens what is expected to happen.
To reopen the bug report you can click on the current status, under the Status column, and change the Status back to "New". Thanks again!