Drag and drop between different windows

[Oxwivi]

Dragging and dropping text and images between different windows doesn't work. Dragging something to the launcher icon of an open window shows the window preview but nothing can be dropped. Dragging something and pressing Alt + Tab focuses on the launcher and doesn't allow switching windows.

Drag-and-drop functionality would be sorely missed as it's a quick workaround to manually copying and pasting data. Please consider this a papercut bug as well.

EDIT
Let me clarify and say that drag and drop does work, but not from MAXIMISED windows.

[Omer Akram (om26er)]

not sure about papercut but the issue is confirmed.

[LisandroVCR (lisandro-v22)]

It makes no sense to have to drag them to the icon, then hover to the expoed window and wait it to focus. There are too many 2 second waits.

Solution: User should be able to drag files into windows while on expo view.

[LisandroVCR (lisandro-v22)]

Intuitively many users will drop the file while on expo view, it is a must to be able to do it or a lot of people will end up frustrated.

[Oxwivi (oxwivi)]

@LisandroVCR, I know about expo view, but I don't know how to access it. And how would you expect a user to bash in a shortcut while still holding the mouse to drag an item?

[LisandroVCR (lisandro-v22)]

In unity when a user hovers an item over an app in the dock after a few moments all running instances of that app are shown in expo view. That's what I meant.

When this happens the user is most likely to drop the file in the window he wants right away. Which is completely understandable.

The only way to do it right now is to hover over the dock and then hover over the expoed window until it focuses, I don't see why users shouldn't be allowed to just drop it in the window they want right away.

[LisandroVCR (lisandro-v22)]

I think that's what he meant with window previews, users should be able to drop files in window previews or "unity expoed" windows. In the worst case the user will end up frustrated because he won't be able to do it, in the best case the user will know he has to focus one window before dropping it, but will still be frustrated because there is no reason for not being able to do it right away.

[Alexander Kallenbach (kallenbachalex)]

I totally agree with LisandroVCR. Especially when you've got just one instance of a program running it makes no sense to wait 2 seconds. This behavior is quite confusing.

[dayf (dayf)]

not being able to "drag - alt-tab - drop" is so frustrating

[Mathieu Leplatre (mathieu.leplatre)]

In metacity, the drag - alt-tab - drop was fixed very recently #111939 . It was a one liner !

So we can almost consider this as a regression in Unity ! ;)

[Julian Alarcon (julian-alarcon)]

Hey, can we consider the Desktop as a "Window" . Because the Drag and Drop functionality of Gmail is not working.

Let me explain.

If you want to drag and drop a file from a Nautilus maximezad window, or when all the windows are minimized, you can't drop the file to the Firefox Icon, cause it's in grey state. And because when you drag a file to an Icon, the window must to pop up (even if the program can't open the file in a native way).

Many times when you drag a file to a program, doesn't means tha you want to open the file with this program. Means that a function inside the program can make something with the file.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

seems similar to bug #770073

[tolostoi (tolostoi)]

When draging a file from nautilus to nautilus icon on dock the expo view is opened, but can't focus on the chosen nautilus window to drop there. I don't want to drop on the window in expo view, because when droping in nautilus active window, a can drop the file in to sub folder (or sub sub folder, depends of chosen view from nautilus options) of the window, in case of expo view this is inposible. The skype case is the same, I want to drag file from nautilus to skype window, but the skype icon is not active :( if the skype icon is active, I can push the icon, then open the skype windows in expo view, chose the window and when it becomes active, drop the file there. In skype is possible to send file whith draging on the user list, not only from chat window.

[LisandroVCR (lisandro-v22)]

@tolstoi:
Being able to drop icons into expo view doesn't mean that you still won't be able to focus on a window and drop it where you want after some seconds. Both things are perfectly compatible. But most of the time you just want to drop the icon anywhere on the app and you have to wait to focus for no real reason.

[tolostoi (tolostoi)]

Yes, I understand that, but I can't focus the desired window at all :( I did not find bug report on my problem but this is close.
Pease apologize me.

[Lukas Koch (ast0815)]

I got a similar problem. For example:

I want to drag and drop some text from maximised Firefox to a non-maximised window of libreoffice writer.

I drag the text to the dock over the writer icon and the firefox window vanishes while the writer window opens. (I guess this is the expo view?) Dropping the text in that window does nothing but focusing the writer window. No text pasted.

To actually focus the writer window and be able to drop the text in it I have to

1. drag the text over the writer icon in the dock to make the writer window appear,
2. drag the text over the writer window so it seems (!) to get the focus,
3. drag the text back to the left edge of the screen (i.e. the dock), at any vertical position really, to make Firefox appear behind the writer window again,
4. now I can drop the text in the writer window as I would expect to be able after step 2.

For 3 it doesn't appear to matter what icons or programs are in the dock. I just have to move my mouse to the very left edge of the screen at which point some focus magic seems to happen.

This whole ordeal is rather bothersome and quite the step back from gnome where one could simply drag to the taskbar, have the respective window get the focus and drop the text (or anything really) in it.

[csulok (shikakaa)]

This bug totally kills new html5 features, like dragging files from the file manager to gmail. It's bad enough that this is a step backwards from gnome2, so if for nothing else, for html5 please fix this already.

[hdpq (defectoscopny)]

Odd, I've just upgraded my other laptop from 11.04 to 11.10 and drag and drop (for maximized windows) is completely broken now.

The way it used to be: open 2 nautilus windows, maximize them, drag a file from window 1 to the launcher, wait for expo, hover window 2, wait for it to get focused, drop the file to window 2.

The way it is now: open 2 nautilus windows, maximize them, drag a file from window 1 to the launcher and PANIC because expo never activates no matter how long I wait. It won't even let me alt+tab while dragging.

What am I doing wrong?

[Janusz (yorashtan2)]

It's still broken in Unity. It works in Gnome 3 and Gnome 2.