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Restore previous operation drag function
Status:
RESOLVED: MOVED

Comments

Description Dale 2016-06-14 04:26:13 CEST
I have just upgraded from Ubuntu Studio 14.04 to 16.04 and thus from Thunar 1.6.3 to 1.6.10 and some of the basic operation has changed making it a far less smooth experience to that which I am used to.

Namely it is no longer possible to drag a selection of files from starting over the file, or over the filename field in List or Detailed List view. I always use Detailed list and this includes not working when on space with no text but falling within this field. This was possible with 1.6.3, where you would have to click a second time to drag a single file (so I can see some people may prefer the new way but to not leave the old method as an option in Preferences is really short-sighted!)

Then there is the fact you can no longer do a rmb mouse drag and get the context menu for copy/move/link/cancel. This is something I used more rarely but definitely use on occasion (mostly when wanting to make a simple link quickly, now you either have to use the command line, or right click and send link to Desktop and then Cut and Paste it from the Desktop to your required location, Really clunky!) If you could add a slider to select time before context menu appears and you can still drag (I would guess the old operation was somewhere in the region of 0.2s and was fine to me, new default could be 0.0s and be like current.)

Finally didn't it used to be a user option where to have the filename column auto-extend as you navigated folders? This seems to have gone with it always doing so. I admit I do generally prefer it to extend to fit full filename in but this in itself makes the first mentioned problem even more annoying as it often pushes the space dragging can be started from off the edge of my window.

In all these changes have forced me to downgrade to 1.6.3 package used in 14.04 as although it has bugs I know and am used to these bugs and the basic operation of the program is far far better!
Comment 1 Dale 2016-06-14 04:31:43 CEST
The Automatically Expand Column option I have found under the Configure Columns menu so that point can be ignored. Sorry I don't think I can edit the post once I've submitted it, unless I'm missing something.
Comment 2 Prof Yaffle 2017-05-28 13:19:56 CEST
Having finally bitten the bullet and yesterday upgraded to Xubuntu 16.04 from 14.04, I can confirm the loss of right-click drag-and-drop, and also the loss of "rectangle select".

To add to the above, the functions both work in "View as Icons" and "View as Compact List". Where they fail is in "View as Detailed List", which is what I use all the time.

Workaround are thus:

1. Click-shiftclick to select a range (instead of rectangle select)
2. Ctrl-leftclick-drag to select a range (causes rectangle select to work, but has to start on an item, not on whitespace)
3. Shift-left-drag to force a move (bypassing the Copy/Move/Link popup menu you'd expect on a right-drag)
4. Change the view every time you want to perform a relevant action (which is clumsy, to say the least)

Kernel: 4.4.0-78-generic
Distro: (X)Ubuntu 16.04.2 LTS (Xenial)
xfce4-about: 4.12
Thunar Help-about: 1.6.11
Comment 3 Prof Yaffle 2017-05-28 17:23:20 CEST
Belay that comment... "functionality as intended".

Please see this commit:

https://github.com/xfce-mirror/thunar/commit/bb9fe8ad3e2202be52fa5c987cb1a7744d20a0a6

And I quote...

"When using the right mouse button, clicking on the first column of an item will always select it and pop up the context menu of the item. Clicking on another column of an unselected item will unselect all items and show the menu of the folder, while clicking on another column of a selected item will show the context menu for that item (or those items)."

In other words:

1. If you right-click on the name of an item, you'll get the context menu. If you want to drag, you can't.

2. If you want to drag with default action (copy/move, depending on whether it's between or within partitions), left-click and drag.

3. If you want to drag with the action menu (copy/move/link), right-click not on the name field but on *any other column* of an item/selection.

4. Rubber-banding/"rectangle select" is the same. You can force it with ctrl, but it is otherwise disabled from the first column; instead, start the selection in *any other column*.

Hopefully, Google will pick this up and help other people, as there are confused users out there and this really isn't clear from the documentation:

https://docs.xfce.org/xfce/thunar/working-with-files-and-folders

Search hints:

Xubuntu Xenial 16.04 XFCE
drag drop
right click
move files
bulk move
Comment 4 Dale 2017-05-30 21:14:11 CEST
I often can't see the other columns  on my small laptop screen. My bug very clearly states it is from the Name column it has stopped working from this version only. This is something that I rely on so much that I have manually installed 1.6.3 and held back any Thunar updates to keep it working! As Intended when the new functionality really isn't helpful just isn't good enough.
Comment 5 Git Bot editbugs 2020-05-26 23:27:31 CEST
-- GitLab Migration Automatic Message --

This bug has been migrated to xfce.org's GitLab instance and has been closed from further activity.

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Bug #12649

Reported by:
Dale
Reported on: 2016-06-14
Last modified on: 2020-05-26

People

Assignee:
Xfce Bug Triage
CC List:
3 users

Version

Version:
1.6.10

Attachments

Additional information