iChat

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From: Tom Insam
Subject: iChat
Date: 23:42 on 03 Oct 2003
I hate iChat

Background. iChat has 2 little windows. There's 'people you know on 
the internet', and 'people on the local network'. They have their own 
fatuous little names given to them by the Great Metalized Apple 
Marketing Team, but I'm going to ignore them. Now, when I'm at work, 
there's a reasonable chance that there will be people I know in the 
'local people' window. I'd like them to also be in the 'internet 
people' window. Ah-HA! thinks I, this will be easy! It's a mac, all 
things are easy. I'll just drag them from one window, into the other 
window!

No. Apparently this really simple thing isn't possible.

But wait! Just as I'm getting good and angry, it turns out that blech 
can do it no trouble. Weird. Why can't I? I play for a bit, and begin 
to think that maybe you have to (a) hilight the name first, and (b) 
maybe drag using a pixel that's in the word, not part of the space, 
because _sometimes_ it works for me, and _sometimes_ it breaks.

But No.

Apparently, and this is what I figured out eventually, if you click 
and hold and drag up or down, you select multiple contacts. If you 
click and hold and drag left or right, you start dragging the contact.

Of course. Because that's completely obvious.

blech had no problems, because he keeps his lists next to each other, 
so was naturally dragging right. I keep mine one above the other, and 
wanted to drag up. When I was really concentrating on what pixel I 
was clicking on, I didn't care where I dropped it, so was dragging 
'out the way', which tended to be to the left.

How is this user-discoverable behavior? Hello?

-- 
.tom

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