One of the new features introduced into ChemDoodle 1.2.1 is drag and drop support. The drag and drop functionality has been fully implemented (and even improved and expanded upon in some cases over standard drag and drop). The diagram below shows the various allowed drag and drop possibilities through colored arrows. All drag a drop gestures change the mouse cursors appropriately.
Internal Drag and Drop
→ Internal drag and drop is designated by the red arrows. Objects can be dragged from widgets to the Doodle Sheet and vice versa for easy transfer and copying. Objects can also be dragged onto a widget’s button, just in case that widget isn’t currently visible. An ghosted image will appear below the mouse pointer while an object is being moved. This great visual feedback will even appear on Windows!
Drag and Drop to Other Applications
→ Drag and drop to other applications is also implemented seamlessly. These actions are designated by the green arrows. Keep in mind that the receiving application needs to accept the “Flavors” of data that are being dragged. You can configure which “Flavors” are transfered in the Advanced section of the Preferences menu. Some receiving applications will automatically choose a “Flavor” from the list ChemDoodle provides. If this becomes and issue, copy the object from ChemDoodle instead of dragging and use the Paste Special… function in the receiving application.
Drag and Drop to the File System
→ Files can be dragged into ChemDoodle by dragging onto the Doodle Board, as designated by the blue arrows. Both images and documents are recognized. ChemDoodle may not support some rare image types, but a message will pop up to describe a solution in this case. Supported documents are the native ChemDoodle types (a list that is growing), and others should be imported using the File>Import… menu item. As it always has, on Mac OSX, dragging a document onto the ChemDoodle icon on the system tray will open that file on the Doodle Board.
→The brown arrow is an unsupported drag and drop action that we would like to implement. This mirrors how most native Mac OSX applications are able to save by dragging the frame icon to the file system. We will eventually incorporate this feature.
Please feel free to post any comments or suggestions below!