
Show HN: my Mac app just got fireballed - markchristian
http://daringfireball.net/linked/2012/05/08/dragondrop
======
chime
Having been a beta-tester of DragonDrop from the start, one thing I'd like to
add is how important the concept of user-interaction truly is and how Mark
really innovated in this regard. Lots of Mark's friends, including myself,
suggested using one of the screen corners as a hot-zone. But since most people
usually have other actions associated with the corners and the extra distance
required to drag the icon far from the center makes the movement tedious, Mark
kept looking for a better way to handle it.

He spent weeks & months trying out different UI and actions, finally coming up
with the 'shake-your-cursor' action. It seems trivial now that you see it but
it was something none of his potential users could imagine. And since then,
he's been refining the app constantly to get it to its current state,
including the rotating background and optimal thumbnail for a variety of
mimetypes. I'm so glad to see the app finally getting the attention it
deserves.

~~~
ynniv
Reading the description, I felt that waiting for the overloaded page to load
was going to be a waste of time. Having seen the video, I am contemplating
tossing him some cash.

Drag, think... doh! wiggle, store. Dig, dig, find, unstore, drop.

That wiggle makes all the difference. Come to think of it, I might
unconsciously wiggle things while I'm trying to remember where I meant to drag
them to.

~~~
amartya916
Absolutely correct, the wiggle does make it happen. One of those "Why didn't I
think of it" interaction technique.

Kudos to the developer. Just a (very) minor change will make it better for me:
slightly less opacity for the pop up window. On an 11inch Macbook Air, I think
it'll help. I just bought the app, it's fantastic and worth every penny.

~~~
hellrich
I have problems performing a "correct" wiggle, especially on my trackpad.
Corners would be more reliable.

~~~
scoot
My trick for more control on a Mac trackpad (the "magic" one at least) is to
use the thumb for the click action, allowing you to hold it down whilst having
full control of the pointer with a light touch of the index finger.

------
citricsquid
This is a fantastic app, not just because of how much of a great utility it is
(does anything like this exist for windows?) but the name is absolutely
brilliant. Not only is it very easy to remember "Dragon Drop", it's also an
excellent wordplay ("drag'n'drop"). The video is very good too. So wonderful,
a perfect combination.

~~~
markchristian
Thank you. Believe me, that video was the hardest part: a bad screencast is a
terrible thing, but they're damn hard to do well. I think I spent about 4
hours on that sixty second video, and it means the world to me to know that it
was well-received. Thank you.

~~~
steventruong
I assume that's your voice on there? Great job

~~~
markchristian
Yeah, that's me — and a very high-end microphone that I managed to borrow from
someone. ;) The mic made all the difference.

~~~
kareemm
A hack for getting good audio on screencasts: sit in a closet with a blanket
over your head while you record the audio. It makes even a built-in Mac mic
sound good.

~~~
mcdillon
There was an episode of Dirty Jobs where Mike Rowe was recording the
narratives in a hotel room by simply going under the blanket of his bed with
the microphone. I'm sure there was additional tweaking production value, but
this is good advice!

------
chime
Congrats Mark! Looks like you'll surpass your 2013 goals before it even
starts. I'm a very happy user of the app and have known Mark for years. He is
awesome!

He has another really neat and surprisingly useful app on the AppStore: Lidpop
- <http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/lidpop/id441887602?mt=12> \- "Lidpop makes
your Macintosh play a sound when it sleeps or wakes up. Close the lid with a
resounding clank or a happy slide whistle. Open it back up with a laugh or a
whimsical chime — it's up to you. Lidpop brings a dash of personality to your
computer."

When I open my Air, Scotty (Star Trek) says "Hello Computer" and when I shut
it down, Vader (Star Wars) says "Nooooooooo." I know it seems trifling but
always brings a smile to my face wherever I am, including work meetings.

~~~
ricardobeat
Nice app. I'm going to steal your idea if you don't mind.

~~~
markchristian
Ha, the idea for the app or the idea for the silly sounds? ;)

Note: my wake-up sound is currently the boot sound effect form OS/2 Warp 4,
just because I love weird, retro-computing goodness.

~~~
markchristian
Follow-up: another great sleep sound is Stauff's “Come baaaaaaaack” from the
7th Guest, for those of you old enough to remember double speed CD-ROM drives
being exciting.

------
graeme
Great idea! Just bought it. I previously did workarounds such as dragging an
entire chrome tab out to move the picture. Got awkward sometimes.

You might want to consider not having a free trial. I watched the video, was
sold, went to click buy, then saw the trial button. Still went to buy, but
_almost_ clicked the trial out of habit.

Edit: Wow, 45 seconds later it's already installed and working seamlessly.
Took me all of 1.5 seconds to figure out how to shake on a touchpad, and now
it feels second nature. I'll repeat, great work and congrats on getting
fireballed.

~~~
markchristian
Thanks, Graeme.

The free trial is actually an entire non-App Store version with its own in-app
purchase -- I chronicled the experience at
[http://writing.markchristian.org/2012/03/30/make-your-own-
ap...](http://writing.markchristian.org/2012/03/30/make-your-own-app-
store.html) in the hopes of sharing the knowledge with other potential indie
devs.

~~~
sammathews
Awesome, thanks Mark.

Does the mac appstore allow you to track where your sales come from? Do you
get the majority from people linking to your site or discovering the app
through the store?

------
rkudeshi
I can understand why you're redirecting traffic directly to the App Store, but
I think it might be doing more harm than good.

I vaguely remember seeing something about this app on HN before, but I don't
really remember what it does exactly. Based on all the comments here, it
sounds like you made a screencast that does a great job of demonstrating the
product. Unfortunately, by redirecting the traffic, I can't see that
screencast (and the App Store screenshots don't really demonstrate what the
app does).

This product might very well be perfect for me, but I don't know because I
can't see the video of it in action because of the redirect.

Just something to think about.

~~~
eps
I'm on iPad and even though I tried to see what this app is, I still have no
idea.

~~~
markchristian
I'm sorry, my server metaphorically melted due to the traffic. :( The site's
back up now, and here's the screencast:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1M0PAiiJLlo>

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
I suggest you add a link to the website in your YouTube video description, for
people who find it through YouTube.

~~~
markchristian
That's a great idea — I just did. Thank you.

------
dguaraglia
Is this really dependent on any particular Lion feature? I was about to buy it
but I'm still on 10.6.8 (never bothered to update to Lion because of the
myriad annoying new 'features').

tl;dr: if you can make it work in 10.6.8, I think you might get some more
$love$ from some of us.

~~~
markchristian
If you're feeling adventurous, I've heard success stories from people manually
hacking the Info.plist on the direct download version.

It currently doesn't require any Lion specific APIs, but I plan on updating it
in the future to make use of the nice flocking icons while dragging, and that
will require Lion.

~~~
dguaraglia
Done. Here, have my money! :)

~~~
garret
How'd you do it?

------
runn1ng
Hello,

a quick question... my Mac cannot be upgraded to Lion. Is there a slight
possibility of making it work for Snow Leopard?

And if not - I would like to know - just for general interest :) - what is the
blocker.

~~~
AlisdairO
As a lion-hater I have the same question! I'd love to buy this app.

~~~
Stwerp
Yeah, I just tried the trial and got an error. Strange. I hope the trend of
Lion-only apps doesn't continue because I just can't cripple my workflow to
"upgrade."

------
aculver
Congratulations! What an awesome utility. Your demo video is awesome. More
than happy to send you money for this. Would love to hear how you fare from
all the attention!

~~~
markchristian
Thank you!

Summary so far: Daring Fireball's traffic is so intense that it's almost
scary. :)

~~~
greendestiny
Your site failed to load for me, can you redirect straight to the App Store?

Edit: here's an App Store link for people to check it out -
<http://itunes.apple.com/au/app/dragondrop/id499148234?mt=12>

~~~
markchristian
Eep — traffic it seems to come in spurts. I've got a RewriteRule to send
people to the App Store when I notice it being particularly bad, but I prefer
to keep the site up so people can see the video and try the trial. Thanks for
posting this link.

~~~
greendestiny
Sounds wise - here's a youtube link for people who want to see the demo
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1M0PAiiJLlo>

------
andos
Just bought it! Skipped the trial because the video demo was enough. You
should really be proud. Works like a charm, somehow feels like a UNIX tool.
Hope you get rich in exponentially faster increments of five bucks.

~~~
markchristian
Thank you — right now, I am both proud and humbled.

------
gurkendoktor
I wanted to love this because I am heavy trackpad D&D user, and I think D&D
has only gotten worse after Leopard, but... :(

I can't get the gesture to work reliably on a (magic) trackpad, and with a
mouse I usually don't bother to use D&D. Also, you cannot stash things and
then move them to the desktop, which is my #1 use case. If you put things into
Dragon Drop, then reveal the desktop, the Dragon Drop window will move out of
sight too.

~~~
markchristian
Try drawing circles with your mouse, rather than shaking it — some people find
that easier to do on trackpads. Does that help?

RE: showing up when you show the desktop — this is a good feature request, and
I will see if I can make it happen. It may not be possible.

------
dazbradbury
I'm confused, is this just an alternative to copy & paste? Or even cut/paste?

The demo for example talks about putting a picture in an email. I would
currently right click -> copy. Go to email -> paste. Is this really easier?

The clipboard utility I find most useful is ditto [1], which has a nice
history and shortcuts for pasting from your history.

Disclaimer: I'm a windows user, so maybe I missed something.

[1] - <http://ditto-cp.sourceforge.net/>

~~~
solutionyogi
Nope. This is not about copy/paste at all.

Windows and Mac lets you drag objects and drop them on target. This works in
normal scenario where the object you are trying to drag and the target are
easy to identify. It gets very difficult if your target is hard to reach. This
app has a brilliant new UI which makes those drag-n-drop operations super
easy.

Please see the demo video to understand the app:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1M0PAiiJLlo>

~~~
dazbradbury
Sorry, what I meant to say isn't this simply _equivalent_ to copy and paste?

In windows at least: <http://superuser.com/a/252104>

I can think of only a few scenarios where dropping is the only option and
pasting isn't available - but clearly those scenarios were real pain points
for people!

~~~
haar
An alternative use-case would be when using a program such as Adobe Photoshop,
rather than launching Photoshop, clicking File, open, navigating to your
desired directory, selecting which files to open the pressing open; if you
already have the directory open, drag the files onto the Photoshop icon and
it'll open them.

~~~
dazbradbury
Thanks. After reading the other comments, it's apparent Apple users simply
drag and drop a lot more. I think there a many more common use cases for
dragging and dropping than on Windows - perhaps from the days of designing for
single mouse button user experience.

Anyway, extremely interesting to see, so thanks for not all downvoting my
ignorance immediately!

Well done as well to the OP for battling and getting his app released. Seems
as though the hard work is paying off!

------
ghshephard
I've spent the last four + years dragging stuff to that tiny little space in
the bottom left of of my screen near the dock, switching to the app I'm
interested in (sometimes after failing for 20-30 seconds of trying to get
focus onto the app while holding onto my mouse button and hoping the
"springboard" functionality of the OS gets to correct window) - and then "show
desktop" - hope that I can find the stuff I just dragged to my desktop in what
is usually an over cluttered screen, and then dragging it to the app that show
(hopefully) be easy to get back into focus.

I probably do this three-four times a day - and it's one of the few miserable
parts of my OS X existence.

The ROI for this app will be measured for me in about one day of frustration
that I no longer have to deal with - the "shake to get clipboard" is
brilliant. Just the toolbar drop alone would have been sufficient to make me
happy.

Thank you so much - I don't recall ever being so pleased with something new.
So worth $5. Brilliant.

------
seanmccann
I followed your App Store struggle and am really happy you were finally able
to get it approved. This is a really great utility.

~~~
markchristian
Thanks, Sean. :)

I wrote this up a few weeks ago to help give other developers their own plan B
in case of similar difficulties:
[http://writing.markchristian.org/2012/03/30/make-your-own-
ap...](http://writing.markchristian.org/2012/03/30/make-your-own-app-
store.html)

~~~
eridius
If you were rejected from the App Store for the mouse shaking behavior, how'd
you finally get it approved?

~~~
markchristian
I had lots and lots of conversations with the App Store appeal board, a plea
for direct download customers to write to Apple and tell them they want the
app in the store.

Apple rejected it for "interfering" with a standard system operation. What
ultimately got me in was an email I wrote pointing out that the app PopClip (a
great utility from @pilotmoon) was in the store and also enhanced a system
behaviour.

------
nsomaru
I just realised that with the new update to Alfred (it lets you drag out of
the results bar), that this could be one of the most useful little utilities
that I've invested in.

I just hope it works as I expect.

Navigating the filesystem is so 2011 :)

edit: would be cool if you could post an update here on just how you did after
you were fireball'd _and_ HN'd!

~~~
markchristian
I posted a screenshot of my Google Analytics elsewhere on the thread:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3946765>

Anything else you'd like to know about the traffic? Open kimono.

Cheers.

~~~
godDLL
I'd like to know how DF traffic converts, for one. I'd like to.

------
dools
Wow this is awesome. I created this thing[1] a little while back that's just
an Automator service (hence can't be sold in the mac app store according to
their install guidelines) that solves a similar issue I was having - basically
I wanted to browse through my file system picking a bunch of files and then
drop them in one place (like cumulative copy/paste for files).

I love how this solution fits perfectly into an existing workflow, though. Now
if only it were cumulative ... ;)

[1]<http://www.pickdropapp.com/>

EDIT: I should also note this grew out of a little command line utility for
unix: <https://github.com/iaindooley/pickdrop/>

~~~
markchristian
It's a shame that Apple doesn't open up the App Store to things like
preference panes and Automator workflows. Good luck with your project!

------
mrchess
I own a similar app called Yoink that does the same thing. Any reason why I
should migrate to Dragondrop/does DND do some things better?

~~~
tuananh
IMHO, Yoink is still better for now!

------
mikhailt
Hey Mark,

Is this useful on the trackpad? It seem to be about 50% accurate on my magic
trackpad when shaking back and forth.

Also, what do you mean by "under the mouse?"

~~~
cmer
I'm also having problems shaking. It works 1 time out of 5 it seems.

How about showing the window if I don't move the mouse for 2 seconds instead?
That'd be easier and a better UX IMO since it would mimic spring loading.

------
jkahn
I was one of the people in that fireball. Bought it through the App Store.
Great app.

~~~
markchristian
Thank you kindly. :)

------
robomartin
Looks like a cool utility. I will probably be well received by those who rely
on dragging and dropping.

I personally never drag-and-drop unless it is the only way to get something
done. Copy and Paste via the keyboard is faster and far easier to use. It also
gives you all the time you need to navigate wherever you need to go.

Further to that, because I switch between platforms multiple times per day I
just can't deal with the weird keyboard mappings on the Mac. Weird, of course,
from the perspective of any other platform. If you are only on Mac it is very
likely that everything else feels weird to you. I get it.

For example, I wanted copy and paste to be Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V. I wanted the
editor in Xcode to behave like most other editors behave in other platforms
and IDE's. I'm old school, for me the keyboard can be far faster than going
for the mouse/touchpad/trackball all the time.

My solution was to install KeyRemap4Macbook (no affiliation) and make the Mac
keyboard mimic Windows/Linux keyboard and mappings as much as possible.

I won't be buying your app, but great job. Like it a lot. Apple should buy it
off you and integrate it into the OS. It's that good.

~~~
jacobolus
The problem with keyboard or menu cut/copy/paste (hereafter c/c/p) is that
it’s a _mode_ (or at least a sort of quasi-mode), and modes are a
fundamentally inhumane user interface approach that shift cognitive burden
from computers to humans. The traditional c/c/p includes no visual feedback
whatsoever, is an extremely overloaded concept (many types of objects can be
copied, the result of pasting depends on context and there’s no way to tell
precisely what will happen from past experience with other applications,
sometimes a copy instruction only places a link to the content (for
performance reasons) so that closing a document or application alters the
paste behavior, c/c/p between applications is often brittle, especially when
dealing with rich text), and is very limited and inflexible (no way or bad
ways (depending on the implementation) to copy two things and then paste them
back, copying another thing destroys the user intent of the previous copy
operation and can’t be undone, no visual/spatial context is provided for the
operation, etc. etc.).

C/c/p is better than what came before it (it was invented at PARC in the early
1970s, and the alternative was much more mode-ful, something like vim), but is
still too unfriendly for novices and too limited for experienced users.
Unfortunately, it is so ubiquitous that it has forced all users to learn it,
forced all software to implement it, and crowded out alternative approaches,
even in contexts like file managers where the concept doesn’t really make
sense. The best we can typically hope for is extensions of the typical c/c/p
interaction which work like other implementations in the simple case but have
some extra functionality for experienced users. These are usually entirely
undiscoverable, and still share most of the problems of the traditional c/c/p.

~~~
robomartin
Well, drag and drop isn't any more discoverable than c/c/p. For example, when
I first started to use a Mac I had to Google to figure out how to import
ebooks into my iPhone. It turns out that you have to drag-and-drop into
iTunes. Just like c/c/p, once someone tells you that this is the way we are
going to play the game it all makes sense.

The grab-something-and-move-it interface is OK for "normal" users. I would
suspect that most techies might be far more inclined to figure out how to
avoid miles of drag-and-drop action by using the keyboard.

There's another element to this. Our systems have, at a minimum, two 24 inch
monitors and most have three 24 inch monitors. Drag-and-drop gets pretty old
once you start to have to cruise around so much real-estate.

Beyond that c/c/p, per your own data point, has been around since the early
70's. That makes it a convention that's been around for possibly over 40
years. I think people get it.

This, of course, extends to operating almost any software. If someone is using
it with any regularity it'd be crazy to mouse all over the menu system to get
things done. The keyboard is far more efficient. This is particularly the case
when macros can be programmed and invoked.

In general terms, I agree: For grandma, drag and drop is great and she is not
likely to learn any keyboard shortcut at all. For anyone who is not a casual
or lightweight computer user there's a whole other layer to the UI --via the
keyboard-- that makes for better driving.

Dragondrop is a great tool. I was sincere when I said that Apple should buy it
and integrate it into the OS. Not for me and those like me, but for the
benefit of others for whom the grab-and-do-something interface is the only
option.

~~~
jacobolus
I never said we shouldn’t try to make a system accessible from the keyboard,
or that drag-and-drop as typically implemented is the best solution here. I
merely said that c/c/p is at once too difficult/brittle and too limited.

Personally, I wish we used some kind of mashup/spinoff/extension of DragThing,
Quicksilver, drag-and-drop for this sort of thing: flexible, letting us do
more with the stuff in it than just paste it back, accessible from both
keyboard and mouse ideally from anywhere on the screen, persistent and non-
destructive. It’s a non-trivial problem, because we need something that scales
from novices up through experts. But there’s a very large design space here,
and most of it has been ignored for 30 years because the existing non-ideal
conventions have ossified.

It’s exciting to see even tiny new ideas, like the utility being discussed in
this conversation.

To follow your thought here: with all that tremendous quantity of monitor
space available, we really should be devoting some chunk of it to showing
what’s on the clipboard, or at least that there’s something there.

~~~
robomartin
> we really should be devoting some chunk of it to showing what’s on the
> clipboard, or at least that there’s something there.

I could see that. Microsoft tried something like that with a stack-based
(presumption) clipboard in Office. I don't think it worked very well. I
thought it was confusing for most. You went from copy-this-and-then-paste-it
to having to select what you wanted to paste. Simple is better in this case.

I can think of no instance where I explicitly needed to know what was in the
clipboard. Now, admittedly, this is me, a single data point and not a casual
user. I am sure it is different for casual users. In fact, I am sure that most
of them don't have a clue that ctrl-c/v/x/z exist.

As for devoting screen real-estate for showing clipboard content. I can't
really get a feel for the idea because I don't feel that I need it. In some
cases I know that I don't want to give up any screen real-estate to anything
other the the application/s currently running. For example, my EDA package
uses three screens very well. I don't want to see anything else while doing
this work. Again, just me.

------
rebo
Dude nice app, but can you add a quickview button/quickview spacebar binding,
so that I can check the whats in my dragondrop.

Also, maybe bloat but can u add plug-in system so we can have things like a
right click with send to twitter, imgur, pastebin, etc?

im sure you can think long and hard about a better user experience than a
right click, maybe whatever 'providers' you choose can appear as a logo to the
right of the main dragondrop box, and you can drop on them if u want to upload
to them. Or if you drop it in the regular dragondrop box, u can just click on
the relevant logo.

Also can you add a buffer of say the last 10 or so items copied, like a stack.
That way if i am composing something i can chuck a load of things in
dragondrop then yank them back in reverse order, or all at once.

Oh yeah and maybe can do other stuff with this buffer, like zipping if its a
loada files. You can then drag the zipped file off, or concatenating PDFs if
its a load of pdfs. Or uploading an imgur album if its a load of pictures.
Watch out for that bloat :p

Anyways just some ideas man, good luck great app. I'm sure it can be even
better!

------
nostromo
This is delightful. Apple, please buy this guy out like you did with
CoverFlow.

~~~
prawn
Then ditch CoverFlow.

~~~
markchristian
Especially on iOS.

------
mikebracco
This is a cool app. The functionality is not as extensive as this but Path
Finder for Mac (Finder replacement) has a featured called "Drop Stack" which
essentially allows you to pile files somewhere before you decide what to do
with them. <http://cocoatech.com/pathfinder/>

------
Dejital
Well done. This is the sort of app you look at and think "Why isn't this built
into the operating system already?"

------
antifuchs
Congratulations - that is a seriously useful utility. At first I thought that
holding down the mouse button wasn't that bad - but your browser tab demo
absolutely convinced me (-:

Thanks for making this - anything that improves my Mac's drag&drop and
copy&paste functionality is worth at least $5.

~~~
jlmendezbonini
A tip that completely changed copy-paste experience in Finder is "Move item
here". Copy as usual (command-c) but instead of pasting (command-v) you do
(option-command-v) and it will _move_ the item. Such as huge time saver since
I use to open two finder windows to accomplish the move since I'm quite bad at
dragging with a trackpad.

------
noonespecial
Neat App. The most surprising thing about it for me was actually the name. Not
that it was a cool word play, its just that I'm so used to the good names
already being camped by completely useless crap that its weird to see a neat
name and a decent app attached to each other.

------
rjb
Seriously brilliant. And the video is spot on in answering questions/concerns
that anyone would have.

------
factorialboy
So, its like doing a 'cut' and then navigating and performing a 'paste'.

Did I miss something in the video?

~~~
carb
Basically, however when moving files you can't cut then paste. You can only
copy/paste/delete. This is pretty intuitive and can be controlled very easily
from the trackpad.

~~~
rosstafarian
option-cmd-v instead of cmd-v will move a file instead of just copying it

------
lunaru
Congrats Mark! Looks like a few HN folks have already used this app in the
past. How did you reach out to an audience to build up beta testers? And, more
importantly, how do I make sure I'm on people's hit list for beta testing new
apps?

~~~
markchristian
I just Tweeted, and more importantly, managed to get some trustworthy tech
folks to help out. One thing I can offer as a word of advice is to try to find
smart users who _aren't_ developers -- they're the perfect beta testers.

------
kapowaz
I wanted to find out more about this app when I saw it mentioned on DF, but
opening the link on my iPhone I was automatically redirected to the App Store.
There I was given a message about this only being available on the _Mac_ App
Store, and a link presented which re-opened Mobile Safari and took me to a
page talking about Mac OS X Lion and the App Store.

Partially Apple's fault, undoubtedly, but are you deliberately redirecting
people to the App Store? Or is that some freebie that comes with embedding an
App Store link/banner?

------
markchristian
To everyone who checked out my app: I am humbled and proud, and I thank you
for your support. Your feedback (and reviews/ratings on the App Store, if you
roll that way) are welcome.

------
why-el
This is an excellent app, but I suppose it works best with a mouse. Using the
trackpad is a bit of a pain, maybe it could have been nice to fire up that box
with a shortcut?

------
jasonlotito
So... what are you building next? I'd like to buy it. =)

~~~
markchristian
My work on DragonDrop is far from done, but I do have a few more ideas. Stay
tuned. :)

------
gojomo
Cool!

I could see this same gestural/persistent-floaty trick being useful on iOS
(and similar full-screen foreground or touch environments) as well.

(Though, reserving a side of the screen as a clip-dock would be an obvious
touch-OS alternative, and might work better on touch screens than it would on
a desktop. On the desktop, the corners and edge are already heavily colonized
with meaning.)

~~~
bunnyhero
I'm reminded of the Newton clipboard.
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhivPLXrLjk>

------
webwielder
Were you inspired by the Shelf from NeXTSTEP?

~~~
markchristian
Not directly -- I never had the pleasure of using NeXTSTEP. To be honest, this
idea has been in my head for a long time, just waiting for me to come up with
a proper interaction modality. I'm my own app's #1 user. :)

~~~
aiscott
"I'm my own app's #1 user."

That is always a good sign.

------
brevityness
You're about to get HackerNews'd. Great app!

------
juliano_q
I use to drag and drop on my macbook many times a day to organize my Downloads
folder and I found this application to be amazing. Bought it seconds after
watching the video. Congrats, it is an amazing and well executed idea.

------
dkersten
I don't understand the part about browser tabs - when I want to drag something
from one tab to another, I just hover the mouse over the destination tab and
the browser switches to that tab. Takes about a second.

~~~
evgen
How do you do that when the other tab is buried under three other browser
windows in another space? Possible, but this makes things a lot easier. Then
again, maybe the way I leave tons of stuff open across lots of spaces is just
the sort of workflow that something like this is meant for...

~~~
dkersten
I guess I must not have that many browser windows scattered around the place
when I'm using OS X or Windows and on linux I use a tiling window manager, so
its trivial to tile both windows side-by-side and then drag between them.

------
mattberg
are there any differences in terms of features between the Mac App Store
version and the one you can buy directly from your site? curious if the
"sandbox" in the Mac App Store caused any file system issues.

~~~
ricardobeat
I'm also curious about this. Please spill the beans!

~~~
markchristian
Right now, the two versions are identical (although their version numbers
differ). I hope to keep it that way, but it may change once I submit a
sandboxed version.

In general, the sandbox doesn't cause us any problems, because we already
write our temporary data to the proper sandboxed location, and dragging a file
into an app is one of the approved sandbox interactions. However, enabling the
sandbox DOES break QuickLook icon fetching for some types of objects (most
notably volumes, which show up as folders). This seems to be a bug in
NSWorkspace that I hope will be addressed in the future.

------
cgcardona
Bought it. Very good first impressions.

Nice work and congrats on the Daring Fireball mention.

------
sudhirj
How comfortable would you be sharing sales figures caused by the fireball?

------
mjackson
Congratulations Mark! A well deserved fireballing. Have fun with it!

------
cpr
Looks nice!

I wonder (judging from other comments) if people know the hack whereby you can
start a d'n'd and then use command-tab to switch apps while dragging. Saves a
lot of grief.

~~~
godDLL
You can also Cmd+` to switch between app windows, and Cmd+Tab to skim through
your browser tabs.

But the Dragon Drop is way sexier.

------
georgio
DragonDrop intro video link on YouTube -
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1M0PAiiJLlo>

------
sampsonjs
Wait, does this mean Mac OS isn't already perfect as is?

------
hynek
It doesn’t work with files from stacks. Yoink has a keyboard shortcut for
that, I haven’t found a similar functionality inside of DragonDrop?

------
jongraehl
The windows-7 version of the drag+shake gesture (for moving windows) is very
poorly detected. I assume this has a better detection algorithm.

------
kposehn
I have always loved full-screen mode on Mac OS, but dragging and dropping
things between screens was a royal pain in the arse. You fixed it.

Thank you.

------
alainbryden
This app makes me want to get a Mac. Awesome job.

------
tuananh
Great app. However, shake to display drop stack is not convenient at all on
trackpad.I'll stick with Yoink for now!

------
Drbble
It's a clipboard shelf app?

<http://qsapp.com/wiki/Shelf_Module>

------
jpxxx
You had my five dollars within 10 seconds of the video starting. Brilliant,
brilliant, brilliant. Thank you!

------
davidu
This is so awesome. The video is great!

------
brianlash
This is just brilliant. Please create a Windows equivalent and make my whole
year.

~~~
Drbble
Search for [clipboard shelf] apps. There are loads of these.

------
jameswyse
This looks great but it's too hard to 'shake' the cursor using a trackpad.

------
bosie
how could i dragondrop a pdf viewed in chrome into another app without having
it to store on disk first?

is there some kind of minimum-wiggle-movement i have to hit in order for
drangdrop to get activated?

~~~
godDLL
Chrome has PDF viewing functionality built in (as a plug-in?); and that thing
doesn't seem to support drag-and-drop at all.

Or one could say it's not a 'Preview window', don't expect it to behave.

------
jimcrews
Congrats! Just bought it, and already loving it.

Jim Crews CEO - CharitySub.org

------
teilo
You just got my $5.

~~~
markchristian
It's going to a good home, I promise. :) Thank you.

------
chris_wot
Is there a version for Windows?

------
chromejs10
Great concept Already bought :)

------
zephjc
drag, command-tab to switch apps, drop on the relevant window.

