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by londons_explore 1019 days ago
Test of if an OS is ready for regular users:

Does drag and drop work? Can I choose a random image/file somewhere in one tab/application and drop it into another.

Just testing that now...

* Drag HN logo to Whatsapp Web: Pass

* Drag from Google Photos to Photopea: Pass

* Drag a zip file from Google Drive to Dropbox: Fail.

* Drag an attachment from an email from gmail into an online hex editor: Fail

Conclusion: The web platform isn't yet ready.

3 comments

I've known "regular users" who don't even realize you can drag and drop between desktop applications.

Conclusion: this is an incredibly arbitrary metric.

You could just as easily construct an arbitrary usability test over interop that the web platform excels at while current desktop apps do terribly. For instance:

* Send a link to a Google Drive document to another person on WeChat: Pass

* Send a link to a Microsoft Word document to another person on Slack: Fail

The web has different paradigms and some of them are an improvement, one being hyperlinks, another being instant delivery just for example (no install time).

But you can drag and drop a word document to slack...
I've never even considered doing many of those things, and I've worked in IT for ~10 years and been using computers for 25