Drag-and-Drop support in VKB

1. Drag-and-drop files

You can drag and drop files or folders from the file system into VKB. This works with a single file or a folder, or with a selected group of files and/or folders.

Files can be dropped into the VKB workspace or into a VKB collection. VKB creates a symbol for each file. Collections are created for folders. Files in a folder will become symbols in folder's collection. Sub-folders are also converted into sub-collections so the entire folder structure is mirrored in the VKB collection structure. This screen dump shows an example of this operation from Windows Explorer (the left window) to VKB (the right window).

VKB is still memory hungry, so be careful not to be too aggressive. Dropping in a deep folder (or a folder with lots of sub-folders) like "C:\" will likely cause an "Out of Memory error" and you may lose the workspace and be unable to recover it.

Files can be dropped on an existing VKB symbol. "File" attributes with values representing each file will be added to the attributes for the symbol.

Some special cases/features for dropping files into VKB including dropping image files and MP3 files:

1.1 Image files

Image files that are dropped into VKB create symbols that show the image with the scaling set to "scaled image view".

Image files that are dropped into existing symbols will add an image to the symbol and switch it to "scaled image view".

Image files that are dropped into the title bar of a collection will become the backdrop for the collection. You can later adjust its offset and scaling by right-clicking on an empty area in the workspace or collection border and selecting "Backdrop Image..." to open the option dialog. Screen dump

VKB will attemp to extract some metadata from JPEG files if that option is enabled. Currently, VKB looks for ImageWidth, ImageHeight, Date/Time, and EXIF Version, etc.

VKB only works with GIF and JPEG formats (files that ends with ".gif" ".jpg" ".jpeg")

1.2. MP3 files

MP3 files that are dropped into VKB creates symbols with "File" attribute pointing to the file. VKB will also attemp to extract some meta information from its ID3 tags. The attributes that VKB extracts if available are : "Title", "Artist", "Album", "Track", "NumTracks", "Composer", "FileSize", "Genre", "PlayingTime", "SampleRate", and "Year".

When the mouse cursor lingers over an MP3 symbol (those with the file attribute pointing to an MP3 file), VKB will start playing the music until you move the cursor out of the symbol.

MP3 files can be dropped on Collections. When a mouse cursor moves within the collection (and not in other symbols), the music will start playing until the cursor is moved out of the collection or into another symbol.

2. Drag-and-drop URLs

URLs from browsers can be dropped into VKB as well; however, IE and Netscape (which are the only two we have tested) behave differently, with better Drag-and-drop support from Netscape. Below are a few types of such operations:

• Drag-n-drop a URL from browser's address bar.
• Drag-n-drop a URL from a link on browser's page.
  (Only works with Netscape)
• Drag-n-drop an image from browser's page.
  (Only works with Netscape and only when the image has a direct image link, i.e., not redirected by a script.) When trying this on IE, it may look like it is working, but it is pointing to your local cache for the image. Thus after you close IE, the image will no longer exist.

3. Drag-and-drop text selections from Browser

Selection of texts from a browser can be dragged into the VKB space and a symbol is created with the text as its content.