beryl: usability (vi)

howto drag and drop files/text using the beryl scale plugin

This is a quick howto on a not-so-well-known feature of beryl - drag and drop using the scale plugin. Under a normal window manager, you can drag and drop files/text between applications no problem at all. If the target window is hidden behind others, usually you drag the file/text up to the taskbar, wait for the relevant window to focus, and drop the file. So what does beryl add to the drag and drop picture? Well, for a start, if you've got a lot of windows open, it's easier to find the target if you can see all the windows at once. Also, if you want to drop a file/text on an application on another desktop, you can do this much more easily.

This is a cool little feature that allows you to drag and drop files between applications on the same desktop, or different desktops. Before you can use this feature, you need to set a couple of things up. Open up the beryl-settings-manager, and change to the Window Management page. Then click on the scale plugin. Then change to the Behaviour tab. You need to activate the Sloppy Focus checkbox. Then change to the Misc. Options tab, and change the Hover Time to a value less than or equal to 500. That's it for the scale side of things. You'll also need to set up the corners so that the scale plugin is activated when you move the mouse to a corner. See this howto on setting up screen corners.

Once you've got things set up, click on a file for transfer, and drag it to a corner that activates the scale plugin. If you want to drag to an application on another desktop, make sure you drag to the corner which shows applications from all desktops. Here's a video showing drag and drop in action:

You can discuss this howto on the forums.