Operating Systems 1 min read

Drag-and-Drop

Last Updated May 24, 2021 1:41 pm

Describes applications that allow you to drag objects to specific locations on the screen to perform actions on them. For example, in the Macintosh environment, you can drag a document to the trashcan icon to delete it. This is a classic case of drag-and-drop functionality.

When implemented well, drag-and-drop functionality is both faster and more intuitive than alternatives, such as selecting options from a menu or typing in commands.

Modern operating systems, including Windows and the Mac OS, even allow you to drag and drop between applications. You can, for example, create a picture with a draw program, select it, and then drag it into a document that you are editing with a word processor.

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