Dragging a message downwards doesn't work

Nope, in Mail.app, i can drag messages down. If i want to select multiple messages there, i have to press the Shift Key and select a range of messages (click on first, press shift, click on last message).

I find the behavior in MM very unusual, even weird. That click and drag selects text, is common behavior. I don't know another app, where click and drag would select items in a listview. But i of course respect your decisions.

Hmm, I'm on Lion right now and Apple Mail in classic mode (similar to MailMate) behaves like this. Maybe they have changed it.

I don't really use this “feature” myself, but I'm sure if I change it, others are going to complain :-) If more people request a change of behavior (or if Apple has stopped using this behavior on Mavericks) then I can change the default and add a hidden option to get the old behavior.

Strange. I've used Apple Mail for years, always in classic mode, and I honestly have never been aware of this behaviour. I wonder if it is dependent on some other UI or OS setting?

As far as I know, Multiple-selection from a mailbox index always requires command- or shift- clicking; it is not possible to click and drag, in any direction, to select multiple messages from an index (that behaviour is reserved for selecting text, as usual). Once you have selected one or more messages, another click and drag (in any direction) allows those messages to be dragged, for example to a folder.

I've just checked Thunderbird and Outlook and they work the same way.

I would strongly prefer to adopt this more standard UI behaviour in MailMate. If I'm not alone, but others strongly prefer current behaviour, then this is a prime candidate for a preference setting.

Thanks,

Paul.

In case not clear, I'd really like to see this ticket reopened and accepted. :-)

I've never noticed Mail (or other apps) to have this behavior, and it doesn't when I test it now.

This behavior is so foreign to me that I actually found this ticket in a search to find out if MM even supported dragging. It never occurred to me that dragging left was different from dragging down.

I don't care what the default is but I'd really love at least the option to make dragging work as I expect (i.e. start in any direction).

And now I got the first complaint about the change of behavior. I did make it optional though:

defaults write com.freron.MailMate MmMessagesOutlineVerticalDragSelects -bool YES

Why not leave the way it was? all you need to do to get the dragging behavior that you want with the old way is to just click it and wait for less than a second it will select the message/messages for drag and drop? dragging and dropping messages is a far less common task than selecting emails for deletion it seems wrong to change the default to a smaller user base.

@Patrick: I've changed it because Apple has changed the default behavior for their applications. As shown in this ticket some users find the old way very confusing (maybe that's why Apple changed it). Obviously I cannot make everyone happy, but when in doubt I'll follow Apple's lead and then make it optional if needed. If I get a lot of complaints I'll make it a GUI option.

(Note that I don't really know what the “smaller user base” is. It may also be a fraction of a fraction since most users might do like me and use ⇧↓ when selecting multiple messages.)

Just because apple changed the action in one of their apps doesn't mean that it's not an error. Take iTunes for example: The system wide default for double clicking the title bar area is to minimize the window to dock and that's in their ux guidelines I am sure. iTunes had this feature for years until iTunes 10 or 11 in which they broke that feature. I thought that the multiselect feature was an advanced feature because your email program is targeted toward the people that are looking for efficiency and power in a mail client. If we wanted apple's mail program and the limitations that they impose on it we would just use mail.app. it's a power user mail program for power users. I am not opposed to using the keyboard as an avid vim user and programmer but some things are nicer to manage in a relaxed position with just the mouse and no other hand on the keyboard.

In any event, thanks for keeping this behavior in the program even if it's harder to enable. I noticed that the docs hadn't been updated with that setting though at least on my build of mm. Cheers.

Also, to add, the behavior of finder is identical to how mm used to work by default.

This is fixed* in the latest version (5107).

Thanks!

Paul

• at least, it is fixed according to this user's preference, and good to see it is settable for others too.