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Habit Forming and Interfacing Features

Isn't it amazing how quickly habits can form?

The last time I used a Mac on a daily basis, OS7 was the new thing and although I've had Macs around since then, my personal machines have all been Windows or Linux (Usually KDE) interfaces. Like many though, Tiger temped me back and so when it came to get myself a new daily machine I went for a MacBook. Given my limited time to spend playing with new toys these days I've been relying on my friend who similarly made the switch a few weeks before me for hints and tips. One of which was the suggestion that I adopt Adium as my IM network aggregator *. Which I did 3 days ago.

Now at first I was a little distressed by the fact that when I opened a new conversation it was realised via a new tab on the conversation window (if one was already open) - that was until I found out that I could grab the tab and drag it off the window to invoke a new one.
This has now become second nature - so much so then when I was writing a paper earlier today with many, many reference tabs open in FireFox I naturally tried to pull one of the tabs off the browser to create a new window so I could view two pages side by side. I'm a long time FireFox user and quite aware of how tabs behave and so it must have been the habit formed through Adium use and the fact that dragging content to form new windows must be such a damned good idea that informed my actions ;-)

Now thinking about this further I pondered how useful it would be to be able to pull bits of web pages or files off of their donor pages to form new instances or even notelets. I await with interest to see what magic micro formats might allow in this area. And that got me thinking about ....

Anyway, I'm looking for other examples of this kind of drag-and-create type functionality if anyone wants to comment any I'd be grateful.

* My next job is to use Growl to aggregate the Adium alerts visually and deactivate the sound, 'cos cute as the little Duckie is, my IM networks have a lot on event traffic (constant stream of people signing on and off) and the constant Quacking is doing my nut!
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