What is the point of the click and drag select feature on my Win98 desktop?

March 24, 2004 12:14 PM

What is the point of being able to draw a dotted square with my cursor on my desktop [Win98]?
posted by dash_slot- to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

You can select multiple objects on your desktop with this and then do something to all of them at once. I use it to select all the MP3s I've downloaded and dragging them all into the iTunes folder, or deleting them if I've already imported them. You can also do this to multiple internet bookmarks and open them all at once, same for pictures or Word documents. Think of it as a more flexible shift-click for selecting multiple objects.
posted by jessamyn at 12:18 PM on March 24, 2004

Response by poster: o. So I can!

Thx Jessamyn! (",)
posted by dash_slot- at 12:33 PM on March 24, 2004

By way of explanation: Your Windows desktop is, more or less, just a big, funny-looking Explorer window. Just about all of that file manager's functionality is accessible on the desktop, and box selection of icons is one of those features.
posted by majick at 2:24 PM on March 24, 2004

If you don't this you likely don't know that you can hold down control to select multiple items at once specifically, or shift to select blocks of items at once. I won't bother describing it, just try it, you'll see.
posted by abcde at 3:23 PM on March 24, 2004

(Aside: Hehe... It's funny, part of my professional life is spent design software interfaces, and it never ceases to amuse me how un-familiar Windows users (and application developers) are with direct manipulation.)
posted by silusGROK at 5:19 PM on March 24, 2004

Just to expand the answer, both KDE and GNOME also operate like this if you're using Linux.
posted by salmacis at 2:09 AM on March 25, 2004