: Indicate Drag&Drop Location in a hierarchical list with documents and folders I have the task to develop (I'm a programmer not a designer) a hierarchical display of folders and documents. A document

I have the task to develop (I'm a programmer not a designer) a hierarchical display of folders and documents. A document inside a folder is indented a bit to the right and it's possible to close a folder to hide all elements inside it. It is possible to organize all items by simple dragging them inside the list to either place them in a folder or organize them. (Sorting items by name won't be possible in the view and is of no concern)

When an item is dragged, it gets removed from the list, sticks at the mouse and there is a preview shadow at the last valid drop position where it gets dropped once the mouse is released. The shadow is updated as you move the mouse to show where it would be placed.

The drag& drop in itself works fine but I'm facing the following problem. I'm not sure how to indicate when a User is dropping inside a folder or between two items. Consider you have a folder that has a couple of items and I want to drop at the last position inside the folder. How do I indicate that it will go at the last position and not at the first position after the folder? (The position that would be below the folder once you would close the folder). It should be possible to drop an document as well on a closed folder (the document will get moved to the top position inside the folder, you can therefore only see it once you open the folder again) but the preview shadow is not helping much in this case since it's great for displaying if an item gets dropped between items but not on them. How do I indicate I want to drop ON the folder? The User are complaining about a "effect like being drunk" since the items in the list are getting updated and therefore the items are moving (to make space for the shadow) and that it seems hard to aim with that. It is possible to hide the shadow but once it's hidden, the list will jump up to fill the space and the courser won't hover anymore over the folder. (This is only the problem if you move an item from top to bottom, since when moving an item up, the shadow is below the folder and once hidden, the list still moves up but the folder stays under the mouse whereas if you came from the top, the courser is now one line below the folder)

My technical limitations are that I can only use the mouse (no hotkeys for different operations) and it should be possible to drop items regardless of the state of the folders (open/ close) but the behavior/ display could be different. There can't be any kind of confirm dialog and it should not make a difference if the User wants to drag inside or on (like toggling something before)

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