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.