Lesser known Drag and Drop tips in Gnome

Recently, while I was reading an article in the Firefox web browser, I happened to accidentally click on a link and drag it outside the browser. And the result was rather interesting. Gnome obediently created a shortcut to the webpage pointed by the link on the desktop. Seeing this and having piqued my curiosity, I decided to try a few other things and to put it lightly, I was surprised and pleased with the results. These are my findings...

Create a shortcut of a webpage or a link in a website on the Gnome desktop

Click on the web link in the web browser and drag it on to the desktop. Gnome will automatically create the shortcut (link) to the remote location pointed to by the link you just dragged.

Note: It also works if you select the link in the Firefox address bar and drag it to the desktop.

Save a block of text from a webpage to a file

Select the text in the webpage and drag it on to the desktop. Gnome will auto-magically create a text file and save the selected text into it. You will also be prompted to rename the file to a name of your choice.

Fig: Showing the drag'n drop possibilities in Gnome

Copy an image from a remote location.

While the image is displayed in the web browser, just click on the image and drag it to the desktop. Gnome will copy the image from the remote location. Take care to drag the image rather than the link pointed to by the image.

Note: These tips are also possible from any application. Not necessarily from the web browser. In fact, I was able to copy a block of text to another file from Gedit. I was able to do this even from evince - the PDF viewer.

These features only prove that Gnome has a very advanced drag and drop functionality built in it.