Currently, to select objects in a GUI, such as icons in a file manager, you use the mouse to draw corners of a rectangle (called a “bounding box” or “rubber band” in the Gnome Human Interface Guidelines).  Often, though, you need to select multiple objects which aren’t in a single rectangular group.  To do this, you have to hold down the Ctrl key while drawing several different rectangles. For instance, you might want to select a block of icons, but not a few in either corner, because of the way they are ordered. which requires you to drag 3 or 4 rectangles.

It would be easier to just outline the ones you want.  Instead of rectangles, it should be possible to select objects by drawing a free-form lasso around them.  This would also be easier to grasp for the less technically-inclined (who probably don’t even know the Ctrl key exists).

As shown, a line would be drawn back to the starting point to complete the selection, so you don’t have to draw the entire outline.  The line that you draw should be simplified as you draw it, on the order of the size of one icon, so as not to be messy, since we don’t need any more precision than a single icon anyway.  It should also be possible to “backtrack”; if you draw backwards within a certain width of the line you already drew, it will erase it, so as to de-select something you accidentally went around.

Here’s a mock-up in Processing.js to play with.  Since you can draw sloppily and still select things, it’s actually faster to use the lasso in most situations than rectangles.  You can even select disjoint sets without pressing Ctrl at all.

Obviously this idea of selecting multiple objects with a lasso instead of rectangles is applicable to more than just Nautilus File Manager.

• Nautilus Bug 470513: Select files with lasso
• Launchpad Bug 174082: Should be able to select files with lasso instead of rectangle
• Some code examples on wiki.tcl.tk