elementary-dev-community team mailing list archive

["Sergey \"Shnatsel\" Davidoff" <sergey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

OK, I have an idea that's been collecting the metaphorical dust for many a
month.

In a nutshell, the current "Open or Save?" dialogs in web browsers that
they show when encountering a non-web file are terrible; how can I choose
if I want to keep the file before I even see it? And why the hell can't I
keep the file without re-downloading it?

The proper UX would be to open all files that are not web pages in a
dedicated viewer, and the dedicated viewer should then allow to save the
file for later after you see the contents and possibly edit it.
This should apply even if the browser sort of supports this file type, e.g.
for images - web browsers make for terrible image viewers!

AFAIR the basic idea got the green light from Dan, I believe he will reply
to this thread if he has anything to add :)
I think had a slightly more complete writeup here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kfI-JB80egEmix0HIJkDkDtMHGF_xeQMqQANqIxxnlo/edit

This sounds like a trivial feature, but it would make worlds of difference
and it is not trivial to implement because you need a
FreeDesktop.org-vetted protocol for signalling "show the save button" from
browser to apps, you need support for this workflow in both web browser and
apps, you need to handle legacy apps and be able to tell which are which,
you need the "keep this file" action to be extensible and system-defined so
that we could do things like keeping all viewed files for a week without
altering the apps, and a metric ton of other details.

--
Sergey "Shnatsel" Davidoff