This is as days pass by, by Stuart Langridge

And this is Epiphany download icon, written , and concerning Usability, Linux

Did you know that Epiphany puts a little icon in the notification area while it's downloading stuff?

epiphany download icon

Well, you might have mentioned it to me, because I didn't know. Anyway, that's really cool. A couple of minor issues with it; firstly, the icon has a right-click menu with only one option, "Show downloads". Since left-clicking the icon shows and hides the download window, I can't think what the point of the right-click context menu is; surely right-click should just do the same thing as left-click? (Bug #508151 submitted.) Secondly, and not really an Epiphany problem; I'd love to see the "downloads" window go away, to be replaced by a "Downloads" folder which has Special Nautilus Magic when displayed. The folder could show partial downloads in progress, with how long there is to go, a clickable link to the page it was being downloaded from, etc, etc. This requires some heavy co-operation between Epiphany and Nautilus (although it might be doable as a Nautilus extension; having said this, I can't find a way to add a top bar (like Deleted Items has or the CD burner has) to a Nautilus folder from an extension), and I'm certainly not the first person to suggest it, but I think it'd be deeply cool.

Comments

ulrik

using the upcoming gio, perhaps the magic download folder can be accomplished with gvfs, i.e a virtual filesystem or FUSE system?

Will Manley

I had been waiting for the fruits of the Mathusalem (long running tasks) GSoC project, but alas I guess it's not going to happen.

Michael Scherer

Did you submit a bugreport for the special folder ? I also think this would be a good idea.

anonim

Anyone knows what happened to Mathusalem? It looked as something promissing

Adam Williamson

What if you don't always download stuff to the same folder? I certainly don't.

sil

Adam: I think it's just as easy to always download to the same folder and then move it where you want with Nautilus as it is to choose where you want to download it to with Epiphany. Also, that means you're using Nautilus for file management, rather than the filepicker, which I think is a good idea. Thirdly, I tend to download things by dragging a link into an appropriate folder anyway, which entirely obviates both processes.

sil

Michael: I haven't submitted a bug report because I haven't got a full plan for how it would work. I need to work out how I'd like to see it work, first. One possible outline for something like this was done by Matthew Thomas: see http://mail.gnome.org/archives/usability/2005-April/msg00017.html for details.

sil

Will, anonim: Mathusalem looked cool; I'd love to see something happen with it. Lots of these sorts of things could do with being provided by Gnome itself; libnotify is a perfect example of doing that right, so now each application doesn't have to make up its own notification balloons.

Floyd

I'd like to see that in-progress downloads "Special Nautilus Magic" no matter what folder I happened to be downloading to, rather than restricting it to a predefined magic folder only.

Then, rather than opening the Downloads dialog, Nautilus could possibly launch the containing folder of my download (and select the file I'm downloading). That would be desktop integration imho.

sil

Floyd: Epiphany already does open the download folder on completion, unless your download folder is the Desktop (which mine is).

Floyd

Hey Stuart..

But I'd like to see the download destination folder opening when the download starts. That way I could watch the download completing in the destination folder itself (like, I gather from your suggestion, the file would have some graphic representing download completion percentage).

Personally I wouldn't like a dedicated downloads folder like you suggested.

Cheers

sil

Floyd: ah, I get you. Nice. Why not have a dedicated downloads folder? If you like the idea of downloading to a place you specify afresh with each download (rather than to one place always), then there are two ways to pick that place:


1. when you do the download, ask the user where they'd like to download it to

2. download it to one known place and then allow the user to move it


Both of those are the same amount of work, in my opinion, and I think (2)'s better because (a) it allows you to do all the "move things to the right place" work in a big batch, rather than every time, and (b) it makes "download this link" easy, because you just say "download the link" and don't have to specify where to.


Epiphany already implements "download this link" which saves it in a pre-specified location, so the first half of this is already how it works. I'm just suggesting that we do the second half as well, thus making this feature even more useful.

Floyd

Cheers Stuart,

I think my initial thought was that no matter where I am downloading a file to I want the Nautilus graphics "magic" of a percentage bar drawn atop the file that is downloading.

And if I won't be forced to use the Downloads folder (by letting me choose a different download destination) I'm actually also coming round to the idea of the default, prescribed, Downloads folder too. Though it isn't something I would use (I'm sure I'd end up with with lots of clutter in it very quickly).

So long as I have the choice not to use it therefore, I do agree with you and think it would be an immense improvement over the current clunky Downloads dialog. My fiancee finds that box so confusing!! I just find it irritating.

There remains the question of whether a Nautilus view of the folder should be launched when the download begins or completes... I'd say when it begins, would you agree?

Stoffe

And if you are downloading stuff for later? Should it open Nautilus windows then as well? I don't really care for moving stuff later either, to be honest...

Like several others have said, Mathusalem or something like it should be the real way forward. Especially since it could and should work for many other things as well, including other browsers for those who mix and match. Good list of use cases and other info here: http://live.gnome.org/Mathusalem

sil

Ooh. http://live.gnome.org/Epiphany/FeatureDesign/DownloadIntegration already documents one way of doing this. Raphael is ahead of me again.

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