Re: [Usability] Downloads recommendation

[Lars Weber <lars brokenbits de>]

[ Slightly delayed follow-up; I'm just catching up on my mail. ]

Marco Pesenti Gritti <marco gnome org> wrote:
> we experimented with a different downloader design with 1.2. While I
> think we reached some interesting results, it doesnt seem to be mature
> enough to actually make 1.2. Maybe you can help us solving the problems
> or showing us that we are going in a wrong direction. [...]

This is only indirectly connected to your problems and probably not
directly helpful; however, once I wondered whether it would be nice to add
the concept of "unsorted files" to the desktop.

Unsorted files would be any files that the user hasn't yet stored at a
specific location.  They would be displayed inside normal folder windows
as usual.  The difference to other folder windows would be that such
windows would not actually have associated user-visible folders in the
filesystem: the files inside such folders would only exist as long as the
windows themselves exist.

Example:

  1. Person clicks on link to tar-file in web-browser -> A small
     file-manager window appears displaying the tar-file.

  2. Person moves the window aside and continues to read the web-page.

  3. After forgetting about the download the person wants to shut down the
     computer and go for a walk.

  4. When closing the window out of a habit, a dialog appears asking the
     person whether to really move the downloaded file to the trash... the
     person decides to take care of the download later and clicks Cancel.

  5. Person logs out and shuts down the computer.

  6. After next login the window with the tar-file is still where the
     person left it.

  7. Person double-clicks the tar-file to see what exactly it contains.

  8. After deciding that it wants to keep the tar-file, the person renames
     the file to something more descriptive and then drags the file to a
     folder on it's desktop -> The file-manager window disappears.

Anyway, nothing to be implemented just for a web-browser I guess... and
also not user-tested etc.

I kind of like the idea, though :-)

Regards,
Lars