Nicolas, Your solution for opening the webapp documents (like a doc residing on google docs) from the desktop is good, but it's the contrary to what I mention, e.g. opening a local doc from the webapp. This is especially important when an organization (such as us) have 300 employees managing hundreds of office documents on a shared drive, and a transitional period is required to switch to a new system.
I do see what you mean in your first paragraph about sending a parameter to the webapp. Though I haven't worked with the code (I'm a client/user, not a developer), I see the logic in it. I've followed Ben's suggestion and opened an issue (http:// code.google.com/p/gears/issues/detail?id=745) for this, but here's how I see it working: User double-clicks on the file, and selects to open it with Google Gears. Gears sees the file and asks with what "WebApp" you want to open it with, where you can select the one you use (for example, I can select between Zoho Writer and Google Docs at this point). It's an extra setup step, yes, but this would be the ideal way of doing things I think. Perhaps a Gears interface to manage the file associations would be a good idea also, to do the process in a reverse order (create a new association, select the file type, select the WebApp. Thanks for your time guys, I hope this becomes a reality soon! Cheers, Eric. On Oct 8, 10:40 am, "Nicolas Roard" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Wed, Oct 8, 2008 at 2:57 PM, Eric-Sebastien Lachance > > > > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > Ben... > > > I strongly hope that I'm not the first one to have thought of this, > > because if I am that should merit me a job at Google (got a > > "Brainstormer" position open?) :P > > > Nah, seriously though, if any online application is to become a > > replacement for a local one (if Docs wants to replace Word, GMail > > replace Outlook) then in a sense you have no choice but to mimic not > > only the software functionality, but the OS functionality. Having a > > file association to a software is a behavior that people are just used > > to. > > > In order to offer a service for the "masses", you have to think like > > the masses, not like geeks! > > I think this is a good idea; there are various ways that could be implemented. > e.g. we could create a blob with the file, and have an additional method to > the > filepicker api that would returns that blob (so webapps upon starting could > call a getParameter() method or something like that). > > As Ben said, what you can do right now if you simply want "documents" on your > desktop (vs opening existing file types) for your webapp, you should be able > to create shortcuts using the desktop api (then it's just a matter for > your webapp > to create shortcuts with url containing the document id so that it can > present it to the user). > > -- > Nicolas Roard > Google UK London
