These are nice ideas!
The drag-and-drop version IS possible -- there is WebDAV, and there
are WebDAV clients out there that make an upload-friendly website
look like a mounted disk. We just need WebDAV support in ComSwiki...
One thing that we keep tossing around is the possibility of making
page-specific upload areas. This would decrease the size of the
upload page and make it easier to install an upload link on a
specific page (i.e., when you hit the Attachments button, you go to a
page-specific upload area, and since we know the page you came from,
we can insert a link to the new file at the bottom of the page). It
makes it a little harder to have global attachments, though.
Mark
>Bert, I think your idea is better, because it handles the other situation
>where one just wants to add a link to a document that has been uploaded
>already, as well - the upload button would appear only when the document is
>not yet there. And it would indeed remove the need to switch windows.
>I can see that my suggestion could lead to further confusion, when someone
>selects an [insert upload] menu option, only to discover that someone else
>already uploaded a document with the same name (can easily happen when you
>use the swiki as a kind of document management system on the intranet) and
>maybe would not know you to proceed in this (currently default) situation.
>
>A remaining issue though: how would you handle the following: the user
>inserts a link to upload *+somedoc.doc+*, an upload button pops up because
>somedoc.doc is not yet there, the user selects a file with name
>anotherdocname.doc, uploads this file, and then..... rename the attachment?
>... or rename the link? (preferably the latter) ... or just show an error
>message (leaving the user in confusion)? (in many cases a user may be
>convinced he/she as uploaded a document with the right name, while the OS
>may have distorted it a little bit)
>
>
>thanks for your quick reply - I hope someone will find the time to try it
>out!
>
>Hans
>
>
> > On Tue, 9 May 2000, Baveco, Dr. J.M. wrote:
> >
> > > Apart from unraveling what the right settings should be, wouldn't it
> > > be a good idea to add the option (while editing a swiki page) [insert
> > > upload] in the menu? After selecting it the upload dialog should appear
> > and
> > > the selected document should be uploaded AND the link to the uploaded
> > > document should be inserted directly at cursor position. As an
> > additional
> > > benefit we would avoid stupid misspellings (e.g. added spaces arising
> > when
> > > copying the name of a file).
> >
> > My first thought was: That would be cool, but it can't be done.
> >
> > But then I had an idea: We have a mechanism to create new pages - you just
> > type the page name and get a link back to "create a page". So what if we
> > just do the same for attachments not found? When serving a page that has
> > an attachment link +filename+ but that file is not yet there, we could
> > insert an upload button right there in the page. The mechanism behind the
> > scenes would be similar to the append areas. And the upload code has to be
> > redone anyway ;-)
> >
> > Hans, how does that sound?
> >
> > -- Bert
--------------------------
Mark Guzdial : Georgia Tech : College of Computing : Atlanta, GA 30332-0280
Associate Professor - Learning Sciences & Technologies.
Collaborative Software Lab
(404) 894-5618 : Fax (404) 894-0673 : [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/people/Faculty/Mark.Guzdial.html
