Re: [whatwg] Multiple file download
On Tue, 23 Feb 2010, Jose Fandos wrote: Currently there are implementations allowing multiple file upload without the need for flash or java applets. What doesn't seem to be there, unless a java applet is used (haven't come across one using flash) is the multiple file download. Even Google Docs uses a zip file to download multiple files. Was wondering if this could be made part of the standard. If something like resource packages http://limi.net/articles/resource-packages/ were used, the server would still be sending one file which could be heavily compressed, letting the UA to decompress and display as if a bunch of files had been downloaded separately. If this needs a change to the specs, it seems like something that should be done either as a new type (e.g. multipart/archive) or some extension to HTTP. I don't think there's anything we should really do at the HTML level to support something like this. I would recommend developing a type that expands as you describe, and then approaching browser vendors directly to see if they would be interested in implementing that feature. Alternatively, you could suggest to browser vendors that they just implement a UI feature that, upon receiving an archive, offers to expand the archive automatically. Some already do (e.g. on Mac it's common for .dmg files to be automatically mounted -- effectively most Mac users are already experiencing what you're describing without any new features being needed, it just works). Another possibility is for browsers to offer UI that given a bunch of links will apply the same download settings to each one, so that the user can just drag-select a bunch of links and download them all with one or two clicks. In conclusion, this seems out of scope for this working group. -- Ian Hickson U+1047E)\._.,--,'``.fL http://ln.hixie.ch/ U+263A/, _.. \ _\ ;`._ ,. Things that are impossible just take longer. `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'
Re: [whatwg] Multiple file download
On Fri, Feb 26, 2010 at 3:31 AM, Jose Fandos iaminlon...@gmail.com wrote: Er... sure. It is not as convenient for certain web apps when compared to desktop apps. With this supported, the gap get's reduced. Adding support for tar (and all of its variations) involves adding extra code, testing, etc. to browsers. This is sometimes called bloat, and can be painful for browsers that work on mobile devices. Things aren't free, especially not duplicative features. I'm quite happy to demand that web sites include code for generating Zip files. http://www.pkware.com/documents/casestudies/APPNOTE.TXT V. General Format of a .ZIP file the zip format is fairly streaming friendly, the directory is at the end of the file. And if you're actually generating a file which has so many records that you can't remember all of them, you're probably trying to attack my user agent, so I'm quite happy that you'd fail.
Re: [whatwg] Multiple file download
On Wed, Mar 10, 2010 at 12:28 AM, timeless timel...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Feb 26, 2010 at 3:31 AM, Jose Fandos iaminlon...@gmail.com wrote: Er... sure. It is not as convenient for certain web apps when compared to desktop apps. With this supported, the gap get's reduced. Adding support for tar (and all of its variations) involves adding extra code, testing, etc. to browsers. This is sometimes called bloat, and can be painful for browsers that work on mobile devices. Things aren't free, especially not duplicative features. I'm quite happy to demand that web sites include code for generating Zip files. http://www.pkware.com/documents/casestudies/APPNOTE.TXT V. General Format of a .ZIP file the zip format is fairly streaming friendly, the directory is at the end of the file. And if you're actually generating a file which has so many records that you can't remember all of them, you're probably trying to attack my user agent, so I'm quite happy that you'd fail. Isn't a format that has its directory at the end about as streaming-UNfriendly as you can get? You need to pull the whole thing down before you can take it apart. With a .tar.gz, you can unpack files as they arrive. Eric
Re: [whatwg] Multiple file download
On 3/10/10 12:51 PM, Eric Uhrhane wrote: the zip format is fairly streaming friendly, the directory is at the end of the file. And if you're actually generating a file which has so many records that you can't remember all of them, you're probably trying to attack my user agent, so I'm quite happy that you'd fail. Isn't a format that has its directory at the end about as streaming-UNfriendly as you can get? You need to pull the whole thing down before you can take it apart. With a .tar.gz, you can unpack files as they arrive. That depends on whether you're the producer or the consumer. Given a format that has a directory (which is an assumption, of course), it's easier to consume as a stream if the directory is at the beginning and easier to produce as a stream if the directory is at the end. -Boris
Re: [whatwg] Multiple file download
On Wed, Mar 10, 2010 at 5:51 PM, Eric Uhrhane er...@google.com wrote: On Wed, Mar 10, 2010 at 12:28 AM, timeless timel...@gmail.com wrote: http://www.pkware.com/documents/casestudies/APPNOTE.TXT V. General Format of a .ZIP file the zip format is fairly streaming friendly, the directory is at the end of the file. And if you're actually generating a file which has so many records that you can't remember all of them, you're probably trying to attack my user agent, so I'm quite happy that you'd fail. Isn't a format that has its directory at the end about as streaming-UNfriendly as you can get? You need to pull the whole thing down before you can take it apart. With a .tar.gz, you can unpack files as they arrive. Each file's compressed data is preceded with a header with enough information to decompress it (filename etc), and then that information is duplicated in the central directory at the end, so I believe you can still do streaming decompression (as well as doing random access once you've got the directory). And you can still do streaming compression without even buffering a single file, by setting a flag and moving a part of the file header (lengths and checksum) to just after the compressed file data. (But I never understood why pkunzip asked me to put in the last floppy disk of a multi-disk zip before it would start decompressing the first - maybe there's some reason that streaming decompression doesn't quite work perfectly in practice?) -- Philip Taylor exc...@gmail.com
Re: [whatwg] Multiple file download
On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 11:03 PM, Ashley Sheridan a...@ashleysheridan.co.uk wrote: Ideally I guess then, the browsers would support .tar.gz files as these give much better compression than .zip. ZIP and gzip give comparable compression, in my experience. I just applied both to a random 3.5M text file lying around in /tmp, and got exactly 170K for both. bzip2, 7-Zip, and xz tend to give better compression.
Re: [whatwg] Multiple file download
On Thu, 2010-02-25 at 19:13 -0500, Aryeh Gregor wrote: On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 11:03 PM, Ashley Sheridan a...@ashleysheridan.co.uk wrote: Ideally I guess then, the browsers would support .tar.gz files as these give much better compression than .zip. ZIP and gzip give comparable compression, in my experience. I just applied both to a random 3.5M text file lying around in /tmp, and got exactly 170K for both. bzip2, 7-Zip, and xz tend to give better compression. I'm just going on software I download that's offered as both types of archive. Generally, gz is the smallest. Saying that, bz2 seems to be superior than both of them, but as it's so new, it doesn't have a massive take-up. Thanks, Ash http://www.ashleysheridan.co.uk
Re: [whatwg] Multiple file download
gzip and zip both use the same algorithm which is called DEFLATE. For a single file they will give exactly the same results. tar.gz has a slight advantage for multiple files because it treats them as one big file. That's called 'solid compression'. However it does mean that in order to do anything with tar.gz, including just seeing what's inside it you have to decompress all of it first. That's a massive disadvantage. Zip is also much more widely supported, and it doesn't suffer from the annoying 'archive with an archive' thing. Anyway, I think providing multiple file downloads in a zip is fine - is anyone really complaining? On 26 February 2010 00:13, Ashley Sheridan a...@ashleysheridan.co.uk wrote: On Thu, 2010-02-25 at 19:13 -0500, Aryeh Gregor wrote: On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 11:03 PM, Ashley Sheridan a...@ashleysheridan.co.uk wrote: Ideally I guess then, the browsers would support .tar.gz files as these give much better compression than .zip. ZIP and gzip give comparable compression, in my experience. I just applied both to a random 3.5M text file lying around in /tmp, and got exactly 170K for both. bzip2, 7-Zip, and xz tend to give better compression. I'm just going on software I download that's offered as both types of archive. Generally, gz is the smallest. Saying that, bz2 seems to be superior than both of them, but as it's so new, it doesn't have a massive take-up. Thanks, Ash http://www.ashleysheridan.co.uk
Re: [whatwg] Multiple file download
On Fri, Feb 26, 2010 at 12:57 AM, Tim Hutt tdh...@gmail.com wrote: gzip and zip both use the same algorithm which is called DEFLATE. For a single file they will give exactly the same results. tar.gz has a slight advantage for multiple files because it treats them as one big file. That's called 'solid compression'. However it does mean that in order to do anything with tar.gz, including just seeing what's inside it you have to decompress all of it first. That's a massive disadvantage. Zip is also much more widely supported, and it doesn't suffer from the annoying 'archive with an archive' thing. Anyway, I think providing multiple file downloads in a zip is fine - is anyone really complaining? Er... sure. It is not as convenient for certain web apps when compared to desktop apps. With this supported, the gap get's reduced.
Re: [whatwg] Multiple file download
On Tue, 2010-02-23 at 10:10 +, Jose Fandos wrote: Currently there are implementations allowing multiple file upload without the need for flash or java applets. What doesn't seem to be there, unless a java applet is used (haven't come across one using flash) is the multiple file download. Even Google Docs uses a zip file to download multiple files. Was wondering if this could be made part of the standard. If something like resource packages were used, the server would still be sending one file which could be heavily compressed, letting the UA to decompress and display as if a bunch of files had been downloaded separately. /J Do any browsers support the resource packages link you gave? As for multiple file download in the manner you describe, that would require some pretty big changes to the http protocol as far as I can tell, as it is there that this sort of thing is handled. Thanks, Ash http://www.ashleysheridan.co.uk
Re: [whatwg] Multiple file download
On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 10:33 AM, Ashley Sheridan a...@ashleysheridan.co.ukwrote: On Tue, 2010-02-23 at 10:10 +, Jose Fandos wrote: Currently there are implementations allowing multiple file upload without the need for flash or java applets. What doesn't seem to be there, unless a java applet is used (haven't come across one using flash) is the multiple file download. Even Google Docs uses a zip file to download multiple files. Was wondering if this could be made part of the standard. If something like resource packages http://limi.net/articles/resource-packages/ were used, the server would still be sending one file which could be heavily compressed, letting the UA to decompress and display as if a bunch of files had been downloaded separately. /J Do any browsers support the resource packages link you gave? I don't know but don't think any browser does just yet. From the link I gave, it is just being specified. As for multiple file download in the manner you describe, that would require some pretty big changes to the http protocol as far as I can tell, as it is there that this sort of thing is handled. The resource packages specification is doing in my eyes exactly that. Allowing scripting to select files to put in a resource-type package and having the browser uncompress and save to disk (like a regular download) rather than processing them to render the page would allow this without any big changes, as long as resource packages makes it through. /J Thanks, Ash http://www.ashleysheridan.co.uk -- Jose Fandos CEO Andekan LLC 5727 Claremont Avenue Oakland, CA 94618 Phone: 415.366.7755 Fax: 415.373.3858 UK: +44 797 198 7757 www.andekan.com
Re: [whatwg] Multiple file download
On 2/23/10 5:10 AM, Jose Fandos wrote: What doesn't seem to be there, unless a java applet is used (haven't come across one using flash) is the multiple file download. Even Google Docs uses a zip file to download multiple files. What do you mean in terms of multiple file download? You can do this right now in two ways: 1) An archive file (your zip example) with the files in it. 2) A multipart response with the files as parts, each part having Content-Disposition: attachment. You can gzip this multipart response to get the compression behavior you want. -Boris
Re: [whatwg] Multiple file download
On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 5:07 PM, Boris Zbarsky bzbar...@mit.edu wrote: On 2/23/10 5:10 AM, Jose Fandos wrote: What doesn't seem to be there, unless a java applet is used (haven't come across one using flash) is the multiple file download. Even Google Docs uses a zip file to download multiple files. What do you mean in terms of multiple file download? Download 10 files as 10 separate files, without having to a) Okay the saving of each file to your drive independently b) Downloading them as a zip file that then needs to be uncompressed by the end user Imagine a list of files showing on a website (like google docs, or like you would have in a default ftp listing in firefox). Scripting would allow a selection of a number of these files and a download button would open a dialog on the UA to select the folder where the files will be copied to. You can do this right now in two ways: 1) An archive file (your zip example) with the files in it. This is b) which we have, agreed, but not what I meant by allowing multiple file download. It's allowing the download of just one file, the zip file. 2) A multipart response with the files as parts, each part having Content-Disposition: attachment. as far as I know, and I could be wrong, this would suffer from what I described in a), i.e. there would be a dialog propping up to accept each downloaded file. You can gzip this multipart response to get the compression behavior you want. I was suggesting the resource packages as a way to make use of compression/decompression. /J -Boris -- Jose Fandos CEO Andekan LLC 5727 Claremont Avenue Oakland, CA 94618 Phone: 415.366.7755 Fax: 415.373.3858 UK: +44 797 198 7757 www.andekan.com
Re: [whatwg] Multiple file download
On Tue, 2010-02-23 at 18:12 +, Jose Fandos wrote: On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 5:07 PM, Boris Zbarsky bzbar...@mit.edu wrote: On 2/23/10 5:10 AM, Jose Fandos wrote: What doesn't seem to be there, unless a java applet is used (haven't come across one using flash) is the multiple file download. Even Google Docs uses a zip file to download multiple files. What do you mean in terms of multiple file download? Download 10 files as 10 separate files, without having to a) Okay the saving of each file to your drive independently b) Downloading them as a zip file that then needs to be uncompressed by the end user Imagine a list of files showing on a website (like google docs, or like you would have in a default ftp listing in firefox). Scripting would allow a selection of a number of these files and a download button would open a dialog on the UA to select the folder where the files will be copied to. You can do this right now in two ways: 1) An archive file (your zip example) with the files in it. This is b) which we have, agreed, but not what I meant by allowing multiple file download. It's allowing the download of just one file, the zip file. 2) A multipart response with the files as parts, each part having Content-Disposition: attachment. as far as I know, and I could be wrong, this would suffer from what I described in a), i.e. there would be a dialog propping up to accept each downloaded file. You can gzip this multipart response to get the compression behavior you want. I was suggesting the resource packages as a way to make use of compression/decompression. /J -Boris -- Jose Fandos CEO Andekan LLC 5727 Claremont Avenue Oakland, CA 94618 Phone: 415.366.7755 Fax: 415.373.3858 UK: +44 797 198 7757 www.andekan.com So how would you decide where each file goes? Would you just pick a directory and it chucks all the files in there? Also, the genius of archive files (zip, tar, rar) is that you can specify a path within the archive, so that a collection of files which requires a certain structure (a web page and its assets) are retained. Most operating systems have built-in features to read into these files as if they weren't archives at all. Windows can only do this for zip files, Linux can do it for most archive types, not sure about MacOS or other OS's. Thanks, Ash http://www.ashleysheridan.co.uk
Re: [whatwg] Multiple file download
On 23 February 2010 18:12, Jose Fandos iaminlon...@gmail.com wrote: 2) A multipart response with the files as parts, each part having Content-Disposition: attachment. as far as I know, and I could be wrong, this would suffer from what I described in a), i.e. there would be a dialog propping up to accept each downloaded file. So wouldn't the solution simply be to modify this behaviour? I'm sure one could write a patch for at least Firefox and Chrome to detect this situation and ask for a destination for all files...
Re: [whatwg] Multiple file download
On 2/23/10 1:12 PM, Jose Fandos wrote: 2) A multipart response with the files as parts, each part having Content-Disposition: attachment. as far as I know, and I could be wrong, this would suffer from what I described in a), i.e. there would be a dialog propping up to accept each downloaded file. Currently yes, but that seems like a UI issue, not a spec issue. Nothing _requires_ that behavior of UAs. I'd prefer just having a header in multipart responses to flag that all the files should probably be saved to the same location, or fixing UAs to only prompt once, to inventing yet another package format here. -Boris
Re: [whatwg] Multiple file download
What about 10K files to download? I don't like this idea. One could create a multiple file download page that could flood the client host. I would like to see the list of files I'm going to download before choosing save destination. For multiple download, I would prefer a dragdrop usability (just like for uploading). -- Diogo Resende drese...@thinkdigital.pt ThinkDigital On Tue, 2010-02-23 at 18:12 +, Jose Fandos wrote: On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 5:07 PM, Boris Zbarsky bzbar...@mit.edu wrote: On 2/23/10 5:10 AM, Jose Fandos wrote: What doesn't seem to be there, unless a java applet is used (haven't come across one using flash) is the multiple file download. Even Google Docs uses a zip file to download multiple files. What do you mean in terms of multiple file download? Download 10 files as 10 separate files, without having to a) Okay the saving of each file to your drive independently b) Downloading them as a zip file that then needs to be uncompressed by the end user Imagine a list of files showing on a website (like google docs, or like you would have in a default ftp listing in firefox). Scripting would allow a selection of a number of these files and a download button would open a dialog on the UA to select the folder where the files will be copied to. You can do this right now in two ways: 1) An archive file (your zip example) with the files in it. This is b) which we have, agreed, but not what I meant by allowing multiple file download. It's allowing the download of just one file, the zip file. 2) A multipart response with the files as parts, each part having Content-Disposition: attachment. as far as I know, and I could be wrong, this would suffer from what I described in a), i.e. there would be a dialog propping up to accept each downloaded file. You can gzip this multipart response to get the compression behavior you want. I was suggesting the resource packages as a way to make use of compression/decompression. /J -Boris -- Jose Fandos CEO Andekan LLC 5727 Claremont Avenue Oakland, CA 94618 Phone: 415.366.7755 Fax: 415.373.3858 UK: +44 797 198 7757 www.andekan.com smime.p7s Description: S/MIME cryptographic signature
Re: [whatwg] Multiple file download
On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 10:45 AM, Boris Zbarsky bzbar...@mit.edu wrote: On 2/23/10 1:12 PM, Jose Fandos wrote: 2) A multipart response with the files as parts, each part having Content-Disposition: attachment. as far as I know, and I could be wrong, this would suffer from what I described in a), i.e. there would be a dialog propping up to accept each downloaded file. Currently yes, but that seems like a UI issue, not a spec issue. Nothing _requires_ that behavior of UAs. I'd prefer just having a header in multipart responses to flag that all the files should probably be saved to the same location, or fixing UAs to only prompt once, to inventing yet another package format here. Indeed, if this can be fixed with no changes to specs that would be ideal. For a multipart response it seems like the UA is free to prompt in any way it sees fit. However one problem with a multipart response is that the UA doesn't know the number of files, or their types and sizes, until all files have been downloaded, right? If there was a way to indicate this information up front then I think we're good to go. / Jonas
Re: [whatwg] Multiple file download
On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 6:13 PM, Ashley Sheridan a...@ashleysheridan.co.ukwrote: On Tue, 2010-02-23 at 18:12 +, Jose Fandos wrote: On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 5:07 PM, Boris Zbarsky bzbar...@mit.edu wrote: On 2/23/10 5:10 AM, Jose Fandos wrote: What doesn't seem to be there, unless a java applet is used (haven't come across one using flash) is the multiple file download. Even Google Docs uses a zip file to download multiple files. What do you mean in terms of multiple file download? Download 10 files as 10 separate files, without having to a) Okay the saving of each file to your drive independently b) Downloading them as a zip file that then needs to be uncompressed by the end user Imagine a list of files showing on a website (like google docs, or like you would have in a default ftp listing in firefox). Scripting would allow a selection of a number of these files and a download button would open a dialog on the UA to select the folder where the files will be copied to. You can do this right now in two ways: 1) An archive file (your zip example) with the files in it. This is b) which we have, agreed, but not what I meant by allowing multiple file download. It's allowing the download of just one file, the zip file. 2) A multipart response with the files as parts, each part having Content-Disposition: attachment. as far as I know, and I could be wrong, this would suffer from what I described in a), i.e. there would be a dialog propping up to accept each downloaded file. You can gzip this multipart response to get the compression behavior you want. I was suggesting the resource packages as a way to make use of compression/decompression. /J -Boris So how would you decide where each file goes? Would you just pick a directory and it chucks all the files in there? Yes, that would be the most common use. Allowing for choosing several different folders for different files would be left up to the UA. I don't thing the UA should bother with that, though; the waste of time to select a different folder for different sets of files negates the benefits of downloading 15 files in one go as 15 distinct files. Also, the genius of archive files (zip, tar, rar) is that you can specify a path within the archive, so that a collection of files which requires a certain structure (a web page and its assets) are retained. Agreed that's one benefit of archived files, but I'm looking for a more general use that's common within the desktop os yet it cannot be reproduced easily over a web app, namely copy a select set of file from here (website) to there (a folder in your desktop) without having to resort to decompression of archives. Most operating systems have built-in features to read into these files as if they weren't archives at all. Agreed, but it only goes so far. Mac OS doesn't, not natively, as far as I can see. I remember Windows did, but only for the file you were opening. If you opened a program to read a file from within the zip and that file depended on another file also in the zip, it wouldn't work. But that might have been fixed long ago. Still, this is a request I get often enough from non-technical people. We are covering this with a Java applet, but that brings its own set of issues. /J Windows can only do this for zip files, Linux can do it for most archive types, not sure about MacOS or other OS's. Thanks, Ash http://www.ashleysheridan.co.uk
Re: [whatwg] Multiple file download
On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 6:19 PM, Tim Hutt tdh...@gmail.com wrote: On 23 February 2010 18:12, Jose Fandos iaminlon...@gmail.com wrote: 2) A multipart response with the files as parts, each part having Content-Disposition: attachment. as far as I know, and I could be wrong, this would suffer from what I described in a), i.e. there would be a dialog propping up to accept each downloaded file. So wouldn't the solution simply be to modify this behaviour? I'm sure one could write a patch for at least Firefox and Chrome to detect this situation and ask for a destination for all files... It definitely would cover our needs, as long as everyone was using one of those browsers. Only benefit of it being part of the spec is that eventually it might be supported by every UA out there.
Re: [whatwg] Multiple file download
On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 6:45 PM, Boris Zbarsky bzbar...@mit.edu wrote: On 2/23/10 1:12 PM, Jose Fandos wrote: 2) A multipart response with the files as parts, each part having Content-Disposition: attachment. as far as I know, and I could be wrong, this would suffer from what I described in a), i.e. there would be a dialog propping up to accept each downloaded file. Currently yes, but that seems like a UI issue, not a spec issue. Nothing _requires_ that behavior of UAs. I'd prefer just having a header in multipart responses to flag that all the files should probably be saved to the same location, or fixing UAs to only prompt once, to inventing yet another package format here. I shall file in a bug in bugzilla if there is none covering this already. But would it be too much of a stretch to use the same package format and almost the same process as the one defined for resource packages, in case that gets into the spec? Again, because this would eventually get taken up by everyone following the standard. /J -Boris
Re: [whatwg] Multiple file download
On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 9:11 PM, Jonas Sicking jo...@sicking.cc wrote: On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 10:45 AM, Boris Zbarsky bzbar...@mit.edu wrote: On 2/23/10 1:12 PM, Jose Fandos wrote: 2) A multipart response with the files as parts, each part having Content-Disposition: attachment. as far as I know, and I could be wrong, this would suffer from what I described in a), i.e. there would be a dialog propping up to accept each downloaded file. Currently yes, but that seems like a UI issue, not a spec issue. Nothing _requires_ that behavior of UAs. I'd prefer just having a header in multipart responses to flag that all the files should probably be saved to the same location, or fixing UAs to only prompt once, to inventing yet another package format here. Indeed, if this can be fixed with no changes to specs that would be ideal. For a multipart response it seems like the UA is free to prompt in any way it sees fit. However one problem with a multipart response is that the UA doesn't know the number of files, or their types and sizes, until all files have been downloaded, right? If there was a way to indicate this information up front then I think we're good to go. / Jonas Definitely a step in the right direction. I'll file a bug for Firefox... what about Chrome/Safari/Opera? /J
Re: [whatwg] Multiple file download
On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 1:27 PM, Jose Fandos iaminlon...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 6:19 PM, Tim Hutt tdh...@gmail.com wrote: On 23 February 2010 18:12, Jose Fandos iaminlon...@gmail.com wrote: 2) A multipart response with the files as parts, each part having Content-Disposition: attachment. as far as I know, and I could be wrong, this would suffer from what I described in a), i.e. there would be a dialog propping up to accept each downloaded file. So wouldn't the solution simply be to modify this behaviour? I'm sure one could write a patch for at least Firefox and Chrome to detect this situation and ask for a destination for all files... It definitely would cover our needs, as long as everyone was using one of those browsers. Only benefit of it being part of the spec is that eventually it might be supported by every UA out there. As a browser developer, I can tell you that I'm not more likely to implement a certain UI just because it's spelled out in a spec. Browsers implement things that are useful for its users, not because a spec asks nicely. File bugs on browsers. Talk to websites to start using this. If you build it, they will come. / Jonas
Re: [whatwg] Multiple file download
On Tue, 2010-02-23 at 21:27 +, Jose Fandos wrote: On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 6:19 PM, Tim Hutt tdh...@gmail.com wrote: On 23 February 2010 18:12, Jose Fandos iaminlon...@gmail.com wrote: 2) A multipart response with the files as parts, each part having Content-Disposition: attachment. as far as I know, and I could be wrong, this would suffer from what I described in a), i.e. there would be a dialog propping up to accept each downloaded file. So wouldn't the solution simply be to modify this behaviour? I'm sure one could write a patch for at least Firefox and Chrome to detect this situation and ask for a destination for all files... It definitely would cover our needs, as long as everyone was using one of those browsers. Only benefit of it being part of the spec is that eventually it might be supported by every UA out there. I still don't think it's part of any html spec, but the http protocol. Just because a web browser will typically be the UA dealing with it does not necessarily mean it's something that should be dealt with in an html spec. Thanks, Ash http://www.ashleysheridan.co.uk
Re: [whatwg] Multiple file download
Boris Zbarsky wrote: or fixing UAs to only prompt once, to inventing yet another package format here. I'd go further: why not just give UAs an option to decompress a ZIP archive (or potentially other recognised archive format) to multiple files (or a folder containing them)? This would require no standards work and would be of general utility for all existing file downloads (I'd certainly be happy to shed a few clicks from the ZIP download-open-extract-delete shuffle). -- And Clover mailto:a...@doxdesk.com http://www.doxdesk.com/
Re: [whatwg] Multiple file download
On Wed, 2010-02-24 at 00:02 +0100, And Clover wrote: Boris Zbarsky wrote: or fixing UAs to only prompt once, to inventing yet another package format here. I'd go further: why not just give UAs an option to decompress a ZIP archive (or potentially other recognised archive format) to multiple files (or a folder containing them)? This would require no standards work and would be of general utility for all existing file downloads (I'd certainly be happy to shed a few clicks from the ZIP download-open-extract-delete shuffle). That's probably the smartest way to go about it. Won't break anything, just enhances the user experience that you'd normally get. Thanks, Ash http://www.ashleysheridan.co.uk
Re: [whatwg] Multiple file download
On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 9:51 PM, Jonas Sicking jo...@sicking.cc wrote: On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 1:27 PM, Jose Fandos iaminlon...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 6:19 PM, Tim Hutt tdh...@gmail.com wrote: On 23 February 2010 18:12, Jose Fandos iaminlon...@gmail.com wrote: 2) A multipart response with the files as parts, each part having Content-Disposition: attachment. as far as I know, and I could be wrong, this would suffer from what I described in a), i.e. there would be a dialog propping up to accept each downloaded file. So wouldn't the solution simply be to modify this behaviour? I'm sure one could write a patch for at least Firefox and Chrome to detect this situation and ask for a destination for all files... It definitely would cover our needs, as long as everyone was using one of those browsers. Only benefit of it being part of the spec is that eventually it might be supported by every UA out there. As a browser developer, I can tell you that I'm not more likely to implement a certain UI just because it's spelled out in a spec. Browsers implement things that are useful for its users, not because a spec asks nicely. I meant the implementation/re-use of a package format being part of the standard more than the UI. Though I'm happy to follow-up on the UI implementations. I had filed a bug for mozilla (bug 537669https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=537669) on this at the beginning of the year. It stands unconfirmed. If anyone can confirm the bug, that would be swell. I'll attach a test case to the bugs to show the multiple dialogs currently showing. I'm submitting the bug at bugs.webkit.org as soon as I get the account ready. Already submitted bug report to Opera. /J File bugs on browsers. Talk to websites to start using this. If you build it, they will come. / Jonas
Re: [whatwg] Multiple file download
On Feb 23, 2010, at 6:02 PM, And Clover wrote: Boris Zbarsky wrote: or fixing UAs to only prompt once, to inventing yet another package format here. I'd go further: why not just give UAs an option to decompress a ZIP archive (or potentially other recognised archive format) to multiple files (or a folder containing them)? Some UAs already have this feature. In Safari, if you have the 'Open safe files after downloading' option enabled (I believe it's enabled by default, though I usually leave it disabled because there have been a few exploits contained in supposedly safe files), it will unpack your ZIP or .tar.gz archives, and delete the archive leaving only the resulting folder. This would require no standards work and would be of general utility for all existing file downloads (I'd certainly be happy to shed a few clicks from the ZIP download-open-extract-delete shuffle). Yep, there's nothing stopping browsers from implementing this, and there are already browser that do it. It's just a matter of encouraging other browser vendors to follow suit. -- Brain
Re: [whatwg] Multiple file download
On Tue, 2010-02-23 at 22:50 -0500, Brian Campbell wrote: On Feb 23, 2010, at 6:02 PM, And Clover wrote: Boris Zbarsky wrote: or fixing UAs to only prompt once, to inventing yet another package format here. I'd go further: why not just give UAs an option to decompress a ZIP archive (or potentially other recognised archive format) to multiple files (or a folder containing them)? Some UAs already have this feature. In Safari, if you have the 'Open safe files after downloading' option enabled (I believe it's enabled by default, though I usually leave it disabled because there have been a few exploits contained in supposedly safe files), it will unpack your ZIP or .tar.gz archives, and delete the archive leaving only the resulting folder. This would require no standards work and would be of general utility for all existing file downloads (I'd certainly be happy to shed a few clicks from the ZIP download-open-extract-delete shuffle). Yep, there's nothing stopping browsers from implementing this, and there are already browser that do it. It's just a matter of encouraging other browser vendors to follow suit. -- Brain Ideally I guess then, the browsers would support .tar.gz files as these give much better compression than .zip. Unfortunately, that's probably unlikely to happen this decade with a certain browser made by a company that is known for trying to get developers to do things their way... Thanks, Ash http://www.ashleysheridan.co.uk
