103258 - ability to specify a default directory for temporary files (override TMP/TEMP)

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: File Handling, enhancement)

Description

[Brian WIlliams]

Apologies if this is the wrong component, none of them really appeared relevant.
Very often I receive attachments to mails, which I then need to open in some
other application (eg staroffice). Often I want to modify the document and save
it back into some related file. However, the file has been stored into a
temporary file with a random name, so I have often have to type in a typically
long new file name.
It would be nice to have an option for a user sepcified directory for these
temporary files, and to save the files to that directory with the name as
received in the attachment. Then the file passed to the selected application at
least has the original name.

Comment 1

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

This sounds like a really good idea. :)  With a user-specified dir we need not
do filename salting...

Comment 2

[a.haakmat]

I'm wondering, could a user specified directory for downloads/attachments also
help obviate the need to use temporary files when downloading? See also <a
href="http://mozillazine.org/talkback.html?article=2054&message=93#93">this
response</a> I wrote to bzbarksy on the Mozillazine forum.

Comment 3

[gary]

Why can't all the temporary files keep their original names and extensions like
in the dreaded I.E. so you could see what is going on in the temporary
directory? I hate the way they assign random names in Mozilla. When I want to
find an MP3 or a MOV or an AVI or JPG file that I looked at before I can't find
anything except by guessing based on file size. I can't even rename them to
check them out because I can't tell what kind of files they are from the stupid
random names without their proper extensions. Where did they get this stupid idea.

Also, I can't tell Mozilla where to put them because it adds its own subfolder
called "cache" to wherever I want them. They also separate the cookies and leave
off the date they arrived so it is hard for me to tell which ones to delete.

I love to hate microsoft, but I keep hitting walls trying to use Mozilla - I may
have to switch back.

Comment 4

[Christian :Biesinger (don't email me, ping me on IRC)]

part of comment 0 has been long fixed - the temporary files get the original
name before they are opened.

ability to specify a default download directory is bug 7840... but that probably
doesn't apply to these temporary files... so I'm leaving this open.

comment 3 seems to be about the cache and therefore totally unrelated to this
bug. it talks about bug 90558.

Comment 5

[OstGote!]

change summary to the only open point

Comment 6

[Palmer Eldritch]

Maybe a security concern - the handling of downloads by FF is perfect - just maybe it would be useful to be able to specify a temporary folder (in a ram drive say) without overriding the system's TMP variable (I am on windows). Of course the user would be responsible to clean the mess up.