112134 - Download dialog shouldn't lock browser window

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: File Handling, defect)

Description

[Hakon]

I think it should be possible to step back to the browser window when a file 
dialog is open, in order to be able to make selections and copy. Like one can 
do in Internet Explorer.

Comment 1

[Karl Johan Kleist]

Hakon: Please do always start your bug reports with the "Build ID"
you are using. You find it in the title bar. Thank you.

Comment 2

[Hakon]

Build ID is 2001112009 (0.9.5)

Comment 3

[R.K.Aa.]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 55977 ***

Comment 4

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

v

Comment 5

[John Morrison]

The other bug is about Linux behaviour (app modal, not just window modal). 

This bug is windows [where it is window modal, but the request is not to be 
modal at all].

IIRC, the reason it is window modal and not modeless was to work around a crash 
in the 6.0 timeframe. I wonder if that condition hasn't been fixed in the 
meantime, and we can remove the modal flags. Not a biggie, but I too prefer 
to be able to go back to the browser window while this dialog is up (e.g., to 
copy a string from the previous page as the filename to save)].

Comment 6

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

should this go to danm?

Comment 7

[John Morrison]

Nope. On windows, there's no problem making this dialog modeless (if I recall
correctly). It's simply an implementation choice, although there may be a 
good reason that we're not doing it (one of which being that making it modal
is a simpler control flow to deal with). 

Comment 8

[R.K.Aa.]

*** Bug 115723 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 9

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

*** Bug 115723 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 10

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

I don't think this should be modeless... in particular, minimizing the browser
window should minimize the filepicker dialog, and so forth.

Comment 11

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

It may make sense to make it nonmodal but dependent....

Comment 12

[Vedran Miletic]

retargeting

Comment 13

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

Why is this assigned to file handling?  In particular, what _exact_ dialog is
this talking about?

Comment 14

[timeless]

well, we talked about this in another bug... you were on the wontfix side.

file>save page as... locks the opening browser here (10/28-04, w2k, talkback)

note that both n4 and ie5 let me do this.

Comment 15

[Synetech]

Holy cow! This has been an issue for almost 20 years‽ I guess I shouldn't expect it to be fixed. 😒

It's poor design. Microsoft completely removed the system-modal setting from the Windows API because there is almost never a good reason to lock everything up. Even the UAC screen can be configured to not be modal. As for a web-browser, there is definitely no reason to block the user from interacting with the browser (especially other tabs) just because there's a save-dialog, and in fact, there are many reasons why users would need to be able to continue using the browser before closing the dialog.

Things are very different now from what they were 20 years ago, so maybe it's time to get Firefox up to date on how things function and users work.