115981 - Quick access to "Favorites" directory in the "Open" and "Save As..." dialogues in Windows

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Firefox :: File Handling, enhancement)

Description

[Peter Lairo]

Quick access to "Favorites" directory in the "Open" and "Save As..." dialogues
in Windows

There should be a button (or icon) in the "Save As..." dialogues that takes you
to the favorites directory. There, the user has quick access to all directories
he has deemed as important enough to want quick access to.

For instance, I am currently managing about 10 projects at my company and have a
"favorite" defined for each project. I also have an additional 10-20 favorites
for other network directories (e.g., proposals, report templates, technical
data, etc). Now, whenever I receice attachments from clients, it would be very
useful to be able to quickly select that project's directory and save the files
there.

Suggested UI:

+- Open/Save a file -----------------------------------------+
|                      ________________________________      |
| Recent directories: |________________________________|\/|  | <-- bug 115574 :)
| ---------------------------------------------------------- |
|           _______________________                          |
| Look in: |_______________________|\/| |^|  [FavIco]        | <-- fav-icon here
| +--------------------------------------------------------+ |
| | files (favs) listed here                               | |
| |                                                        | |
| |                                                        | |

If bug 115574 is possible (modify open/save dialogues) and "a good idea" then
this one must at least be one too :)

Would this apply to other OS's (Linux, Mac) too?

Comment 1

[Peter Lairo]

adding Alex B. because he liked my other idea in bug 115574 (if you're not
interested, I apologize)

Comment 2

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

confirming rfe.  UI people should look at this....

Comment 3

[Bill Law]

next release

Comment 4

[Peter Lairo]

I looked over the shoulder of my colleague who uses MS Access 2000 and saw that
it "seems" that MS has split the "file" favorites from the "web" favorites (two
separate folders, two separate icons). This would make this feature even more
useful, since favorites will increasingly be used (and demanded by users) for
quick access to file directories.

I will attach some screenshots of typical applications (WordPerfect and Word)
showing their use of a favorites button in their "Open" and "Save as..." dialogues.

Comment 5

[Peter Lairo]

Attachment: "Favorites" icon in WordPerfect's "Open" and "Save as" dialogues.

Once discovered, this is an immensely useful tool.

Comment 6

[Peter Lairo]

Attachment: "Favorites" icon in Word's "Open" and "Save as" dialogues.

Comment 7

[[e-mail]]

bug http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=125133 has some discussion
and a proposal for this

Comment 8

[Ian Pottinger]

adding self to cc list

Comment 9

[Jesse Ruderman]

Dup of bug 112900?

Comment 10

[[e-mail]]

Jesse, as I pointed out in 112900, this bug has been chosen for the work 
on favorites (it describes the problem better IMO) 
and therefore blocks 125133. Therefore 112900 should be a DUP
of this, not the other way round. 

Comment 11

[Peter Lairo]

How does this bug depend on bug 19437 ([RFE] Move, delete, and edit bookmarks
inline (in menu))? :-/

Comment 12

[[e-mail]]

Peter, I guess you are right - I meant to make it dependent on bug 64324.
The idea is that having a context menu for menu items would greatly simplify
the interaction needed for this. I dont say it has to be in the final design,
but we should keep that idea in mind. A dependency would also show the 
potential usefulness of this feature in bug 64324. 

Comment 13

[Peter Trudelle]

nsbeta1-

Comment 14

[Felix Miata]

Incorporating by reference http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=24625#c13
and the attachment it describes.

Comment 15

[[e-mail]]

Making this dependend on bug 64324 (see comment #12) and bug 146137 (odd behaviour
of button when type menu-button is used). I'd like to implement this as 
a menu-button dropdown menu that is attached to the home button in filepicker.
Having bug 64324 implemented would be great because it would let us avoid
seperate menu items like "manage favorites" to delete or reorder the favorites.
Getting info on bug 146137 would be great because it seems that either there
is a bug in the implementation of that button type or I am missing something
bigtime. Unfortunately nobody did confirm that bug yet, though it has a simple
testcase attached.

Comment 16

[Peter Lairo]

RE comment #15: What is the difference between a "home" and a "favorites" button?
It seems you use Linux(?) and don't know that the expected OS behavour for the
favorites button in Windows is to take the user to/from the favorites
subdirectory. This "special" directory merely contains *links* to other
directories. Thus there is no need for extra buttons to manage, delete or
reorder favorites - this can be done once in the favorites directory. This is
*far* more powerful than a simple "home" button in Linux (unless there are a
bunch of simlinks(?) to other directories in the home directory (unlikely).

BTW. Mozilla for Win has a "go to desktop" button (like the linux "home"
button), which is about as useful as a fork in the eye (OK, slight exaggeration). ;)

All this bug really requests is one favorites button that takes the user to (and
from?) the favorites directory.

Perhaps, as a bonus, there could also be an "Add this Location to Favorites" button.

If you are still interested in takling this bug, with the above in mind, I would
be thrilled. :-D

Comment 17

[[e-mail]]

This bug only applies to the XP filepicker. Windows issues are of no relevance
here since Windows uses the native OS filepicker.
The plan for this bug is to use the existing home button and attach
an additional menu to it that lets you handle favorites.
Comments on how to do this in a user friendly way welcome.

I was thinking that a first implementation could simply use a menu
that is limited to, say, 10 locations, with a FIFO strategy to
throw them away when the 11th one is added. I guess one usually
will not have more favorite download directories anyway - if the
favorites menu gets too complicated, you are probably faster using
other means to go to the desired path. For the same reasons I would
suggest not to use a hierarchical menu like for the bookmarks for this,
not even in the ultimate version wich might not be limited to 10 directories.

Comment 18

[Peter Lairo]

> This bug only applies to the XP filepicker. Windows issues are of no relevance
> here since Windows uses the native OS filepicker.

*I* filed this bug because the windows native filepicker sucks, and *every*
decent windows program (even MS WORD!!!) has a "Favorites" button in the filepicker.

Hiding the favorites under a never-used "Home" button would be useless - no one
would ever *discover*, let alone use it. 

Limiting the Favorites to a (limited) menu list further increases the ideas
uselessness. I have at least 30 favorites at my office pointing to all kinds of
obscurely named, but often used, network directories. Being able to manage
(rename, delete) Favorites in the filepicker is also important because when you
add a Favorite, it gets the name of the directory it points to, which is often
not an intuitive name (project number "09488-152"). It therefore often needs to
get renamed on-the-fly (e.g., "EXXON Merger - Environmental Audit").

Also, windows users are used to having a Favorites button.

BTW. Favorites *can* contain (non-shortcut, REAL) subdiretories, so a
hierarchical menu would become mandatory, thus making the idea of a menu even
more ... well you get the picture.

BTW. You could have a Favorite shortcut that takes you to your "Home" directory.
The home dir is a *subset of Favorites* and not the other way around.

Comment 19

[[e-mail]]

OK I guess we should divide this into two bugs then, one for windows and
one for the XP filepicker. The problem is that the dependencies and 
several comments apply (falsely, according to Peter) to the XP version only.
So one solution would be to make this bug the XP favorites bug and 
create a new bug for OS Windows that requests the favorite buttons as
seen in Word (there are actually two of them as seen in attachment 69240 [details]).

Comment 20

[Peter Lairo]

I don't care what you do with winXP (I don't and will not use that spyware POS).
This bug will remain for win9x and other applicable OS's. You can move winXP to
_another_ bug, if you must. Win9x stays here!

Comment 21

[[e-mail]]

Peter, this is not about WinXP versus other Windows versions, but
*any* windows versus non-Windows. The filepicker that is used for
other (non-windows) platforms is called "xp" for "cross-platform".
My suggestion was to be pragmatic and move the Windows-only bug to a fresh
one and leave this bug as the XP (cross platform) one.

Comment 22

[Peter Lairo]

Thank for clearing that up (xp <> Windows XP). :)

The subject line (and I) says "Windows". So please move "xp" stuff to another bug. 

Comment 23

[Felix Miata]

Incorporating by reference a continuation of comment 14
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=24625#c15

Comment 24

[[e-mail]]

The i suggest that bug 112900 be for favorites in the XP filepicker and this
one for the Windows filepicker. Sorry for the confusion.
It seems it is not possible to have OS=Windows, but OS=All seems wrong too.
Should we pick a representative Win-OS, e.g. Windows98?

Comment 25

[[e-mail]]

Removing incorrect dependencies, adding to bug 112900

Comment 26

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

*** Bug 183432 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 27

[Samir Gehani]

Nav triage team: nsbeta1-

Comment 28

[Ralf-Peter Rohbeck]

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.2.1; MultiZilla v1.1.34
(d)) Gecko/20030221

Related: Mozilla should recognize the .url file extension on Windows. Currently,
if you open a .url file from the Favorites, you see something like

[InternetShortcut]
URL=http://www.w3.org/Protocols/

Comment 29

[Ray Kraesig [:rkraesig]]

As of Windows 8.1 (and therefore in all actively-supported Windows versions), the standard Microsoft-provided Windows file dialog has a sidebar with a "Quick Access" section. Folders may be added thereto by right-clicking them, whether in File Explorer or in the file-dialog itself.

For our less-actively-but-still-supported ESR users, Windows 7 has a similar feature in the form of the Places dialog. That requires some registry hacking or Group Policy modification to customize, but it's doable, and guides are available with a web search.

Closing, somewhat arbitrarily, as RESOLVED WORKSFORME.