1760482 - Clarify icon on pdf viewer download button to help explain why it prompts for a location instead of saving immediately to the default downloads directory (despite "always ask me where to save files" being turned off)

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox :: PDF Viewer, defect, P3)

Description

[jscher2000]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:98.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/98.0

Steps to reproduce:

With these (default) settings --

• Downloads: select "Save files to" (browser.download.useDownloadDir => true)
• PDF handling: select "Open in Firefox"

-- open a web-based PDF in the Viewer.

Click the Download button to save the file.

Actual results:

Firefox 98 displays a folder browser (similar to Save [content] As...).

Expected results:

Firefox should follow the "Save file to" preference.

Mentioned on r/Firefox in https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/thstzb/after_v98_the_download_button_in_pdfjs_brings_up/

Is this due to the change in bug 1740135 ?

Comment 1

[:Gijs (he/him)]

(In reply to jscher2000 from comment #0)

Is this due to the change in bug 1740135 ?

Yes. The request here is interesting to me because I would have thought that the added flexibility here is better than the alternative, and it's also still the same-or-fewer number of clicks vs. before (when you would have had to click the "save" radioitem and the "OK" button in the "what do you want to do with this file" dialog).

Marco and Sam, wdyt?

Comment 2

[Sam Foster [:sfoster] (he/him)]

Did you mean to need-info :mak (rather than mcastelluccio) here?

In this one case we have an unambiguous signal from the user that they do want to download this file (rather than potentially ambiguous content-type headers and interaction imposed by the website.) I think the point of using save-as, rather than just quietly saving to the downloads folder is to give the user an opportunity to provide a more meaningful-to-them filename. This flexibility seems to be worth the extra click to me.

Is issue that it is not consistent with how we treat that preference/configuration in other scenarios? Because the intention is clear in this case, to my mind there is a meaningful difference here -the prompt is a direct result of user action and so it should be more expected. Unless we want to provide distinct save and save-as UI in the PDF viewer, this seems like the best outcome.

Comment 3

[:Gijs (he/him)]

(In reply to Sam Foster [:sfoster] (he/him) from comment #2)

Did you mean to need-info :mak (rather than mcastelluccio) here?

No, I wanted some feedback from the PDF viewer folks, so I got the right Marco, I think. :-)

In this one case we have an unambiguous signal from the user that they do want to download this file (rather than potentially ambiguous content-type headers and interaction imposed by the website.) I think the point of using save-as, rather than just quietly saving to the downloads folder is to give the user an opportunity to provide a more meaningful-to-them filename. This flexibility seems to be worth the extra click to me.

Is issue that it is not consistent with how we treat that preference/configuration in other scenarios? Because the intention is clear in this case, to my mind there is a meaningful difference here -the prompt is a direct result of user action and so it should be more expected. Unless we want to provide distinct save and save-as UI in the PDF viewer, this seems like the best outcome.

I think the logic of people annoyed by this change is that other downloads save immediately to their downloads folder (no prompt for a location or what to do at all), and they would expect this to behave in the same way. I can see the logic; I don't know that I necessarily think it is likely to be a better flow for all users, so I wanted some feedback. It sounds like you feel similarly in that you're saying the flexibility seems important to offer in this case, much like we do for the "save as..." in the main Firefox menu if users save a copy of HTML. We don't just dump that in their downloads folder, either. Ditto for "save link as" or "save image as". This button feels similar to me.

Comment 4

[eskot98]

(In reply to :Gijs (he/him) from comment #3)

(I'm the OP from the Reddit post)

I think the logic of people annoyed by this change is that other downloads save immediately to their downloads folder (no prompt for a location or what to do at all), and they would expect this to behave in the same way.

Yes, this is exactly what I thought.

I don't know that I necessarily think it is likely to be a better flow for all users

Could it be a configurable option, like something in about:config if not in the Settings menu?

It sounds like you feel similarly in that you're saying the flexibility seems important to offer in this case, much like we do for the "save as..." in the main Firefox menu if users save a copy of HTML. We don't just dump that in their downloads folder, either. Ditto for "save link as" or "save image as". This button feels similar to me.

I understand the flexibility argument, however this PDF download change kind of goes against the changes to download flow defaults, as they removed flexibility from the process. Previously, we had (by default, that is) the dialog that gives options to either download the file or open it immediately in an application, but now the default is to just download, without the dialog appearing.

In my opinion, the "Save page as..." option and PDF download button are not very similar. The "save as..." button has the explicit notation of "save as", which implies that as a user, I can choose how and where I want to save the file. The menu item also has an ellipsis that tells me that something more is going to happen after clicking it. The download button in the PDF viewer, however, is not called "Save PDF as..." - it is simply called "Download". No "save as", no ellipsis. To me, the PDF Viewer button implies that the file would be downloaded immediately, and therefore it should use the default download flow (which I have set to download everything in a single downloads directory). I'm not asking to change the button to "Save PDF as..." though - for me, just dumping the PDF to the downloads directory would be the better option (which, again, is not necessarily the case for everyone, but I don't think I'm alone with my point of view).

Comment 5

[Marco Castelluccio [:marco]]

(In reply to :Gijs (he/him) from comment #3)

It sounds like you feel similarly in that you're saying the flexibility seems important to offer in this case, much like we do for the "save as..." in the main Firefox menu if users save a copy of HTML. We don't just dump that in their downloads folder, either. Ditto for "save link as" or "save image as". This button feels similar to me.

I also see the "Download" button more as a "Save As..." than as a "Download", especially given that the PDF could contain forms and you might have modified it.

Romain, do you have any thoughts?

Comment 6

[Romain Testard [:RT]]

(In reply to Marco Castelluccio [:marco] from comment #5)

(In reply to :Gijs (he/him) from comment #3)

It sounds like you feel similarly in that you're saying the flexibility seems important to offer in this case, much like we do for the "save as..." in the main Firefox menu if users save a copy of HTML. We don't just dump that in their downloads folder, either. Ditto for "save link as" or "save image as". This button feels similar to me.

I also see the "Download" button more as a "Save As..." than as a "Download", especially given that the PDF could contain forms and you might have modified it.

Romain, do you have any thoughts?

Agreed here. The flexibility to select the target folder in this instance seems valuable and is consistent with the File>Save Page As... menu
The icon is not great and UX is looking into updated icons to better align with the rest of the browser UI - the download icon was identified as needing to convey better the "Save" meaning as opposed to the "Download meaning". I pinged UX for an updated on status for delivery of these icons that will help address https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1739965

Anyway long way to say that I think we should keep the current flow and speed-up https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1739965 to help fix this.

Comment 7

[Marco Castelluccio [:marco]]

The download icon has been updated in https://github.com/mozilla/pdf.js/pull/15384 (part of bug 1790039).

Maybe we should update the text associated to the icon too?

Comment 8

[Marco Castelluccio [:marco]]

(In reply to Marco Castelluccio [:marco] from comment #7)

Maybe we should update the text associated to the icon too?

This would be bug 1662416.

Comment 9

[:Gijs (he/him)]

Updating milestone etc. per bug 1790039