234704 - Open file dialog should look in /usr/bin for applications and remember and propose recent and/or most often used locations and/or applications

Status: RESOLVED EXPIRED

(Core Graveyard :: File Handling, enhancement)

Description

[Mad Max]

User-Agent:       
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030630

When opening a file for which no helper application is defined, the "Opening
file..." dialog should
- present a list of most recently and/or most often chosen applications

- look in places like /usr/bin  and not in /home/user/Documents/...
  for applications !

In general, as navigation in the "Open file" browser is quite uncomfortable
(on linux the directory menu should display like on M$-Win all directories
corresponding to separate partitions (e.g. /, /mnt/c, /mnt/floppy, /opt, ...)
and places like $HOME, $HOME/Desktop, $HOME/Documents,...)
I strongly suggest that at least a "Favorites" or "Recent" menu should be
available, which would make it easier to switch from "Documents/" to "/usr/bin"


Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Click on e-mail attachment or hypertext link of "unknown type"
  (e.g. application/octet-stream for unrecognized filetype in spite of
  ending...))
  such that the "Opening file..." dialog appears
2. Try to find e.g. /usr/local/bin/oocalc using the "Open it with..." browser
3. Click once again on the same file
4. Save it in /home/yourlogin/Documents/ using the "Save it to disk" browser
5. repeat this as often as you need all day long...
   (sometimes also opening a document in  /home/yourlogin/Documents/
    after having chosen something in /usr/local/bin/ or vice versa)

Actual Results:  
I was tired of choosing "/" and then successive subdirectories (especially if
they are not on top of the list of the browser and I have to use the scrollbar),


Expected Results:  
provide "favorite" applications like
  "/usr/bin/oocalc", "/usr/bin/gnumeric" (may want/need to choose)
  "/usr/bin/abiword", "/usr/bin/oowriter"  (  - // -   )
in the "Open with..." dialog,

and "favorite" directories like  $HOME/Documents, /mnt/floppy, ...
in the "Choose file..." dialog (for "Open..." and "Save...")

Comment 1

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

Note bug 82860.

The rest of this stuff may also be a duplicate of earlier bugs...

Comment 2

[Mad Max]

(In reply to comment #1)
> Note bug 82860.

No: I do not speak about the possibility to search $PATH
    for an executable whose plain name is given
    (also described in bug 56662)

But thanks for the reference, it allowed me to find that
the first part of what I reported is quite close to bug 161102
indeed.
(Please be assured that before posting, I took at least 30 mins to find this
"bug" already reported, without success... as seen, even insiders dont easily
find the right reference.)

However I did not yet manage to find a reference to the "Recent folders"
resp. "Recent applications" suggestions.

N.B.: to be more clear, in my initial message "favorite" should be replaced
by "recent" or "most often used".

AND, PLEASE :
   if it is such a well known "bug" (a thing to change, all agree!),
   why not add this easily-to-implement "recent places" dropdown menu
   to the file requester ?
   (bugzilla starts getting bureaucratic instead of productive...)

Comment 3

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

> if it is such a well known "bug" (a thing to change, all agree!),

Well, no.  Not all agree.  And therein lies the crux of the problem with every
single UI change. ;)

Comment 4

[Mad Max]

(In reply to comment #3)
seriously, who would not agree that a "recent places" dropdown menu would be
useful in the file browser ?

and, if so, I suggest yet another change(!): add an option
 "Provide 'recent places' menu in file browser"

it would be so easy to implement and so much more easy to use !

Comment 5

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This is an automated message, with ID "auto-resolve01".

This bug has had no comments for a long time. Statistically, we have found that
bug reports that have not been confirmed by a second user after three months are
highly unlikely to be the source of a fix to the code.

While your input is very important to us, our resources are limited and so we
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Comment 6

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This bug has been automatically resolved after a period of inactivity (see above
comment). If anyone thinks this is incorrect, they should feel free to reopen it.