571858 - Not easy to find/access/use "Open containing folder" from download manager after downloading attachments ["Saved Files" dialogue]

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Thunderbird :: General, enhancement)

Description

[tobias.rauter]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/533.4 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/5.0.375.70 Safari/533.4
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; de; rv:1.9.1.10) Gecko/20100512 Lightning/1.0b1 Thunderbird/3.0.5

When saving a group of attachements to local folder i have to browse with the file-explorer to get there: Better would be a "open this folder with your file-explorer"-Option. Comparable to Firefox feature "open containing folder"

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Open Mail with attachments
2.Download attachmend to Local Folder
3.Search for Button that gets me directly to the local folder
Actual Results:  
Nothing

Expected Results:  
There should be a Button which gets me to the Local folder

Comment 2

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Tobias, after downloading attachments, goto Tools > Saved Files (aka Download Manager, Ctrl+J), then right-click on downloaded attachment and find "Open containing folder" in the context menu.

Does that solve your problem?

Or are you proposing the further enhancement that we actually need a *button* for that command somewhere in download manager? If the latter, what's your vision of the proposed UI (permanent button on each attachment, or permanent central button on dlm frame, or button-on-hover etc...). I must admit I have often wished for such a button to exist, to spare us of one extra targeted click each time we go to the containing folder...

Comment 3

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

There are several problems that make it hard to use the "Saved Files" download manager to open the containing folder after downloading attachments:

- TB shows the download manager sometimes, but not always (Bug 689034, bug 442068)
- By default, TB closes the download manager after downloading attachments (browser.download.manager.closeWhenDone=true), which makes it much more difficult for all cases to access downloaded attachments (hence this bug). I think the default should be changed to browser.download.manager.closeWhenDone=false (needs a new bug), even though it comes with the side effect that even for just *opening* attachments, we'd also keep the download manager open.
- TB does not have any UI to control the behaviour of the download manager, especially browser.download.manager.closeWhenDone (bug 408647), nor whether or not to show the download manager at all (needs a new bug to have an UI option like FF has, "[ ] Show the 'Saved Files' window when downloading attachments").
- When download manager is used, "Open containing folder" is only available from the context menu, while it's certainly frequent and important enough to deserve a button (at least on hover). Note that FF has a bug to renovate the download manager which might change things for TB, too.

Comment 0 looks invalid or wfm unless morphed to request an actual *button* for "Open containing folder", however I'm hesitant to close until we've understood better and filed some more of the issues involved, e.g. those mentioned in this comment.

Comment 4

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

There are several problems that make it hard to use the "Saved Files" download manager to open the containing folder after downloading attachments:

- TB shows the download manager sometimes, but not always (Bug 689034, bug 442068)
- By default, TB closes the download manager after downloading attachments (browser.download.manager.closeWhenDone=true), which makes it much more difficult for all cases to access downloaded attachments (hence this bug). I think the default should be changed to browser.download.manager.closeWhenDone=false (needs a new bug), even though it comes with the side effect that even for just *opening* attachments, we'd also keep the download manager open.
- TB does not have any UI to control the behaviour of the download manager, especially browser.download.manager.closeWhenDone (bug 408647), nor whether or not to show the download manager at all (needs a new bug to have an UI option like FF has, "[ ] Show the 'Saved Files' window when downloading attachments").
- When download manager is used, "Open containing folder" is only available from the context menu, while it's certainly frequent and important enough to deserve a button (at least on hover). Note that FF has a bug to renovate the download manager which might change things for TB, too.

Comment 0 looks invalid or wfm unless morphed to request an actual *button* for "Open containing folder", however I'm hesitant to close until we've understood better and filed some more of the issues involved, e.g. those mentioned in this comment.

Comment 5

[thornz]

Thank you for reporting this. For a long time now I find it pretty annoying that opening a target folder after downloading an attachment is not more easy and comfortable, especially with this bug that makes the downloadmanager appear only very seldomly (I haven´t seen it for months...). 

Please let´s have at least the option to have something like a pop up window asking us if we want to open the target folder after download, or something similar. 

A dialogue, opening when wanting to save an attachment, would be great that contains exactly this option "open target folder" and also "delete attachment in mail after saving". 

There could also be an option (accessible in the general options or as a checkbox in the dialogue) to have "open target folder" as a default setting. 

Any questions for more explanations or detailed ideas? I would be happy to contribute, though hoping I could give enough info already to improve Thunderbird here.

Comment 6

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

(In reply to thornz from comment #5)
> Thank you for reporting this. For a long time now I find it pretty annoying
> that opening a target folder after downloading an attachment is not more
> easy and comfortable, especially with this bug that makes the
> downloadmanager appear only very seldomly (I haven´t seen it for months...). 

See my comment 4 with details where current TB goes wrong here.

> Please let´s have at least the option to have something like a pop up window
> asking us if we want to open the target folder after download, or something
> similar.

The major plan here is to port FF new download manager to TB, which will probably fix most, if not all of these problems. FF download manager has "Show target folder" small round flat button on each downloaded item. Can you try FF download manager (the arrow-down button which flashes after downloading), and report back if that design would solve your issues?

> A dialogue, opening when wanting to save an attachment, would be great that
> contains exactly this option "open target folder" and also "delete
> attachment in mail after saving". 

"Delete attachment in mail after saving" already exists as a feature - it's "Detach" from Save Button dropdown or attachment context menu.
We probably don't want to show dialogues that get in the way each time user downloads; the unintrusive yet immediately and intuitively accessible FF download button solution seems much superior here.

> There could also be an option (accessible in the general options or as a
> checkbox in the dialogue) to have "open target folder" as a default setting. 

An option in general settings to automatically "Open target folder" after downloads sounds like a nice idea to me, although it might be tricky to implement because we need to avoid opening multiple file manager instances of the same folder. Can you pls file that as a separate RFE?
 
> Any questions for more explanations or detailed ideas? I would be happy to
> contribute, though hoping I could give enough info already to improve
> Thunderbird here.

Thank you for contributing by filing your ideas to improve TB. We need more manpower to realize those ideas, as TB is run by volunteers. If you can code, most welcome. We also need people like you who contribute, de-duplicate, sort, clarify, specify and track specific ideas/bugs so that we can offer them to volunteer developers to code them up :)

Comment 7

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

(In reply to Thomas D. from comment #6)
> The major plan here is to port FF new download manager to TB, which will
> probably fix most, if not all of these problems. FF download manager has

That's Bug 907732, see dependencies of this bug.

Comment 8

[thornz]

Porting FF´s download manager sounds like a very good idea for me! 
I agree, this would be better than a dialogue that could annoy users who don´t need it. 

With having this, an option to set "always open target folder" as default would not be a must-have for me anymore, too - as this download manager is just so easy to use.  

Well, as I cannot code, I can only contrbute with ideas. But thank you very much for being open to this! I am really looking forward to having this download manager soon, would be great!

Comment 9

[alta88]

Fixed in Bug 1345167.