Comments on: Some file upload ideas

By: Gerv

Gerv — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 10:12:35 +0000

What would be cool is if a form could be marked as “accepting Zip files” in the HTML. Then, you could select multiple files in the filepicker and Firefox would zip them all up and send them. Is there a standards-compliant way we could do this using content types or something or would it require an HTML extension?

Also, the file upload control should certainly be a drop target. And yes, you should be able to enter a URL and have Firefox fetch the URL and upload the resulting data in one smooth move. Re-enabling the typeable path via a menu item or hotkey would also be very good. And you should be able to press Ctrl-V when the control is highlighted and have it say “” in the field and upload the contents of the clipboard.

Lots of possibilities :-)

By: Josh

Josh — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 18:27:12 +0000

One of the only things I really like about Windows (and one of the only things I miss when I’m working on a Mac) is that it has some of this built-in in a pretty neat way. In a file upload control, click browse or choose file or whatever; in the Windows file chooser dialog that comes up, type in (or paste) a URL in the “file name” field. Windows will automatically fetch the URL, download it into the temp folder, and upload it for you.

By: Eric Shepherd

Eric Shepherd — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 14:01:25 +0000

Being able to drag and drop files into the edit field asking for a file to upload would be really nice.

By: chaos8

chaos8 — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 13:31:11 +0000

What about this bug? :-)

By: dave

dave — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 10:54:33 +0000

This is partly a combination of your 1st and 3rd points, and maybe only makes sense to geeks but…

If I’m asked to upload something that is publicly available on the web, I should be able to just input the URL and have Firefox fetch it, then upload it in a single action.

(Also the screenshot one seems like too specific overkill if you can already easily paste an image from the clipboard, or drag from the desktop)

By: Colin Barrett

Colin Barrett — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 04:26:52 +0000

> We could attach a menu to each , containing commands

Please don’t. Just use the standard system one.

Instead, allow people to do things like drag & drop files into text fields or just paste images directly into the browser.

Operating systems already have existing ways to move documents and text clippings around: the clipboard and drag & drop. Embrace these methods, don’t roll your own.