Downloader design proposal

[Marco Pesenti Gritti <marco gnome org>]

Hi,

so I finally found a bit of free time to think to issues with current
downloader design. I think both Dave and Mikael has good points, my
proposal try to mediate between the views.

PROBLEMS TO ADDRESS

I think there are two points where current design has problems:

1 We assume sites does a good work presenting files to be downloaded. It
would be a good practice to give the user informations about the link he
is going to click: it should be clear it's a download, there should be
an indication of size/time necessary to download it, the type of the
file should be visible too. Unfortunately this doesnt happen in real
world and that's why sometimes current desing trigger unwanted
downloads.

2 As stated by Dave we assume people doesnt want to micromanage their
downloads. In my experience it's the minority, but we should consider
the case of people with well organized downloads hierarchies.

PERSONAS

To try to remain concrete I'll try to sketch two (sort of, I have no
time to do it properly :/) personas:

Renata. 45 years, she assist people paying their taxes (sorry I bet
there is a proper english name for this ;)). She use Internet mainly to
download the software and the documents she need to do his work. She use
his computer all day but she never completely understood how files are
stored.

Armando. 18 years, student, he use Internet to download music, games,
videos, he has a good understanding of the filesystem.

Renata has problems using Mozilla. She goes to the web page that
contains the documentation for his work, she click on the right link but
the dialogs she get at that point is very confusing. She try to click
ok. She get a file picker now, she have seen it using Word and she ever
clicked ok there, so she does it here too.
The download start but she have no idea on how to see the document now !
Where is it gone ?! She call Armando and has to pay him to be able to
see his document.

Armando has problems using Epiphany. He has his local files well
organized in a hierarchy. With mozilla he just used the file picker to
choose one of the folders but now he has to open the file manager and
move the file, annoying !
But what is much worst is that he often click downloads by mistake and
has to close the application that started, open filemanager and delete
the downloaded file. What a waste of time, and his hierarchy is getting
a mess now !
With mozilla he was getting a confirmation dialog, from the file type he
was more or less able to estimate the time necessary to download it and
how much time it would have taken to see that file. Often there was a
faster way to reach the same results, so he just clicked Cancel there.

I think these are both personas we want to support. I tend to give
priority to Renata, but Armando is important too.

DESIGN PROPOSAL

There are three main components:

1 Download folder

It's an object on the desktop and acts like a sort of cache for stuff
Renata and Armando downloaded from the web. Files are automatically
sorted in subfolders (Music, Video, Docs etc).

Renata has a fast connection so she often prefer to just open the web
site again and click the link. A few times though the folder helped her
to find documents she was not able to find again on the web.
Armando didnt use that folder at first, he had his nice hierarchy,
though he was in a hurry a few times and decided to just download there.
It was nice to find the files there later !

2 Downloader

It's mostly hidden to the user but it provides feedback on the status of
the download.

Renata doesnt look at it that much, though it was useful one time to
know how much time she was going to wait to see his document. Armando
looks at it every two minutes, start another download when others
finished...

3 Browser

Renata can finally see his documents without the help of Armando. She
click on the link and the file opens.

Armando changed a preference in epiphany and now he feel the behavior
much more flexible. He can confirm to download the link he clicked on
and use the download folder when he is in a hurry (he can move files to
his nice hierarchy later). When he wants to put his file in his
downloads hierarchy or something else he just choose another button in
the dialog.

SHORT TIME

To end the funny story here is a description of the actual user
interface I'm proposing. They are very simple to hack, and we have
alredy most of them, so I think we can easily target 2.6:

- A preference for the downloads directory. Default should be
"Downloads" translated. It doesnt seem a big issue if changing language
create another dir (it doesnt seem like a common use case to switch
languages of the same user), and we can find a better solution for 2.8.

- "Download and open files automatically" checkbox in the preferences.
Default ON, when it's OFF we show a confirmation dialog.

- Confirmation dialog:

(Sucky text, it should prolly be something like 1.0 text)

It's not possible to open the link directly in the browser. The file
will be downloaded.

Save As - Cancel - Open (prolly Download when there is no handler).

It should be showed when automatic download is off or when the download
has been started automatically.

- Security Dialog

[Text to write.]

Cancel - Download

It should be showed when the mime type is unsafe.

The Download link as... in context menu is at this point controversial.
Since we have already a way to Save As, maybe we can avoid it.

DID WE ADDRESS ANY PROBLEM ?

Yeah, we addressed 1 with the checkbox preference. I think it's ok to
use a pref here because:

- A totally clean design is impossible without assuming web sites does a
good work with downloads links. And we cant really assume it ...
- We have two behaviors that are good depending on the persona we
consider. This looks like a case where personalization is good and
necessary.
It's not a choice between two borked behaviors. We should keep working
to make using another app to open the file the less annoying it's
possible.
- Mainteinance cost is low

We addressed 2 with the alternate action in the confirmation dialog. In
my opinion there is intersection between the two problems. If you want
to micromanage files you will be very annoyed to have stuff downloaded
on your disk without confirmation.
If there is no intersection the Download Link As... context menu will be
still necessary.

Also we adressed 3 that I forgot to mention. We never actually made a
call about saving the file in Downloads dir or in tmp with clicks on
links. I think we should save in Downloads directory for these reasons:

- Downloading on the desktop we would make unwanted downloads annoying
for Renata too. She got a few icons on the desktop and she heavily
depend on them: we cant clutter it.
- Having a download directory isnt that useful if the only way to use it
is a context menu item.
- If we use a Downloads folder instead of the desktop, esp with
automatic categorization, there is no penalty to keep the file on disk.
I think the main advantage to use the desktop would be quick open,
though that's not necessary since we autoopen.
- We can do automatic categorization
- It could be a good place to download pages, parts of sites ...

Ok, there is not much that is mine in the design. I just tried to put
together Dave, Mickael, Alan ideas in a plan (esp short time).
Do you think it make sense ?

/me fear Dave flames coming very soon :P

Marco