File Selection

Standard file selection and save dialog. Allows someone to select a file to open, or set a name and location for saving.

Designers

William Jon McCann, JakubSteiner, AllanDay

Objectives

Functional requirements:

• Saving:
  • Select a location
  • Enter a file name
  • Create folders
  • Clearly identify where the file will be saved
• File selection:
  • Select one or more files
  • Allow picking a recently used file
• Folder selection: select a folder
• Allow application filtering of available files

General considerations:

• Consistent with the Files app experience (particularly important for navigation - having the same locations and structure)
• Effective search
• Provide useful and consistent file previews
• Focused on picking

Constraints:

• API compatible with existing GtkFileChooser

• Uses a dialog form factor (compact)
• Support embedding "extra" widgets

Personas

• Frequent filers
• Spring cleaners
• No filers

Relevant Art

Windows 10

Open:

Save:

Mac

Open:

Save:

Clicking the button to the right of the save as field shows a more complete dialog:

GNOME 3.30

Open:

Save:

Discussion

• How does preview work with multi-select?
• How can we allow typing or pasting a URI?
• Should we support both list and icon view?
• Do we need to do bookmark management?
• Is trash ever needed?
• Can we supply better default names and locations in Save mode?
• What should we show?
  • Columns
  • Metadata
  • Order

One of the persistent questions facing the file chooser is how much file manager functionality it should incorporate.

Issues that have been raised about the existing file chooser/save dialog:

• When the dialog is selecting a directory and a directory is highlighted, it isn't clear whether pressing the open button will navigate to the directory or select it
• You have to select an image to get a preview (technically it is difficult to show an thumbnail grid in the dialog, apparently)
• Keyboard input conflicts between typeahead find, tab completion and search

Tentative Design

• Mockups for the current implementation

• Some more recent, quick experiments

• Older mockups:

  • 3.12 Mockups

  • Jon's Mockups from bug 722211.

Comments

See Also

• Content Selection

• Content Previews