Amazing Downloading Discovery

Thoughts & Feedback
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I have to share this discovery - I wonder if my mouth dropped open. :joy:

A little bit how I do things. As a silly perfectionist I like to drag and drop a link on a web page to an open Caja directory window to start a file download. What I typically get is a ā€œFile Operationsā€ progress window (I hate the Firefox changes) and the server time-stamp actually preserved.

The direct links to Ubuntu-Mate ISOs on this page is a good example but I happened to discover it grabbing mp3 files from here.

What I did was accidentally rename a file that was still downloading. Oh geezeā€¦ I just broke the fileā€¦ NO I DIDNā€™T! It was still downloading under the new name! When it was done everything was fine and the rename stuck.

I think this is all Caja handling the URL it was given by the dropped object? Can anyone confirm? Is it intentional or serendipity this happens?

I might test this a little. Iā€™m not sure what happens with other downloading techniques.

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From a quick look at the process, it's gvfsd-http that is handling this under the hood. gvfs is used for a lot of things:

GVFS is the virtual filesystem for the GNOME desktop, which allows users easy access to remote data via SFTP, FTP, WebDAV, SMB, and local data via Udev integration, OBEX, MTP and others

Thanks for sharing -- I knew it could create links, but not downloads like this! :slight_smile: (I wish it worked for Chrome/Chromium)

There's a few nifty little tricks with how applications behave with each other.

  • Drag-and-dropping folders/files in Save/Open dialog to "jump" to that folder.
  • Copy a file/folder and its path is on the clipboard too.
  • Dragging text in/out of other programs or "dropping" it as a new file in a directory.

It was once possible to drag files/folders onto a dropdown (like MATE Screenshot) ... but that hasn't worked for years. :frowning:

One thing for sure... I hope this stays into the future!

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Hi @lah7. Then hats off to the level of detail in GVFS. I'm not sure how I discovered Firefox to Caja drag-n-drop but it seems I've been using it for years. BTW, the desktop is a good destination, too. I'm sure very few care about time-stamps so that's just me I guess. :grinning:

Thanks, I'll take a look at those tricks. I know I have varied success with copying files and directories from Caja. The terminal tends to get:

file:///home/bill/.bash_history

But this compose window or Pluma gets the desired:

/home/bill/.bash_history

But I use a clipboard manager called Parcellite that may get involved.

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