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Download workflow: compression scheme (or lack thereof) for multiple files/folders

Open jessicaschilling opened this issue 5 years ago • 3 comments

As originally discussed in https://github.com/ipfs-shipyard/ipfs-desktop/issues/1639: Current practice of downloading multiple files/folders results in the user receiving a .tar.gz file. Investigate and possibly implement the following to improve overall UX:

  • Default to using .zip as a compression scheme since not all OSes natively support .tar.gz uncompression
  • Add a prefs option for .zip vs .tar.gz for those who'd prefer the smaller files but possibly more work in uncompressing
  • Opt out of compression altogether if user is just downloading something off localhost (is there a foolproof way to detect this?); this could also be a prefs option

jessicaschilling avatar Sep 14 '20 16:09 jessicaschilling

Adding support for ZIP archive format requires changes to go-ipfs/js-ipfs.

If we want to prioritize improvements that do not require landing changes to the backend:

  • Disable download compression by default Rationale: nearly all users are running local node so download is instant and compression only slows things down
  • Make it possible to enable compression via Settings screen:
    • Add Files section somewhere (maybe between Language and Analytics?) with a single checkbox option to "Enable compression of downloaded TAR archives" (unchecked by default)
  • Research and document open source software that is able to open .tar.gz and .tar.gz on each platform (macOS, Windows, Linux)
    • I suspect we only need a hint that is displayed for Windows users
    • For the sake of discoverability, it could be a link on Settings screen, perhaps a short explainer next to/below the compression checkbox?

lidel avatar Sep 14 '20 19:09 lidel

Mockup below. I'd recommend just explaining that the user may need a decompression app rather than creating an ongoing-maintenance item for keeping a list of third-party apps up to date.

image.png

jessicaschilling avatar Sep 18 '20 16:09 jessicaschilling

I'm not sure if this is solved by https://github.com/ipfs/ipfs-webui/pull/1894, but we should double check before starting work on this

SgtPooki avatar Dec 02 '22 21:12 SgtPooki