[whatwg] Proposal for local-storage file management

[Maciej Stachowiak]

On Aug 28, 2009, at 12:55 AM, Jonas Sicking wrote:

> Ah, now I follow what you are requesting. Basically the ability to not
> just hook into some virtual directory of files, but rather the normal
> file tree as seen by the user on the Desktop/Documents folder/Images
> folder/etc. And with that, not just the ability to read these files,
> but also write to them.
>
> I see two major problems with this:
> 1. Security
> How to do all this while protecting users and their data
> 2. Cross platform differences
> Different platforms have different directories and directory
> structures for storing the photos/music/documents/etc.

There's also platforms like iPhone where there is no user-visible  
concept of a filesystem at all. (There are, however, media collections  
which could be a source of files to upload.) You could also imagine  
that products which boot straight into a web browser and don't offer  
any other UI, like the CrunchPad, might also not want to expose the  
filesysyem hierarchy. The capabilities offered to Web applications  
should work for these kinds of platforms.

Broader note: loading and then modifying existing documents in the  
browser might be cool. But in general, I don't see the win of making  
the file manager the tool to manage data created by web apps. File  
managers are not really that great an interface for managing  
information, and much of the time, something specific to the type of  
content is a better interface.

Regards,
Maciej