[whatwg] Multiple file download

[Ian Hickson]

On Tue, 23 Feb 2010, Jose Fandos wrote:
>
> Currently there are implementations allowing multiple file upload 
> without the need for flash or java applets.
> 
> What doesn't seem to be there, unless a java applet is used (haven't 
> come across one using flash) is the multiple file download. Even Google 
> Docs uses a zip file to download multiple files.
>
> Was wondering if this could be made part of the standard. If something 
> like resource packages <http://limi.net/articles/resource-packages/> 
> were used, the server would still be sending one file which could be 
> heavily compressed, letting the UA to decompress and display as if a 
> bunch of files had been downloaded separately.

If this needs a change to the specs, it seems like something that should 
be done either as a new type (e.g. multipart/archive) or some extension to 
HTTP. I don't think there's anything we should really do at the HTML level 
to support something like this.

I would recommend developing a type that expands as you describe, and then 
approaching browser vendors directly to see if they would be interested in 
implementing that feature.

Alternatively, you could suggest to browser vendors that they just 
implement a UI feature that, upon receiving an archive, offers to expand 
the archive automatically. Some already do (e.g. on Mac it's common for 
.dmg files to be automatically mounted -- effectively most Mac users are 
already experiencing what you're describing without any new features being 
needed, it just works).

Another possibility is for browsers to offer UI that given a bunch of 
links will apply the same download settings to each one, so that the user 
can just drag-select a bunch of links and download them all with one or 
two clicks.

In conclusion, this seems out of scope for this working group.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
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