Making .URL files actually open in a new tab

Rami

Hi,

First of all I'd like to thank the developer for making an awesome web-app.
It's pretty easy to setup and I like the features it has so far a lot.

Now my question is; would it be possible to support .URL files?
So that it opens the target URL in a new tab of the webbrowser; perhaps with a few options.
With my limited knowledge I suppose it's not a very hard feature to implement.

Thanks a lot

Karl

Rami Now my question is; would it be possible to support .URL files?

Question: In the Files gallery layouts, do you want to display the name of the file somelinkfile.url or the actual link destination www.somelink.com? It would seem most logical to display the destination url, else how will the visitor know where the link goes and what happens when they click? On the other hand, desktop file browsers simply show the file name.

I already added support for URL files, but got a few more features to add before release in a few weeks.

Karl

Hi. I may have come across it earlier, but I wasn't actually aware of the .URL file type. It would definitely make sense to support this in Files, to open external links in new browser window. I will look into a basic implementation for next release (1-2 months).

It could even be extended, for example by displaying Youtube links or remote image/video files directly in Files' own popup viewer.

Rami

Karl I supose the default would be which you find the most logical.

I think since you browse 'files' (hence the name of the app) you should simply see the filename and its extention, just like a normal file browser in Windows or Linux.

Perhaps an option like "url-showtarget=1" for enabling target urls for display. Also on desktop, it might be useful to see the target url on hover, if that's reasonably easy to implement.

Thanks a lot for listening to feedback!

Karl

Support for .url files was included in Files Gallery 0.6.0.

When clicked, browser will navigate to the destination url. See demo:
demo.files.gallery/?files#filter=url

Information about the .url extension:
https://fileinfo.com/extension/url

An .url file is basically a text file with the following:

[InternetShortcut]
URL=https://www.files.gallery/

If you want to open links in popup windows, assign url to the click_window config option.

Rami

Thanks a lot!
This will be very usefull for lists of links and such :-)

Karl

Rami I think since you browse 'files' (hence the name of the app) you should simply see the filename and its extention, just like a normal file browser in Windows or Linux.

The difference is, in desktop browsers, the icon would match the browser, and it would require a double-click to open the link. This makes it quite intuitive to understand you are opening a link, that somewhat matches the file name.

From browsers and from within Files gallery, a single-click will open the URL. This could definitely catch users off-guard as I don't think it's implicit that they are opening a link in a new tab if the file is just called something.url, and all other clicks in Files gallery simply show a preview. That's why I defaulted to show the actual URL.

Anyway, this is minor details ...

Rami Perhaps an option like "url-showtarget=1" for enabling target urls for display. Also on desktop, it might be useful to see the target url on hover, if that's reasonably easy to implement.

Yes it could be an option. On hover, we would probably just keep the native browser title="..." containing the url.