GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 140662
Right click Open With... context menu on links
Last modified: 2004-12-22 21:47:04 UTC
When a user right clicks on a link they have the option to Open Link, which opens the link in the browser, and then, depending on the file/mime type and/or protocol, passes the file/url off to the assosicated handler. A useful feature would be a Open With... style menu, such as that which appears in Nautilus. In fact, given a mime-type/extension combonation, such an Epiphany menu could be built in the same fashion as Nautilus builds it's own. Implementation of this feature would be done exactly as in Nautilus. Immediatly upon right click, the file extension is known. This file extension could however be incorrect in cases of automatically generated server side files, and thus not permanently known until an actual request is issued. Thus, initial programs in Open With... can be shown based on the extension, just as Nautilus does. A thread can then be scheduled to initiate a HEAD request to the specified URL. A HEAD request returns only the headers of a specific HTTP request, and not the body. This would allow the mime-type to be provided, without downloading the content. The resulting mime type would then be used to refill the Open With menu while the user is watching it, similar to how Nautilus works. The URL could then be passed to the appropiate program for furthur processing. The HTTP HEAD request could be initiated on right click on a link, as opposed to on expansion of the Open With sub menu, if this is appropiate given bandwidth considerations. A HEAD request is generally very fast, and can use an existing open Keep-Alive connection, resulting in minimal overhead.
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 155119 ***