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beakerbrowser / specs

Beaker's specifications [way outdated and inaccurate]
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Concerns w/ Index.json #13

Closed webdesserts closed 5 years ago

webdesserts commented 5 years ago

As I've mentioned, I like most of where the FS proposal is going, but the Index.json proposal seems problematic to me. I'm specifically worried about the user experience of non-devs if the file was exposed to them in the UI.

I feel that it could easily get in the way of actions like "select all Documents and drag them into a new folder". I also think that users would have a knee-jerk reaction of deleting the file since they didn't make it (see prior examples of users deleting system32 because they needed more space for their mp3s). In my mind, these types of files make sense for devs building a website (e.g. dat.json), but as soon as we enter the space of pure users, they're going to be tripping hazards.

You could make index.json a hidden file, but even with this you're one step away from recreating the oh so beloved .DS_Store. Deleting something like a DS_Store is usually harmless, but in the case of Index.json you would be accidentally deleting permissions, which to me seems dangerous.

At the very least I think these files should be hidden somehow, but possibly even completely abstracted from the UI. It would be nice if there was an alternative way of sharing folder metadata between devices that wasn't as problematic, but I honestly don't have any suggestions here.

(side note: the name is also a bit confusing, but that's a smaller issue imo)

pfrazee commented 5 years ago

I'm +1 to hiding the file. I'm open to discussing alternatives too, like metadata that's encoded in the dat storage but not exposed as a file.