🔦 Feature: Open file in attachment in the browser like we do for images

[o1lab]

Please confirm if feature request does NOT exist already ?

• I confirm there is no existing issue for this

Describe the usecase for the feature

File types like pdf, docs are getting downloaded. Instead, they should open in the browser itself.

Suggested Solution

.

Additional Context

No response

[salim-b]

File types like pdf, docs are getting downloaded. Instead, they should open in the browser itself.

For PDFs, this is not true – they don't get downloaded but opened in new browser tabs / pop-up windows without getting downloaded in the common sense (technically they are downloaded to the browser cache of course, but not a user directory like ~/Downloads). Tested with NocoDB 0.205.1 and Firefox and Chrome/Chromium on Linux (Ubuntu 22.04).

But the attachment file handling could certainly be improved! A few suggestions:

1. Allow "bulk deletion". The UI already allows to select multiple attachments, but currently the only action available then is Bulk Download. It would be great to also have Bulk Delete.

   Furthermore, I'd suggest to use slightly different, more intuitive terms: Download selection and Delete selection.

2. The current attachment download functionality is a bit misleading as it actually doesn't download an attachment (in the common sense) but rather opens it in a new tab. Thus I think download should do what a regular user would expect, i.e. save the attachment to disk (to the user's ~/Downloads directory or whatever is configured in the user's browser settings).

   Additionally, there could still be an Open in new tab action if that is desired.

3. The current Bulk Download action opens the first selected attachment in a new tab and the remaining ones in pop-up windows – which requires the user to first allow pop-ups for the NocoDB hostname. This is a subpar UX. Instead,

   • Bulk Download (or Download selection) should actually download the selected files to disk as outlined above.
   • a possibly new Open selection in new tabs action should open all attachments in new tabs (if that's possible browser-API-wise, I dunno).

[dstala]

On MAC OS

• Chrome : file gets downloaded
• Firefox : file gets opened in adjacent tab