Subject: [apps-discuss] FWD: Sending personal files between web applications

From: Peter Saint-Andre <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 02 Jul 2010 09:36:50 -0600

Forwarding this on behalf of Pablo Salomon, who is having trouble
sending to this list...

/psa

###

I would like your opinion on the following problem:

Every day, millions of files are created, edited, stored and shared
online through a wide variety of web applications. Those applications
usually allows the users to upload files from his personal computer and
to download them back but there is no standard way for users to move
files from one web application to another without having to download
them from one and upload them back to the other.

For example, a users receives an email with a photo attachment using his
favorite web email application (ie: Gmail), decides to edit it in his
favorite online photo editing application (ie: Photoshop.com), then he
wants to store the edited picture in his online storage (ie: Skydrive)
and orders a printed copy from a photo printing service (ie: Kodak Gallery).

This scenario requires to the user to download and upload the photo file
several times which is:

    * Inefficient: Twice the bandwidth is consumed over the internet for
a download and upload vs. a direct server to server transfer between the
involved services.
    * Time consuming: A server to server transfer is much faster than
for the user to download and then upload the file.
    * Not user friendly: A dozen clicks or more are needed for the user
to download a file from one service and then switch to the other service
and upload it back again while it should be possible to do the same with
just a couple of clicks in a direct way.
    * Sometimes impossible: If the user is in a mobile device or
embedded browser in an appliance with limited bandwidth/storage it may
not be possible to do so.

Once a file is in "the cloud" it should be possible to create a standard
for the user to move it between any web applications that complies with
it without being forced to download it and upload it again.

Best Regards,

            Pablo Salomon

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From: Aaron Stone <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 2 Jul 2010 09:42:34 -0700

Much of this can be achieved now with OAuth. Site A prepares an image,
and presents the user with an url to it. Site B is told about this
url, and attempts to fetch it. An OAuth exchange proceeds, wherein the
user tells Site A to grant Site B access to the resource. Site B then
fetches the resource with its newly granted authorization.

There's a lot of hand-waving going on though.

A further step is to attach this to HTML 5 drag-and-drop. The user
agents may need to assist in some ways to mediate the necessary
authorizations between the drag source and drop target sites.

I haven't followed HTML 5 DnD to see if they're doing it in such a way
as to permit this interaction to take place, rather than the user
agents simply downloading the resource and uploading it to the other
side.

Imagine an icon in a file manager -- the icon itself is downloaded,
but the file it represents has not been downloaded. When the drag
event takes place, we don't want to upload the icon to the target, we
want the url of the resource that the icon represents to be sent to
the target, and have it figure out how to get that resource.

At the end of the day, I don't see the need for a new protocol.

Cheers,
Aaron

On Fri, Jul 2, 2010 at 8:36 AM, Peter Saint-Andre <[email-masked]> wrote:
> Every day, millions ofW files are created, edited, stored and shared
> _______________________________________________
> apps-discuss mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/apps-discuss
>
>

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From: Barry Leiba <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 2 Jul 2010 14:34:33 -0400

> it without being forced to download it and upload it again.

Isn't this part of the problem that DECADE is looking to solve?

Barry