[app] UX to open files

[jskinne3]

We need to know

• how a user selects to open / export / print a file
• what indication they see that file opening (which may take 6 seconds) is taking place

Guiding questions

This screenshot below shows a link ("sed_ut.txt") which is currently a nonfunctional placeholder.

What should happen when a user clicks on that link? Displaying the file? At what point do we ask users if they want to print or export the file?

As the file display is being prepared, what indication will users see that something is happening? A throbber or progress bar?

Is there a use case to print or export a file without opening it?

Related issues

• [app] UX designs for export/print dialogs #2752
• Proposals on how printing could work by @deeplow

[deeplow]

• Proposals on how printing could work by @deeplow

For a bit of a TL;DR on this to inform UX feedback. The current print workflow corresponds to proposal 1, where viewing the file is entirely different workflow from printing the file:

That is the simplest implementation and can be directly ported to the new client. However, when the user opens the file in the viewer application, the "save as" and "print" options essentially don't work (problem described in freedomofpress/securedrop-workstation#278).

Proposal 2 suggests a way of making the buttons in the viewer functional as well, particularly for the printing workflow. It has a few security considerations which we have not yet considered (whether or not give an attacker to prompt the user about printing a document). But I see the UX upsides as being:

• Add a more familiar way of printing -- debatable up to which point this adds value given the implementation complexity and the fact that users can learn to use the print and export buttons on the client (maybe a few times they will struggle, but possible not much after that)
• Preview and change settings before printing - currently, this is not possible to do. Previewing for a broad variety of file types is only ever possible in the file viewers (if they do support preview) and if we integrate Dangerzone, this makes this practically impossible after the conversion. But I don't have a sense of how important this would be for users.

The question is: are these enough upsides for a regular workstation user to be worth considering at a later implementation stage?