lifetime settings

[znoteer]

UI suggestion related to the fact that when choosing to upload files, a second pair of lifetime-setting menus appears. Both pairs of menus must be set to achieve other than the default time to live.

In bepasty, initially there is the text input box with its meta-data fields and submit button, two dropdown menus for setting the entered text's lifetime, and an area onto which one can drag files, or which one can click to select files, to be uploaded to bepasty.

If one chooses to upload files, some new fields appear on the page amongst which are a second pair of dropdown menus for setting the uploaded files' lifetime. If one sets a lifetime for the uploaded files using only one of the pairs of dropdown lifetime-setting menus, the uploaded files' lifetime will be the default lifetime. Only when both pairs of dropdowns are set to the same lifetime will the wanted lifetime be set.

Expected behaviour is that setting only one or the other of these pairs of menus should be enough to set a non-default lifetime for uploaded files. I say one or the other because a person wanting to upload files may decide first to set a lifetime, seeing the first pair of lifetime menus there, and then select some files for upload. The person may not notice the second set of lifetime-setting menus that appear and end up with the default lifetime of one month.

A different person might select some files first, see the second set of ttl menus appear and forget that there was a first set of menus. They would also end up having the default lifetime set.

This exposes, I believe, a UI problem. One cannot both submit text using the input box and upload files. You can do one or the other. If the fields relating to the submitted text's meta data and lifetime disappeared at the same time as the fields related to files chosen for upload appear there would be no ambiguity, at least for the person who selected files without first setting a lifetime.

For the person who set a lifetime before selecting files for upload, though, there might still be a problem. That person must remember to reset the lifetime in the newly appeared set of lifetime menus. They may forget and end up with the default lifetime.

One way around this would be to have a single pair of lifetime-setting dropdown menus work for which ever option is chosen, text submission or file uploading.

Another way would be to wait until some text is actually entered in the text input box before making the first set of time-setting menus appear. In this second case, I would also suggest making the area for uploading (either by dragging or clicking) files disappear to make it clear that a person cannot upload files at the same time as submit text with the text input area.

[ThomasWaldmann]

Hi and thanks for the feedback.

I just tried it and it works for me as expected, so I think this might be mainly an unclarity of how it works:

• the first lifetime selection are for each of the uploaded files. e.g. when uploading 2 files, it will create 2 bepasty items, each with that lifetime.
• the additional UI elements appearing after the files upload is finished are to optionally create another bepasty item: a list item that shows a list of the just uploaded files. by setting the lifetime there, you set the lifetime of only the list item (this is just a small text with the IDs of the uploaded files and a special mimetype to trigger the rendering as such a list).

In many cases it of course makes sense to set both lifetimes to the same value, but this does not always need to be the case.

[znoteer]

On Sun, Aug 14, 2022 at 12:42:08AM -0700, TW wrote: I just tried it and it works for me as expected, so I think this might be mainly an unclarity of how it works:

You are quite right. I did not understand the intended work flow.

In many cases it of course makes sense to set both lifetimes to the same value, but this does not always need to be the case.

Given this new information, I have a different UI suggestion. I believed I needed to create a list to get links to copy to send to people for individual images. Now I see that once a file has been uploaded, it is sufficient to copy "<root part of url>/bepasty/" and to copy the code that gets displayed in the field on the right when a file is successfully uploaded, and to paste them together to make a suitable url to access the file. For a large number of files, all the copying and pasting could become tedious. My suggestion would be to display below each blue box that shows the name of a successfully uploaded file the complete URL for accessing that file. One doesn't need worry about associating a code of 8 random characters to the correct file in the list below. Thanks, for having taken the time to explain the design of bepasty to me.

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-- Znoteer ***@***.***

[ThomasWaldmann]

It's even easier: bepasty shows a link list of uploaded items at the right (below the "optional list-name" field).

You can just right-click and copy the url of such a link (or open the link in a new tab and copy the url from the address bar of the browser).

But I guess as soon as you have multiple items that somehow belong together, just creating that bepasty link list item is the best, then you only need to deal with 1 url / 1 link.

[znoteer]

On Thu, Aug 25, 2022 at 02:14:29AM -0700, TW wrote: It's even easier: bepasty shows a link list of uploaded items at the right (below the "optional list-name" field). You can just right-click and copy the url of such a link

Thank you for pointing this out. <blush mode>I'm feeling a bit dull for not having noticed that the names of the uploading files were clickable, and thus had a URL.<blush off> I thought the list was purely informational and not functional. Sorry for the noise this time, and thanks again.