I have a Document based app that I’ve managed to adapt the Document Browser VC and Document View VC’s to most of its needs. The UX could be better though, if some further customization of the Document Browser were possible.
I’m listing here the features I would like to see, partly to draw attention to how, I believe the Document Browser could be improved and partly because I may be missing some features that are already present in the Document Browser, that I haven’t figured out how to use.
The following items are in the order of what I believe would be the easiest to the hardest features for Apple to imlement, if they’re not there already.
1/ The Open menu command.
A Document or Documents cannot be opened in the Document view VC unless they have been previously selected in the Document Browser.
First of all, I would like to be able to change the name of this command to something more appropriate to the kind of app and documents being developed, For example, instead of “Open” it might be more approiate for an app to name it “Edit”.
2/ Selection of Documents in the Document Browser.
When a folder has been opened in the Document Browser I would like to be able to programatically pre-select items in that folder for the user. So the user doesn’t have to do this manually. Of course this would be limited to the document types supported by my app and could be further filtered within my code.
In some cases I may want to programatically select all documents in a folder as soon as the folder is opened. In other cases only specific documents may be pre-selected.
I may also want the “Open” command above to be automatically invoked as soon as a folder is opened in the Document Browser. So these files would be automatically selected by the user and the opened in the Document view, with just a single tap on the folder which contains those documents.
Related to this is the fact that the “Open” command currently does nothing, unless at least one Document is selected. Perhaps it should only be available when documents have been selected and “greyed out” otherwise. This would send a clear message to the user that docucuments must be selected before “Open” can be invoked.
3/ Upload a document to a location outside of my App’s Sandbox.
This is currently possible; but is very convoluted. In the case of my app a document is automatically fetched from the internet and presented to the user in the Document view VC. I would like the user to have the option of long pressing on this document and request it to be uploaded to the same location as the rest of the Documents which are already in that location and presented in the Document viewer. Obviously the user would be giving permission for this via an alert and could choose to cancel instead of proceeding.
Right now, I’m automatically downloading these document to my app’s Documents folder. So the user has to navigate there via the Document Browser, select the Downloaded document, choose “Move” then navigate back to the location where they want the document to be uploaded and choose “Copy” when they get there. This is a long process and forces the user to navigate away from the Document viewer, when I beloeve this shoudl be prossible with one long press and followed by confirmation in the alert.
4/ Make Documents URLs within a folder available before the folder is opened.
This is a little bit simiar to “2” above. It seems that urls only become available for my app to work with, when they have been selected by the user from within an opened folder. I would like all the urls, which are contained in a folder, to be available to my app, if the user chooses “Select” and selects that folder.
Right now, if a user chooses the “Select” command before tapping on a folder, taps on the folder, then chooses the “Open” command, they are taken to an empty document in the Document viewer VC. I believe this is because, from the point of view of a Docuement based app, the user has chosen to view a Document of type directory. When, of course, what the user would really want is to see all the documents contained within that folder presented in the Document view. At least that’s the case for my app.
Further, if the user selects multiple folders and chooses “Open” all the documents contained in all of the selected folder would be presented in the Document view. My app, obviously decides how they are presented, in what order; etc.
5/ Cause folder icons to be replaced by a thumbnail of an image contained within each folder
When subfolders contain an image document, which is representative of the documents handled by my app, I would like that image to replace the generic folder icons for those folders. I realize this may be a tall order, because when the user navigates to a bunch of subfolders, which contain an image file, the Document browser would need to programatically look ahead, into the contents of each folder, and if it contains an image file, present a thumbnail of that image in place of the generic folder icon.
6/ Allow customisation of Document Browser’s menus
The Document Browser VC is very full featured. Some of those features though, are just not appropriate to my app. So I would like to be able to customize the menus, and be able to remove any commands that I feel could cause the user to lose focus on what they want to accomlish with my app.
For example, in my case, I only want to list the contents of a folder by name and I don’t need any of the “View Options” and the user doesn’t need to be able to create a new folder.
This would allow more space for me to add the few additional menu items that apply to my app and would avoid clutter.
I realize this is really a list of feature requests for the Document Browser. Some of these may have been requested before and apologies if I missed those.
If this isn’t the appropriate place to post these requests, then I’ll be grateful if someone can point me in the right direction, …and again, if any of these are already possible somehow, I’ll be very gratful for any advice on how to accomplished them.
Thanks for listening.
