Drag&Drop of linked files from FireFox to DOpus?

Since Drag&Drop of images from FireFox to DOpus works without problems, how can I achieve the following?:

When dragging a file-link (e.g.: <a href="AFile.zip">This is a linked file</a>) from FireFox to Dopus the linked file (AFile.zip) should be downloaded to this folder in DOpus. This would save me from clicking the link and eventually searching for a specific download directory in the Download dialog. How can I achieve this?

Does DOpus have a Drag&Drop handler which can be customized for this purpose?

There's no way to do that right now. It looks like FireFox provides the URL in the drop data, and Opus will create a .URL shortcut to it.

Technically, Opus probably could be changed to follow that link and download the file, but right now it just saves a .URL shortcut. (If it did follow the link then it wouldn't work with the many sites that require referrals since Opus would be downloading the file itself and wouldn't have the session/cookie/context data that Firefox had. It'd also have to be sensible about creating .URL files if the dropped item was a link to another web page and doing the download if the dropped item was a file, which could be tricky to get right.)

The feature could also be implemented in the browser, which is tempting at first... The browser already has the HTTP download code in it; it's got the session/cookie/context data (plus username + password where required) and can send the correct referral; it's also already got its own methods/configuration for deciding whether to view or download a file... Only problem is that the browser would have to download the file completely before sending the drop event, which would probably mean tying up whatever you had dropped on to for the duration of the download. (I've seen FTP clients which do just that. Drop a file on the Desktop and you can't use the Desktop again until their download progress dialog reaches 100%.)

So it doesn't seem ideal from either end, but maybe there's a way to do it that I haven't thought of. I've only done a bit of drag & drop programming myself so I could be overlooking something.

I don't know if it helps at all, but there are some Firefox extensions that automatically sort different files into different download locations. Those are great if you want to organise by type, but obviously no use otherwise. All of my downloads get dumped to the desktop where I later sort them, which can result in a messy desktop on days where I'm feeling lazy. :slight_smile: