Drag and drop a file from a webpage into application

3
votes

In Gmail, an email attachment can be downloaded by dragging the item from the webpage into a folder. A solution for achieving this is described in Case Study: Drag and Drop Download in Chrome on HTML5Rocks.

I'd like to drag an item from a web page and onto a drop area in an application. I've tried dragging items from Gmail into Outlook, but it won't catch the attachment. I've also tried other applications that normally can catch files with the same result.

Is it possible to drag files from a web page into a drop area in an application normally capable of catching files? If not, are there any workarounds making it possible to create a more sexy user experience than dragging the file to a folder and then drag it into an application?

1
javascriptgoogle-chromedrag-and-drophtml5-filesystem
Have you tried other email clients than Outlook, or even other OSs? – Matt R. Wilson
I have tried Thunderbird, and then figured out that dropping items into the application wasn't so easy :) I've tried other applications that normally can catch files that are dropped, but I can't seem to make it work – Jørgen

1 Answers

2
votes

The drag and drop action from the browser is not the traditional drag-and-drop that you would get in an application. It works by setting a DownloadURL (which is just a string) in to the drag-and-drop event which then invokes Chrome to perform a download to the file location where the drag happened. It doesn't work for Inter-app drag and drop.