Save File to Desktop - Feasibility?

Question

We have a part of our program which can save a diagnostic file for the user to email to us so we can help them with problems. We have the option of saving it to the desktop, and it seems to be the prevailing idea at the time. However, I have these two questions:

• Is there any instance where we WON'T be able to save to the desktop? I was just having problems with Win7, then I realized I was not doing it right, and now I am able to save them fine. But, are there any instances (for example, a locked-down system at work) where those permissions may be denied? I know even at my school, where everything was locked down, we could create files on the desktop.
• Is it OK per Design Guidelines etc. to save to the desktop? I mean, we're not saving regularly, it's just for diagnostic purposes. Is there a really, really important reason why NOT to do this?

Thanks a lot.

Answer 1

I can't find a specific guideline, but in general you want to give the user the option of saving to an alternate location. It's okay to have the Desktop be the default location. Some users love to have tons of stuff on their desktop, and others (like me) are the anal types who want nothing but the recycle bin and maybe a program shortcut or two. But I poop temporary files to the desktop all the time (such as logs, etc). Perhaps you should have a Save (which goes to the desktop automatically) and a Save As... which gives the user the standard save dialog to let them choose a location.

Permission to write to the desktop can be denied (though in practice I haven't seen it in business settings).

Answer 2

Is the only purpose of the diagnostics file so that they can email it to you? If that's the case, you might be able to try saving to a temporary file (which AFAIK will always work), and programmatically launching their email client and attaching that file (although it's some ugly code to do that).

Or you could have an upload form on your website, and programmatically upload the file so that the user doesn't even have to launch their email client.

The issue with both of these approaches is that it requires the user to have internet access to get you the file, so you would probably still need to let them save the diagnostics file to a specified location in case they needed to send it to you at a later time.

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Regarding whether a user would ever be unable to write to the desktop, this post on the Tom's Hardware forums points out that although write access could be disabled, the user would still be the owner of the desktop folder and would thus be able to re-enable write access -- but I think that was Win2k specific. Another forum post claims that you can make the desktop read-only in XP with ALS. I'm not sure how it works in Vista, but it would seem that write-access to the Desktop is by no means guaranteed in Windows.

As @jeffamaphone points out, it would be a very good idea to offer a "save as" dialog, just in case. Personally, I'd lean towards having the desktop be the default folder, with a browse button to select another folder, in your "Save diagnostics" dialog. It's irritating, as a user, to not have control of where output goes.

Answer 3

If roaming profiles are in use there is the possibility that space will not be available to store the file. It might be better to saving to the local files folder in the profile and popping up an explorer window for that directory.

I personally would display a dialog stating that the info is going to be saved to the desktop, with an option of saving to an alternative location. Some people get really irritated if they don't have this option.

Automatic upload of diagnostic files to a central server is a great way of capturing information if your user base is not very tech savvy. This usability advantage can be the difference between getting feedback or not, unless you have a way to coerce the user into providing the diagnostic file. There are privacy issues to consider for some types of applications and user bases.

Answer 4

The option we choose it to give users an option to copy the diagnostic information to the clipboard. They can then past it directly into any email client. Ctrl-C Ctrl-V is way easier than attaching a file in GMail.