1262800 - Downloads panel should only display overflow info on n+1 downloads

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: Downloads Panel, enhancement, P5)

Description

[Raphael Schweikert]

Attachment: Screen Shot 2016-04-07 at 14.12.04.png

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.11; rv:45.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/45.0
Build ID: 20160315153207

Steps to reproduce:

1. Download four files simultaneously.
2. Open the downloads panel.


Actual results:

There are three downloads displayed in the panel and then there is an additional item in the downloads list that is just a text saying there is “+ 1 other download“ (see screenshot).

Ask yourself: if it’s only one additional download and it takes up the same amount of space to display this notification, why not display the download directly?


Expected results:

The overflow notification item in the downloads list should only appear if limit+1 downloads are reached otherwise it needlessly takes up space.

So when there are four downloads, the panel should look as follows:

                     Λ      
┌───────────────────▕ ▏────┐
│┌───────────────────────┐ │
││      Download 1       │ │
│└───────────────────────┘ │
│┌───────────────────────┐ │
││      Download 1       │ │
│└───────────────────────┘ │
│┌───────────────────────┐ │
││      Download 1       │ │
│└───────────────────────┘ │
│┌───────────────────────┐ │
││      Download 1       │ │
│└───────────────────────┘ │
└──────────────────────────┘

And only when there are *five* downloads (limit+1) should the panel include the info text and hide the last two downloads (thus, still showing 4 items total):

                     Λ      
┌───────────────────▕ ▏────┐
│┌───────────────────────┐ │
││      Download 1       │ │
│└───────────────────────┘ │
│┌───────────────────────┐ │
││      Download 1       │ │
│└───────────────────────┘ │
│┌───────────────────────┐ │
││      Download 1       │ │
│└───────────────────────┘ │
│┌───────────────────────┐ │
││  + 2 other downloads  │ │
│└───────────────────────┘ │
└──────────────────────────┘

Comment 1

[Raphael Schweikert]

Oops, I forgot to number the downloads in the ASCII art above. I think you’ll get the gist. Also I took the liberty of labelling this a “good first bug” since I guess it’s trivial to fix.

Comment 2

[Andrew Lawson]

Hey, can I take this one?

Comment 3

[Vyas giridharan]

What files contain the modules responsible for this enhancement?

Comment 4

[Vidhey PV]

Hai,can i work on this????

Comment 5

[Vikram]

Hi, I want to help. please involve me.

Comment 6

[Mike Hoye [:mhoye]]

Blake, who should take a look at this?

Comment 7

[Blake Winton (:bwinton) (:☕️)]

Based on https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/filelog/c3f5e6079284a7b7053c41f05d0fe06ff031db03/browser/components/downloads/content/downloads.js I would probably choose one of :mak, :jaws, or :past…

Comment 8

[Mike Hoye [:mhoye]]

Putting past up to it.

Comment 9

[Panos Astithas (he/him) [:past] (please ni?)]

Actually, Paolo is the expert on the current downloads panel design. There is a redesign project underway for the downloads panel that may make this issue moot anyway, but at least he should know if this is something that has been considered already.

Comment 10

[:Paolo Amadini]

The diagrams in comment 0 don't take into account the "Show All Downloads" button. When there are four downloads, we don't add an item but we replace the button with the "overflow" indication. If we didn't do that, we would have to show the "Show All Downloads" button below the fourth download, which would take up more vertical space than the maximum we want.

The redesign project will probably make changes in this area, including the relative heights of the elements in the panel, so we can check if this still applies when the redesign is done.

Comment 11

[Raphael Schweikert]

(In reply to :Paolo Amadini from comment #10)
> The diagrams in comment 0 don't take into account the "Show All Downloads"
> button. When there are four downloads, we don't add an item but we replace
> the button with the "overflow" indication. If we didn't do that, we would
> have to show the "Show All Downloads" button below the fourth download,
> which would take up more vertical space than the maximum we want.

I did forget the “Show All Downloads” button but it takes up at most half the space of a complete item and I doubt 224px (current max height 144 + item height 80) is too much for any display currently in use.

Comment 12

[Panos Astithas (he/him) [:past] (please ni?)]

I think that we should WONTFIX this bug due to the pending redesign tracked in bug 1269956. There is a nice UX sepc there that anyone can see and suggest improvements to. We are unlikely to work on any other changes to the downloads panel in parallel to that effort. Paolo, what do you think?

Comment 13

[:Paolo Amadini]

The final call on interaction design for the new panel will be made by the user experience team, so as far as I can tell we should keep this suggestion for consideration until someone from the user experience team has looked at it.

Comment 14

[Ritika Mishra]

Hello Marco, can you please assign me this issue. I am interested in working on this bug.

Comment 15

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

I'm sorry but I don't think this is actionable, as said in previous comments how to move on here depends on some UX decision. Comment 10 has not been resolved.

Comment 16

[Raphael Schweikert]

AFAICT there is no “overflow item” anymore, its functionality has seemingly been integrated into the “Show All Downloads” button, making this bug no longer applicable.