"Downloads" button cannot be dismissed
Categories
(Firefox :: Downloads Panel, enhancement)
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(Reporter: billdillensrevenge, Unassigned)
Details
Attachments
(4 files)
DownloadsButtonmakesbarnarrower.png
User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:81.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/81.0
Steps to reproduce:
Save an image. The "Downloads" button appears. Even though there are no downloads in progress, the button remains and there's no way to dismiss it. The "Remove from Toolbar" option is not the solution because then the Downloads button will never appear again. Chrome has a close button on their Downloads bar, this is a good solution. Please find a solution for this because it's annoying to have the Downloads button there all the time and also, it makes the megabar even more narrow, which is not good (screenshot of this attached)
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Comment 1•5 years ago
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Bugbug thinks this bug should belong to this component, but please revert this change in case of error.
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Comment 2•5 years ago
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This is matter of personal preference. We found that many users still don't understand how to find downloads, and where they go, a Mozilla design group is studying that problem to figure out solutions. But I don't know where those studies will bring us.
From what I understand, your request would be to show the downloads button only when there are new notifications, then hide it immediately (or add a button to dismiss it) once opened. But doing that would make the above problem worse for the majority of users, that are already having difficulties finding their downloads. for this reason I don't see us adding an auto-hide option that would be working differently from the current behavior. Depending on the results of the above study the problem may be resolved in the future, it really depends on the new designs that will come out of that. I'll ensure we take this feedback into consideration when it happens.
There is a way to do what you want though, right click on a download and choose "Empty downloads preview panel", that will remove all the download notifications and hide the button, since there's no more notifications to handle. Downloads will still be available in the Library/Downloads menu.
Another thing you could do here, is to remove the flexible spaces around the urlbar, that would allow you to get more space for it, if that's your main concern. You could also customize the toolbar and move something inside the overflow panel, so multiple toolbar buttons would be grouped into a single one.
My fault for not explaining in detail enough: basically, this "Dismiss" UX would be the same as Chrome's. Save an image in Chrome, observe the downloads bar appears at the bottom of the window. Click the "X" button and it goes away. Now save another image, it appears again. That's how I think this Downloads button should work in Firefox (I made a very crude mock up of something it could look like).
Or just have the Downloads button there permanently by default, instead of the current "hidden-until-you-download-something" behavior, that way it's not as distracting and annoying when it does appear.
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Comment 5•5 years ago
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The contextual menu to Clear Preview Panel is pretty much the same, just that it's in the contextual menu.
You can also make the button persistent, just open Customize... from the toolbar contextual menu, then click on the downloads button and untick "Hide automatically".
You mentioned a design study, is that complete? This UX really is not good. By default, the downloads button is not there, but if you save a single image (or any kind of download, of course) it appears and doesn't go away. This "Hide Button When Empty" option is not a good solution at all, and neither is expecting the user to right-click on each item and selecting "Remove From History" or "Clear Preview Panel" (Btw, "Clear Preview Panel" is just confusing. What is a preview panel? This is all a bit of a mess). Even though Firefox's downloads UI/UX does not use up vertical space like Chrome's, Chrome's does give the user the simple option to dismiss it (see attached screenshot).
And to compare to a browser that has a more similar UI/UX to Firefox, Edge shows a button in the same location and it hides after download is complete or the file is opened (try it out yourself. There seems to be some minor behavioural changes from Edge Stable to Edge Canary but the point is, the button hides when the download is complete). Firefox's downloads button either needs a dismiss function added like Chrome or some kind of auto-hide-when-download-is-completed like Edge.
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