1710926 - [meta] Outreachy 2021 - Downloads panel improvements

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox :: Downloads Panel, task, P3)

Description

[Micah [:mtigley] (she/her)]

Meta for the "Improve the Firefox Downloads Panel" Outreachy project. This bug will be tracking that work.

All this work will be hidden behind a pref that will be introduced in Bug 1710929, so that we have the option to turn off/on the feature if needed.

Comment 1

[:Paolo Amadini]

Depending on how many people are assigned to this project, an achievable subset might be limited to bug 1711049. I have provided a few pointers there.

The rest of the dependencies of this bug, at the moment, are mostly equivalent to this set of meta-bugs:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/showdependencytree.cgi?id=1270405&hide_resolved=1

Comment 2

[Ava Katushka]

It looks like telemetry bug is missing: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1706355

Comment 3

[Uristqwerty]

Hi! I'm a user who just noticed the new download panel behaviour. In particular, I was saving a number of small files (so each completed before the next began), from a number of tabs (further defeating any heuristics that could have helped), and was rather annoyed at how it would re-open itself with every single file saved. Searching for information about this behaviour, it looks like the title of bug 1709129 muses about an opt-out, but either one was never implemented, or it's very well hidden, so my only apparent option is to choose between daily annoyance, or disabling the improvements_to_download_pane pref as a short-term workaround.

It'd be much appreciated by myself, and probably a decent handful of other users, if there were a more fine-grained way to turn off that one specific bit of functionality before improvements_to_download_pane becomes the default and reinforces the usual "they changed it, now it sucks" resentment that comes with nearly every UI change.

Comment 4

[:Gijs (he/him)]

(In reply to Uristqwerty from comment #3)

Hi! I'm a user who just noticed the new download panel behaviour. In particular, I was saving a number of small files (so each completed before the next began), from a number of tabs (further defeating any heuristics that could have helped), and was rather annoyed at how it would re-open itself with every single file saved. Searching for information about this behaviour, it looks like the title of bug 1709129 muses about an opt-out, but either one was never implemented, or it's very well hidden, so my only apparent option is to choose between daily annoyance, or disabling the improvements_to_download_pane pref as a short-term workaround.

It'd be much appreciated by myself, and probably a decent handful of other users, if there were a more fine-grained way to turn off that one specific bit of functionality before improvements_to_download_pane becomes the default and reinforces the usual "they changed it, now it sucks" resentment that comes with nearly every UI change.

Please file a new bug blocking bug 1733587. You can use this link. See also the documentation and FAQ at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1H0Uw7oNgATAN1Ji_MYj7loaY_H-GUmnkNKvwraeHWgQ/edit .

Comment 5

[Shane Hughes [:aminomancer]]

Attachment: File types set to "Open in Nightly" get downloaded twice for some reason

I'm finding that this new behavior is creating duplicate files that have no contents. I went looking for errors and looked at the source code that relies on this pref, but I'm really not sure what's going on. Like I expressed before in a previous comment on one of these bugs, I think the current behavior is a little frustrating so I turned it off a couple weeks ago. I guess due to some migration code it came back on automatically after I updated recently.

And I started seeing that every time I downloaded a file that was set to "Open in Nightly" in about:preferences, it would save the file twice, but the first copy would be empty and the second copy would be named filename-1.pdf or whatever. I had PDF and SVG files both set to open in firefox. And every time I downloaded one of these, instead of asking me whether I want to open in nightly, open in another handler, or save the file, it would go right to the Windows save as dialog. Upon choosing the filename and saving, it would automatically open the file in firefox and (no idea why) it would open the downloads panel too.

The behavior is kinda weird and hard to explain so check out my attachment. I have no insights on where this is coming from. Just the observation that it only affects filetypes set to "Open in Nightly." It doesn't seem to matter what kind of file type handler is set up in the Windows registry. I tried it with PDF which is set (in the registry) to open in Firefox, then tried with SVG which is set to open in VS Code, then tried deleting the SVG file handler altogether. All 3 scenarios exhibit the same issue. But any file type not set to "Open in Nightly" does not have the issue. Finally, disabling the pref browser.download.improvements_to_download_panel eliminates the issue altogether of course.

Comment 6

[:Gijs (he/him)]

(In reply to aminomancer from comment #5)

Created attachment 9248523 [details]
File types set to "Open in Nightly" get downloaded twice for some reason

I'm finding that this new behavior is creating duplicate files that have no contents.

This is now tracked in bug 1738601.

(In reply to Uristqwerty from comment #3)

It'd be much appreciated by myself, and probably a decent handful of other users, if there were a more fine-grained way to turn off [opening the downloads panel]

This is now tracked in bug 1738372.

For future people considering commenting here: please do not do that. If you're having issues with this behaviour, file a new bug that blocks enabling this feature on release, after reviewing this doc describing the changes.

Comment 7

[:Gijs (he/him)]

The Outreachy project itself is now long finished so I'm going to close out this meta.