1758791 - v98 Downloads panel pops up incorrectly when opening files as pages in Firefox

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Firefox :: Downloads Panel, defect)

Description

[gserg.g]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64; rv:98.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/98.0

Steps to reproduce:

The new and improved Downloads panel in v98 is advertised as:
This means you’ll experience minimal interruptions and easily find your downloaded files.

The current implementation must be erroneous as it results in the exact opposite: the panel shows up when it should not, in an extremely disruptive fashion, and the system Downloads folder is polluted with files that should not be there.

Actual results:

Under "Files and Application Settings", I have selected "Always ask you where to save files", and for the vast majority of the individual files associations, I have "Always ask" as the action on download.

Vast majority of "downloads" that I do are the PDF files I work with daily.
When clicking on a link that serves a PDF, I am always presented with a dialog - open in Firefox, save to disk, open in Adobe. That part is correct. I do need the dialog, as half of the time I want to "Open in Firefox" and another half - "Save to disk".

Starting with v98, after I select "Open in Firefox", the PDF opens as a page in Firefox, and then two things erroneously happen:

• The Downloads panel pops up and shows the file name being downloaded
• The PDF file that I now have opened as a page saves into my system Downloads folder, effectively turning it into the Temp folder. (As I have noted above, I do not have the Downloads folder set as my default destination, I have "Always ask where to save files", so putting any file at all automatically into the system "Downloads" folder is erroneous behaviour.)

So each and every time, after opening a PDF in Firefox, I have to 1) Close the useless Downloads popup, and 2) Locate the unwanted file in the Downloads folder and delete it (which may be really tricky given the nonsensical names, often GUIDs).

I literally spent half of today fighting the Downloads panel that kept appearing on each PDF view. I can testify that it is a major annoyance and goes very much against the entire experience of "open in Firefox", where the file opens as if it was but another web page.

Expected results:

When the downloaded file is "Opened in Firefox" (e.g. a PDF):

• The Downloads panel should not show up
• The file should not be automatically saved into the system Downloads folder

When the downloaded file is "Saved to disk" into a user-provided folder:

• The Downloads panel should not show up (it's simply pointless - I have just manually selected a folder to save the file, I don't need to be immediately told what folder I just selected)

Comment 1

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

(In reply to gserg.g from comment #0)

Expected results:

When the downloaded file is "Opened in Firefox" (e.g. a PDF):

• The Downloads panel should not show up

To prevent showing the downloads panel on every download, you can set this preference: "browser.download.alwaysOpenPanel" to false from about:config. For the case

• The file should not be automatically saved into the system Downloads folder

There's two options we can handle this:

1. You can choose to change the default folder from "Downloads" to another one from about:preferences. From that folder, you can periodically empty its contents from there. We have similar suggestion here.

2. Set PDFs to "always open" in Firefox. This will automatically open the file from Firefox's PDF viewer. From there, you can use the "Download" button to save it, which should prompt where you'd like the save destination to be.

In both cases, the UX isn't straightforward and not perfect, but it might get you closer to what you're expecting. That said, we'll need to investigate a clearer way to handle this.

Comment 2

[gserg.g]

browser.download.alwaysOpenPanel

Thank you, will surely put that to use.

You can choose to change the default folder from "Downloads" to another one from about:preferences

That's was point exactly: I do not have a specific folder, nor do I want one, and Firefox now imposes it on me.
If I correctly understand what you are saying, my best option is to put the path to my Temp folder in the "Save files to" field, and thus lose the "Always Ask where to save" option (because the "Always ask where to save" is mutually exclusive with having a predefined folder. You cannot 'change the default folder from "Downloads" to another one' if your selected option is "Always ask where to save").

If you are saying that I need to switch my preference to "Save files to <this folder>" to have a value there, and then switch it back to "Always ask you where to save files", keeping the now-inactive-but-still-visible path in the "save to" field, and that Firefox will then use this inactive-but-still-visible path to save the files into, even though it's not the selected option, then I will argue that it's a yet another bug.

I genuinely do not see how automatically saving a file in a folder that is not approved by the user is not a bug. I would argue that it's a serious bug.

Set PDFs to "always open" in Firefox

That will still download it to a default folder, won't it?

That said, we'll need to investigate a clearer way to handle this.

With all due respect, the previous behaviour did just that: it never polluted any folders with unwanted files.
And if the "popup in your face" aspect of the new behaviour can be mitigated with browser.download.alwaysOpenPanel (I assume temporarily, until the switch is deprecated in a next version), the "pollute folders" aspect apparently cannot. Which strongly suggests that the new behaviour is just, well, wrong.

Comment 3

[:Gijs (away/busy until Mar 10)]

(In reply to gserg.g from comment #2)

If you are saying that I need to switch my preference to "Save files to <this folder>" to have a value there, and then switch it back to "Always ask you where to save files", keeping the now-inactive-but-still-visible path in the "save to" field, and that Firefox will then use this inactive-but-still-visible path to save the files into,

Yes.

even though it's not the selected option, then I will argue that it's a yet another bug.

It is, it's bug 1762775. It will be fixed.

Comment 4

[Shane Hughes [:aminomancer]]

I think all the complaints here have ended up being fixed now, so we can mark this fixed instead of wontfix