215451 - Feature Request: Reprogramming Download Manager as external program ("Rainbird")

Status: VERIFIED INVALID

(Toolkit :: Downloads API, enhancement)

Description

[Ralf Hagen]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; de-AT; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624
Build Identifier: 

Mozilla lacks as of this moment a potent Download Manager that can be given
download locations and restart or recover downloads after going offline.

It would also help to make it possible to search for multiple sources of a file;
if coupled with the possibility to download complete websites with Mozilla
Navigator, it could perhaps add an option to download also all file links from a
website.

Such download managers exist as of today, but AFAIK only for Windows, and most
laden with spyware. 

I would propose to extract the Download Manager as a program on its own (let's
code-name it "Rainbird"), and include support to put downloads to a FIFO list,
of which it downloads only a preset number simultanously. I think it would be a
bonus if it could be made to use a certain download bandwith until which it
downloads simultanously.

I think a project such as this would also give Mozilla an extra edge over its
competitors.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:

Comment 1

[Ralf Hagen]

*** Bug 215455 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 2

[Pham]

I think this is invalid because it will bring super changes and unless you fix
it yourself, no one's going to fix it

Comment 3

[Ralf Hagen]

I truly appreciate your opinion on this matter, but I'm sorry to differ.
I laid out my reasons for opening this feature request.
Your doubts as to the possibilities to achieve it have been noted.

Comment 4

[Pham]

remember that this requires super changes and you need a project page like
mozilla.org/projects/rainbird to do this and have all the specs

Comment 5

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

If there's any reason for this to be invalid, its because its a bug against one
program to create another, separate program.

Otherwise it should be correctly resolved as WONTFIX.  There is a bug on
supporting external download managers, which should get done at some point.