Closed Bug 233122 Opened 21 years ago Closed 21 years ago

Option to use separate progress windows instead of download manager

Categories

(Toolkit :: Downloads API, enhancement)

Product:
Toolkit
Component:
Downloads API
Type:
enhancement
Priority:
Not set
Severity:
normal

Tracking

()

Status:
VERIFIED WONTFIX

People

(Reporter: ajunne, Assigned: bugs)

References

Details

User-Agent: Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7a) Gecko/20040131 Firebird/0.8.0+ In my personal opinion, a feature to be able to completely disable the download manager would be nice. I'm not talking about not showing the download manager window like the current option in the 0.8 builds, but like in 0.7, no download manager at all, and simple dialog boxes asking where the file should be saved or wether it should be opened by an external program. To be clear: I'm talking about the 0.7 or IE-like downloading windows, not the download manager as it is right now. I'm not saying it should be removed, but It would be better if it could be totally disabled. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: N/A
You can already disable the download manager. Do you want a progress window for each download in addition to disabling the download manager?
(In reply to comment #1) > Do you want a progress window for > each download in addition to disabling the download manager? That's it, just like it was in Firebird 0.7, and similar like it's in IE now, instead of having all downloads in the download manager in one window I'd prefer having them each in their own window, 0.7-style.
Summary: Ability to completely disable download manager → Option to use separate progress windows instead of download manager
I agree w/ the poster here, please bring back the 0.7 behavior which has separate download windows for each downloading file when download manager is set not to be shown.
*** Bug 233978 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
I'd just like to say that given the option to use either the separate download windows or the centralized download manager, I would choose the manager. I know that the old code has long since been removed, but is the new code designed in such a way to allow a easy method to restore the old-style downloading system?
I agree, there should DEFINITELY be an option to use the old download system, the new Firefox 0.8 download manager has such poor performance on my computer that it makes it unuseable. I never had performance problems with the seperate Firebird 0.7 download windows.
I do not think this should be implemented. Instead, the devs should focus on solving people's problems with the new download manager. The most frequent complaints I hear are that it's slow, getting download information isn't as easy as it used to be, it doesn't open in a tab/in the background and you can't view download progress from the taskbar. Perhaps RFEs for these bugs would be appropriate? I have already filed bug 234396 and bug 234397.
I agree with the oringal poster, the old system should be choosable, Ive been going through nightly builds of firebird just to try and find the last one with the old style download system because the new one, ignoring the bugs it has, simply is not what i like to use to download things. The old system worked just fine and there was no reason to change it
*** Bug 235304 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
(In reply to comment #7) > I do not think this should be implemented. Instead, the devs should focus on > solving people's problems with the new download manager. But the code for the 0.7/IE way of handling downloads has *already been written and tested*. All that's needed is a boolean in about:config (or a checkbox in Tools -> Options) to change the path of execution. Restoring previous functionality should be less labor intensive than "fixing" the new DM. The 0.7 way of handling downloads was much more simple, clear and fast, and it also makes the transition from IE to Firefox/Firebird/Phoenix easier. I definately think having a DM is "a good thing", for instance if I want to examine a history of my downloads, but if I'm just downloading a small file (the download manager doesn't even open for a file if it downloads too quickly, unless you set a hidden pref) I just want to click the link and then click Open.
Additional reasons for having the option to switch back to the old seamonkey dialogs: -Progress of each concurrent download is immeadiatly viewable in it's taskbar button. It is NOT possible to implement this functionality in a consolidated, single window interface. -Each Concurrent Download can always be managed with just a single mouse click. W/ the DL Manager, sometimes you have to scroll to find the download you want to manage. Fixing this in a consolidated, single window interface, although possible, would be a dificult development task and that action would require use of a context menu (which are not intuitive to the common person). -The individual progress dialogs are familier and intuitive to all users switching to firefox from Internet Explorer. The Download manager can not be familiar and intuative to these users because it's functionality and use are radicaly different. (This reason supports the DL Manager being a good UI option for the advanced user, instead of being turned on by default) Those are the main points as I see it. All other complaints seem to be around the current buggyness of the DL Manager which will no doubt be fixed at some point.
From the Firefox charter http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/charter.html "Firefox began because a group of people who used to work on the Netscape browser releases wanted to show the world what a browser would look like if it were developed using the flexible Gecko layout engine and XPFE, but without the constraints of commercial interest and the creep of esoteric features from the developer community." I do not want a download manager. I rarely download more than two files at the same time and like having seperate windows for each download. I'm not interested in a history of all downloads I happen to have made. I consider a download manager an esoteric feature from the developer community and that in adding one the developers have broken the Firefox charter. My main browser is Mozilla and although it has a download manager it has very little impact on me. In Mozilla, I have the Downloads preference set to "Open a progress dialog" so the only impact of the download manager is that I periodicly have to empty the list of downloaded files maintained by the download manager. Please bring back the seperate download windows for each download and remove (or hide) the download manager.
I disagree with you. I do not believe that a download manager is a breach of the Firefox charter, and it is certainly not an esoteric feature. In fact, if forced to return to the separate progress window model in 0.9, I would not use 0.9. I appreciate that there are folks who do not like the new download manager, but I personally believe that it is a great feature and should be retained if at all possible. How hard would it be to make the new and old DM outputs coexist solely in the UI and not in the backend?
Bradley, We're not asking for the removal of the new DM, just a feature to be able to turn it off. As stated by Bruce, there are some of us out here that don't download a lot and definitely don't need the overhead of such an extensive way to manage something we don't use. I understand there are a majority that likes the new feature. Great! We simple users are happy that Firefox can be such a wonderful browser to so many people. I always thought from the beginning that Firefox (Firebird, Phoenix) was to be a no nonsense, streamlined browser without all of the "gimmicks". That said, try to understand no one wants to take anything away from you. We just want an OPTION to turn a new feature off.
As it is now, the DM seems little more than a crude sketch. But I suppose that's somewhat to be expected, since it's a brand new feature. No hard feelings :). I vote for an option to switch between Classic Downloads and the Download Manager, with Classic as the default. Classic is a robust system, has a good reputation and, most importantly, It Simply Works. The current DM is none of those things. Interestingly though, I would enjoy the look of single DM download item as if it were a single-download dialogue, 0.7-style. Basically splicing a list of downloads in the DM into list.length separate Download dialogues, still sporting the look of a single item. Resize the DM window to fit 1 download to illustrate what I mean. So if the option to choose between Classic Downloads and Download Manager is implementent, the old 0.7 code for download dialogues would not have to be reinserted, since you could reuse display code for the DM, and modify it slightly to look like a fixed single-download dialogue. That would also save on build size. But all this only after changing the layout for a single item, of course. The way things look now is not completely conform the FFX style guidelines, i.e. blue links where buttons or properly styled text 'links' should be, and the gradient-background Active-state when selecting a download where, in my opinion, a FFX-blue background or a System color should be. They give the DM a clunky feel.
taking qa
QA Contact: aebrahim
Flags: blocking1.0?
I think this has been getting somewhat off the track. The original complaint was that the Download Manager had some things wrong with it, AND it could be awkward to use. (1) The performance can be unacceptably slow, at least on some systems. (2) The DM window itself also appeared to slow the updating of other windows -- the whole system slowed down. (3) The little popup signaling end of downloads appears over the system tray. This is a great annoyance. It is poor placement. The solution that is clearly most popular / most acceptable: (1) Allow a toggle to revert behavior back to the 0.7 way of handling downloads, which was not broken. That handling method offered some benefits, and did not have performance problems. Further suggestions: (1) Allow use of Download Manager (via toggle -- see above) but gix the performance / window update problems. (2) A toggle to disable the "All downloads finished" popup. At the very least, it must be moved to a less-critical part of the screen.
Nice, but it is my understanding that extensions were supposed to be for adding functionality, not for supplying or repairing fundamental parts of the project.
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 21 years ago
Flags: blocking1.0? → blocking1.0-
Resolution: --- → WONTFIX
Seeing as how this bug has been RESOLVED WONTFIX and blocking1.0-, I suppose that extensions can do both. Removing self from CC list.
Ben's too young to have a sense for ergonomics ...
*** Bug 244268 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
The link posted above does not even attempt to solve the main complaint in this whole thread with the download manager, that you cannot have separate windows for each download. We do not all want all the downloads grouped into a bug hodgepodge; people who don't spend all day downloading files / have fast broadband want to be able to watch the progress of all their downloads in the taskbar while doing other things in other windows.
It's a shame that this requested feature won't be implemented into FireFox just because some people (who just happen to be the developers) don't like the IE/FB0.7 way of downloading files. I agree that the download manager has been debugged greatly in the last few weeks (months), but I still like the old way of downloading files, each in a single window and asking me where I want to save it each time. Not to mention the increadible uglyness of the "all downloads finished" popup (which luckily can be disabled now). Call me arrogant or ignorant, but since quite a lot of people request this it might be a good idea to just *think* about it, and not just dismiss it because *you* think it's annoying to have multiple windows. I myself have broadband, am online all day and download a lot of files, and I still like it the old fashioned way...
Just a thought that popped into my mind: What if we had an officially supported extension that enabled this ability, but that was not part of the default build? Would that be a reasonable compromise? Ben, any thoughts? I'm not suggesting this for Firefox 1.0, because there are too many other things to do, but possibly this could be implemented via extension post-1.0.
That would definately be an extension that I would be installing. Good call.
I sit and download all day long on broadband as well and I hate the download manager. Its sad, but I would rather sit at the last nightly build with the old manager and accpect its bugs than use the newest Firefox and have loads of issues fixed. I love to tell others about firefox, but the download manager confuses too many new users who are used to the IE6 way of doing things when trying to convert, and its just not what people are used to. Have the new system, just give us some way to go back to the way we like downloads working
This is already handled by an extension. I know because I use it. http://extensionroom.mozdev.org/more-info/downloadmanagertweak
Status: RESOLVED → VERIFIED
(In reply to comment #28) > This is already handled by an extension. I know because I use it. > http://extensionroom.mozdev.org/more-info/downloadmanagertweak dumbass
(In reply to comment #28) That extention does nothing to do what this bug is requesting. All it does is add more junk to the download manager, which is something we do not want at all ( or want the ability to turn off). Please read the bug description.
I myself love Firefox too much, but I know people who do not use it just because of the download manager. I think an option for reverting back to .7 way of downloading files it's a must. That and improving greatly the download manager, for example, some ideas: - Downloading files should be one line tall, and not two lines and some white space - Showing windows icons in the download manager is ugly imo - Downloaded history should provide more information, such as the date of the download - For more ideas on the download manager, check the great, not very overheaded, fast and stable GetRight (is it a comercial one, and I'm not affiliated with it, I just happened to use it)
*** Bug 251003 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
For the moment, I stick with 0.7 because of the Download Manager, but I wouldn't mind upgrading if - it had the ability to pop up just as fast as the old download window, even on a Pentium II class machine - clicking on the "download finished" notification would make it pop up - it had a "reveal location" option for each newly downloaded file
*** Bug 256993 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Though it's been said a dozen times already, I'm putting in my 2p, too. Please bring back the OPTION to use separate windows. There is a document (http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/ue/downloads/) that says that separate windows get in the way and are annoying. On the contrary, they may pop up and get in the way, but I am expecting them. It is UNEXPECTED popup windows that are annoying. I say that the current defaults are fine, but the option should be returned to download files as it was done in Firebird 0.7. We've been downloading files in webbrowsers for nearly 10 years. In that same time, computing power and network bandwidth has exploded. And here we are with a slow, clunky way to do what we were doing in 1995 on our Pentium 75's. Also, why is it so hard for the developers to see that the current way is unuseable for many of the users? Hello! Your users are telling you what they want! And it is not what we're getting. I love Firefox and would love to see it more widely-used. However, I don't think I'll want to recommend it when it hits 1.0 if downloading files is so troublesome. Please bring back those little windows.
While I still think leaving this *option* open would be the most satisfying solution to my download manager issues, it seems that the devs want to "do the microsoft", in other words to split the new DM through everybody's throats, regardless of what the users really want. So, we might as well suggest improvements for the DM, in order to have its ease-of-use approach the old download window's. Try to imagine a download manager where bug 161783, bug 251256, and possibly also bug 132755 and bug 251337 are fixed. Wouldn't its behaviour resemble the old windows enough to make it acceptable?
*** Bug 244268 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Ok, I see once again this bug has been marked as WONTFIX. I am not going to bother opening this again myself since I know someone will just close it again, but I plead with the developers to *please* open this wish. This stupid, retaded, always in the way download manager is by far the worst and most annoying thing in Firefox and it alone is the reason I stopped useing it as my primary web browser after version 0.7x, and I personally know many other who feel the same way. If you do not agree with me, just see the bug for many other opinions, people who would rather use ancient versions than put up with this annoyance. I really do not understand the reasoning behind this thinking, which is the exact opposite of not only every other major web browser in existance, but also the opposite of Firefox's stated goal - to be "the web, and only the web". How does a download manager help this? Its just bundling in more garbage that is the job of a 3rd party application. If I wanted a download manager, there are umpteen dozen solutions for this in Windows, or Mac, or Unix, any/all of which are just as good or better than the one in Firefox. However, those of us who *do not* want them, now have no option at all, instead, they are foxed upon us.
I'm for independant for each download windows also. There should not be an option.
First of all - I am not against download manager but definetly think that right now in Firefox download management is in a bad condition. And I think that devs do not understand the problem. Here are my thoughts about all of this and maybe something would be helpful. To solve the problem, first, we ALL have to understand it. Why do we need a Download manager or download management at all? 1. To see the status of the downloaded file. 2. To cancel/stop/resume the job. 3. To see the full URL of the downloaded file and copy to use it in other places. For example to copy it to the 3rd party download manager. If it is given via some scripts and not as a HTML link on a page. 4. To see the history and find some information about previous downloads. What do we have right now or Facts / Problems: In all of those cases we have to open the download manager. Can we do all of those tasks in a FAST and PAINLESS manner? NO! We understand that Firefox is not a good download manager - it is useless for "hard" downloads when you got a slow warez/crack/etc. sites with restrictions and connetion brakes up all the time - it is a pain. It can not do many automatic tasks and other things that can be easily done with a decent 3rd party download manager. Because Firefox is a great browser and NOT a download manager. So, many of us still use a 3rd party download managers. That's why we could use Firefox mainly for fast downloads. But here we get the problem - it is damn slow for "fast" tasks. If I have a huge list of downloads (~1MiB file downloads.rdf or maybe less) it shows up sooooooooooooo slow and eats up CPU for so long time a user could get frustraded easily, even a browser or any other program that needs this CPU could crash. Instead of a useful feature, to do one fast task that a download manager should do, we get a lot of problems. Huston we have a problem! Thoughts / Solution: I think Firefox in near future woun't be able to beat the best download managers out there. But we have to use it right now. Many people ask for a separate windows for a downloads. Why? It solves the problem now and we can do all of those tasks in a fast un painless way. Firefox downloads.rdf or an XML way of keeping a list of download history is too slow to load vs. any decent download manager 5 times bigger list that loads in 100 times faster. Maybe the format should be changed if it can not parse XML format as fast as "some" symbol separated format? Another solution of not separating downloads in a separate windows would be to split Download manager into TABS. Make active tab load only active downloads and when you open DM load only active downloads, so it is fast and you can track all the activity going on. If a person wants then you can click on second tab where it loads all the previous downloads and while it loads have a message - please wait while it loads the download history list. So split downloads.rdf into two files - downloads-history.rdf and downloads-active.rdf. Still this solution does not solve the main problem with slow XML file parsing but at least it would be a lot faster for many of us.
On October 2, 2004 07:11 pm, bugzilla-daemon@mozilla.org wrote: > Many people ask for a separate windows for a downloads. Why? .... > Another solution of not separating downloads in a separate windows would be > to split Download manager into TABS. Argh. No. The reason many people ask for separate windows is so that THEY CAN SEE THE PROGRESS OF ALL DOWNLOADS IN THE STATUSBAR. Having one tabbed window is not going to be any better than the current monstrosity. I will say it again - if people want a download manger they can use an external one. Firefox should *not* be providing a download manager in any way-shape-or form. It is not what casual internet users want, expect, or need.
*** Bug 265193 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Any chance on this getting into 2.0?
> I will say it again - if people want a download manger they can use an > external one. Firefox should *not* be providing a download manager in any > way-shape-or form. It is not what casual internet users want, expect, or > need. MY WORDS !! I can't understand why this is an "Won't Fix" marked Bug!!! You're aiming to become the most popular Webbrowsing application in the world. So - shouldn't you care a little bit more about the needs and wishes of the users? Why are you saying "No - I like it this way better, so EVERYONE has to use it that way?" isn't that a little ... Microsoftish? Another thing I don't understand is, that it shouldn't become a absolute change in the way FF behaves, it shal be an additional feature instead, so that you can choose between single DL windows and the manager. Isn't such a choosing ability the way "free" Software should behave?
Product: Firefox → Toolkit
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