316038 - extension/theme downloads cannot be cancelled

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Toolkit :: Add-ons Manager, enhancement)

Description

[Bradley Chapman (not reading bugmail, still gone but not forever)]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20051110 Firefox/1.5
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20051110 Firefox/1.5

When downloading an extension or a theme, there is no way to directly cancel the file download. This results in the 'downloads-in-progress' warning to appear if you quit Firefox during an exceptionally slow download (i.e. due to network problems or a slow website).

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Locate a website serving extensions or themes that is slow.
2. Install an extension or theme from that site.
3. During the download, right-click the entry in the EM/TM.

Actual Results:  
There is no option to cancel the download.

Expected Results:  
There should be an option to cancel the download.

This option falls neatly into the 'nice-to-have' category, and is most useful to users who change their mind about a theme download and want to cancel it (especially since theme downloads are very big).

Bug 300922 falls into the same category.

Comment 1

[Bradley Chapman (not reading bugmail, still gone but not forever)]

Having a quick read through extensions.js and nsExtensionManager.js.in, it looks like all that is needed is for the front-end UI to call a new ExtensionManager.cancelThisDownload(t) member function for a given active transaction t.

ExtensionManager.cancelThisDownload(t) would simply remove the necessary observers and then call ExtensionManager.removeDownload(url), with url being taken from the transaction identified by the front-end UI.

Is this analysis too simplistic? If it's not, I might be able to put together a rough patch...

Comment 2

[Robert Strong (they/them - no direct email)]

Bug 319022 fixed this in that it now behaves as the Download Manager so when you quit the application canceling downloads actually cancels the downloads and closing the extension manager allows the install to continue / complete. I'm not sure if anything more needs to be done for this as it stands now.

Comment 3

[Robert Strong (they/them - no direct email)]

The download in progress warning now cancels the download / install though it should probably have the text fixed when canceling the download / install of an extension. Though it may be nice to give the option to cancel when closing the Extension Manager I think it is just as nice to have the install continue and complete successfully when closing the Extension Manager. I'm dup'ing this to bug 319022 since that fixed the cancel on app exit issue. If you think an option to cancel the download / install should be available when closing the Extension Manager please file a new bug or reopen this one.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 319022 ***

Comment 4

[Bradley Chapman (not reading bugmail, still gone but not forever)]

I don't think extension downloads should be cancelled when closing the EM, but it would be nice to be able to cancel extension downloads by right-clicking a nascent entry and selecting Cancel. Is that a viable RFE?

Comment 5

[Robert Strong (they/them - no direct email)]

Sure. I am concerned that it won't be discovered easily due to it being in the context menu but that can wait until the ui is rewritten.

Comment 6

[Robert Strong (they/them - no direct email)]

Bradley, this should be fairly easy to accomplish now that the EM code does the right thing... if you create a patch I'll review it but I don't have time to provide guidance on this before Firefox 2.0

Comment 7

[Bradley Chapman (not reading bugmail, still gone but not forever)]

Thanks for the info. If I can get a source tree from CVS I'll start looking around at this and determine how easily it can be done.

Comment 8

[Robert Strong (they/them - no direct email)]

Bradley, if you are planning on doing this it would be best to do so before alpha 2 is released otherwise it may be too late to consider for inclusion for Firefox 2.0

Comment 9

[Bradley Chapman (not reading bugmail, still gone but not forever)]

I can't get free to do this anytime soon; Real Life(TM) is taking precedence.

When is alpha 2 scheduled for release?

Comment 10

[Robert Strong (they/them - no direct email)]

iirc sometime in May

Comment 11

[Robert Strong (they/them - no direct email)]

I just took a quick look at this and it appears that if you have multiple downloads they can only be canceled as a group. I added code to the install view for the work I am doing on bug 329045 so all downloads can be canceled but it will take significantly more work to be able to cancel individual downloads.

Comment 12

[Robert Strong (they/them - no direct email)]

Turns out there are additional issues with cancelling downloads so I did not add it to the patch in bug 329045 though it should be easier to accomplish after that patch lands

Comment 14

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

I think this has a pretty low usefulness, except in the case that the network completely stalls and I wonder if we could just detect that when we don't see any progress for a minute or so and then ask the user if they want to cancel, rather than permanently using up UI for it.

Comment 15

[Andy McKay]

Due to a long period of inactivity on this bug (6.98 years), I am intending to close this bug within a month or so in accordance with: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Add-ons/OldBugs Please remove [intent-to-close] from the whiteboard and comment on this bug if you would like to keep it open.