410538 - Download Manager should cache its "Downloads"-window list

Status: NEW

(Toolkit :: Downloads API, defect)

Description

[Stephen Donner [:stephend] Not actively reading bugmail]

Summary: Download Manager should cache its "Downloads"-window list

Currently, even with improvements in the way we build the Download Manager list--see bug 408745 and bug 404006--we still don't cache that list; this means that subsequent Download Manager window invocations will take just as long to populate as their previous ones.

Comment 1

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

Not blocking, far too late for changes of this type.

Comment 2

[christoph gille]

When  the file list in Downloads is long, users wait up to a few seconds before a new download is performed.

Waiting two extra seconds for a download is usually not a problem.

However, increasingly people are using Web-pages to control
interactive animations like in Bio-molecule graphics.

Clicking a Web link results in a certain action in the Software that
is controlled by the Web-page.


In this case 2 seconds delay for each user interaction is certainly
not acceptable.  The delay vanishes after clearing list. To my
opinion, this performance bug is important.


For examples see page 

http://3d-alignment.eu/strap_script.html
http://www.umass.edu/microbio/chime/

Comment 3

[christoph gille]

The protein viewer Vmd already has the possibility to be controlled by
Web-links of the form http://localhost  

The authors of another protein viewer Pymol currently implementing this feature:
 
   "Also, we're in the process of adding web-service interface to
   PyMOL as well, so you will soon simply be able message PyMOL with
   are URL request like:
   http://localhost:port/color.pymol?color=red&selection=name%20ca"

Therefore it would be helpful if the delay of the downloads manager could be improved.

Comment 4

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+2]]

Shawn, anything we can do to improve the time needed to enqueue a new download?

Comment 5

[Shawn Wilsher :sdwilsh]

I'm not seeing this delay myself, nor do I see code that would cause it (short of network latency)

Comment 6

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+2]]

Christoph, could you attach a prepared downloads.sqlite file which shows this behavior? It's sometimes easier to have a testcase to confirm the behavior. Thanks.

Comment 7

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to comment #6)
> Christoph, could you attach a prepared downloads.sqlite file which shows this
> behavior? It's sometimes easier to have a testcase to confirm the behavior.
> Thanks.

Christoph appears to be gone