820537 - Display Downloads Summary only if there are at least 2 hidden downloads.

Status: REOPENED

(Firefox :: Downloads Panel, defect)

Description

[Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️)]

When the Downloads Summary is only summarizing a single download, it takes up the same space that a normal download item would...so why not display the download item instead?

The behaviour I'm proposing is:

1) Display a maximum of 4 items in the download list
2) If the number of items exceeds the maximum, display 3 items in the list, and show the summary (so that we display a total of 4 items again).

This would increase the maximum height of the panel somewhat, since we have the case with 4 downloads in progress, plus the footer.

An alternative would be to only show 3 items maximum, as we currently do, and if we exceed that maximum, to only show 2 items, plus the summary.

Thoughts?

Comment 1

[Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️)]

Wow, the summary was just flat-out wrong. Fixed.

Comment 2

[Marco Bonardo [:mak] (Away Apr 25 - May 5)]

makes sense, as a nice-to-have

Comment 3

[Marco Bonardo [:mak] (Away Apr 25 - May 5)]

The second suggestion means we reduce the number of downloads in some cases, from 3 to 2, I feel like 3 is the bare minimum we should keep, so I'd probably vote against this.
The first suggestion has just the problem that we always need to add the footer, so the panel will be 4+1/2 in one case 3+1 in the other case, that may look unpolished but could be worth trying.

Comment 4

[Marco Bonardo [:mak] (Away Apr 25 - May 5)]

on a second thought, this makes the panel less coherent (height changes too often, sometimes we show 4, somethings 3+2) and looks like may complicate code for a small benefit (we always have to add Show All Downloads so the panel height grows by almost a whole entry). If we feel like 3 downloads are too few we may just increase to 4.

A best approach to the problem would be to add a telemetry probe that reports the maximum number of session downloads per user, then we could evaluate better if it's worth to increase number of downloads.

Comment 5

[Marco Bonardo [:mak] (Away Apr 25 - May 5)]

Reopening per ongoing discussion, we should better evaluate the code complication needed here. Not a priority though, this is just for coherence and it's more important to increase downloads count first.