939873 - Download histories should have a separate option to sync

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: Sync, enhancement)

Description

[syndesis]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:25.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/25.0 (Beta/Release)
Build ID: 20131112160018

Steps to reproduce:

Firefox Sync options checked: Bookmarks, History

Click the "Show all downloads" link or hit Ctrl-J



Actual results:

I see things I've downloaded on other synced instances of Firefox.


Expected results:

Showing downloads from other instances doesn't make sense because the files don't exist on the other machines.  Some users also might not want the download history from one instance to be synchronized to another instance.  Also, the "History" Sync option doesn't make it clear that it will include download history as opposed to just browsing history.

Downloads should at least have a separate configure option to be synchronized.

Comment 1

[Richard Newman [:rnewman]]

Explanation for why this happens: downloads are just history items with a visit with a TRANSITION_DOWNLOAD transition type. We sync all visits. Ergo, we sync downloads.

It would be possible to change this, in theory. I don't know how desirable that is either way; if you're saving stuff to DropBox it *does* make sense to have your downloads synced, and regardless you can always copy the download link from the Downloads window and re-download it on the current machine.

I think what makes more sense is to -- as we've discussed several times -- extend the notion of history with a 'source', so you're able to slice and dice these things by which device you were using when you created that visit.

Marking this as part of the format improvements bug that Sync.next *might* address, should it ever come to pass.

See also Bug 559175.

Comment 2

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

Imho, this is a wontfix, downloads are valuable history data ("I downloaded such thing") that you may need on other devices, maybe even just to download it again on such device.
I think a better fix would be to better distinguish "historical" downloads from current ones, in the view, and also improve descriptions, there is for sure plan to provide something descriptive like "downloaded file not found on disk" or such.
Better downloads sorting? yes, maybe that too. Summing up, I think it's more a UI bug than a backend one.

Comment 3

[syndesis]

I can understand that there are reasons that someone would want to sync downloads, but I maintain that there are also reasons (privacy, etc.) that one would want to sync their browsing history but not download history.  Hence the request for the configure option.

Comment 4

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

I don't want to appear unrespectful, but you can find a reason for any option you may think about, and anyone can definitely find a good (at least for him) reason to have an option for something. The result can easily become thousands of options, each requiring some special handling code that has to be maintained for years. So, you see we must choose options very wisely by looking at which of them will benefit most people, and leave the rest to add-ons.
Fwiw, privacy is better handled by using Private Browsing when needed, preventing privacy leaks is safer than hoping something else won't leak that data elsewhere.

Comment 5

[Mark Hammond [:markh] [:mhammond]]

I agree with Mak that we shouldn't do this.