Talk:Firefox/Feature Brainstorming:Downloads

Originally from main article:

Firefox 1.5.0.7 (tested on Ubuntu 6.06 LTS) has the following issues with the Download window. These should be fixed in Firefox 3:

I recently started several larger downloads in Firefox and had to reboot my router while downloading. After this, I got to see several Firefox inadequacies or bugs, which I'll tell you about here:

0: After the temporary network connectivity disruption, my downloads were left in limbo, with Firefox only giving me the option to Pause or Cancel; with the progress bar still showing, but not increasing, and the numbers (rate of transfer, ETA) not showing. At this point I could not get Firefox to resume the downloads, not even by clicking Pause and Resume. However, looking at the Desktop, I could see that the partial files where there. I then found that I could resume the downloads with wget -c <URL> from the command line. If I can resume from the command line, why can't I resume from Firefox?

1: Upon now clicking Cancel in Firefox after the files were fully downloaded via wget, Firefox deleted the files. Also, where I resumed the download via wget and then clicked Cancel in Firefox, wget seemed to complete the download, but then threw an error message as the file was now nonexistant. I consider the fact that Firefox deleted the files upon clicking Cancel a bug. After all, after clicking Cancel, the download is still listed in Firefox' Download window. If anything, Firefox should delete the file upon clicking Remove. Which brings me to the next point.

2: The user should be able to trigger the following three actions (and others, which are not the issue here) in the Firefox Download window: Cancel -- this should cancel a current download, but not remove the file. Remove -- this should remove the download item from the Download window list, but NOT remove the file. Remove from disk -- this should remove the item from the Download window list and delete the file from the hard drive. Alternatively, there could be just one Remove link that prompts the user whether they wish to remove the item listing only or also wish to delete the file; or this could be made a user preference.

3: When clicking retry and a partially completed file of the same name already exists on the Desktop (e.g. because the user made a copy before clicking Cancel and then moved that copy back before clicking retry (cf. above broken Cancel behaviour), that file should be resumed. Instead Firefox currently attempts a new download from scratch and names it filename(2).ext. Firefox should resume the existing file, or give the user a choice.