- Multiple downloads
- download in progress should be the same size as a completed one. If you have multiple downloads in progress and want to remove a particular one it can move if other downloads complete. If multiple downloads complete in a very short period of time another download might come under the mouse.
- Download control
- Possibility to shut down the computer after finishing the last download or after a specific idle time / no response (Of course with the possibility of interupting the shut-down process by the user)
- check if destination drive has enough free space before starting download.
- reserving disk space at destination before starting the download
- Dont name temporary files like '403AF..' use realnames like in IE. (very helpful when accessing Flash and Media content.)
- Support Drag&drop from 'Downloads' window
- Allow an option run a downloaded setup file (in the place of "open") instead of saving it, like in Internet Explorer
- Interpret the meta tag "DownloadOptions" like Internet Explorer does
- Ability to select a custom program ("other") to handle the download of an unknown file type (see bug 352142
- Ability to download all links
- Ability to easily pass the url to third-party download manager to do the downloading instead of using firefox's built-in download manager
- Ability to download selected links
- Ability for a limitation of the download speed in the settings
- Ability to create download queues so a user can add several links to a queue then fire off a batch download session
- Fix download resume so it works reliably and as expected (for ex. by stopping download on Firefox exit, and restart it next time Firefox is launched, maybe with popup notice)
- Integrate download status into the main browsing window
- Display UI for each download somewhere in the window (in a sidebar, on a "downloads bar" either at the top or the bottom of the browsing window, etc.) so users can see the progress of their downloads without having to go to a different window
- Alternately (or perhaps in conjunction), display a single UI element (like an icon or a throbber) that shows the status of the user's downloads (f.e. it might throb to indicate downloads in progress and display a number to indicate the number of downloads still in progress)
- Schedule downloads
- Ability to 'Add' file to be downloaded via URL
- Make many connections (to different or same server)
- p2p support (locating/participating)
- Ability to restrict download bandwidth (aggregate or per stream)
- Allow connection timeouts to pause the download instead of closing it. This will help people with slow or unreliable connections like tor to continue downloading even if their connection fails on them.
- Download Tagging. On a page where you wish to download from many links, it might be helpful to be able to to tag links for download. When you've finished tagging all the links you want, you could start a dedicated Download Manager session which would download all the links you've tagged to a specified folder, and even, perhaps, run certain actions on them like re-naming and unzipping, and other prcedures. Such features would put Firefox way ahead of the competition. Example: Scrolling through a site where you need to download a bunch of documents. You could download them normally, or you could tag them to be downloaded. Once you'd tagge everything you needed, you start the tagged Downloading Applet and it downloads all the files, one by one to the folder you specified, re-naming them according to a scheme you choose.This would be a very handy feature, especially for people who use image sites, or who need to download dependencies for open source projects. Initially, you could tag links from the same page, but eventually it might be feasible to keep a cross-site tag list. This would also be useful for people on dial up connections who need to download many large files, as it would allow them to tage the downloads during the day, and then download them at night, when they are less likely to need to use the phone.
- Show the MD5 Checksum of each download after its finishied.
- Interpret a "Checksum Attribute" in HTML like <a href="file" checksum="md5:46302164391643zfa9faq65f98a"> and compare it with the generated one.
- Be able to save the download history to a file.
- On Unix, where just about all of your programs are in /usr/bin or /usr/local/bin it's really clumsy to have to use a file selector GUI to choose a program to open a download. There's no option to just type in the path, so I have to wait while a listing of my /usr/bin is populated and then find the program whose name I already know in an alphabetical list. Highly inefficient. There should be a text field as well as a "Browse..." button so I can just type in obvious names like /usr/bin/xpdf or /usr/bin/xv. Even better would be if it searched $PATH so I could just type "xpdf". And once you're in the browse dialog you should be able to type the program's name once you're in the right directory. This problem also exists on Windows.
- Fix webBrowserPersist to save @import-ed stylesheets and backgrounds referenced in stylesheets. See Save Complete for my work on an extension to fix this.
- Simplify download pop-up. That thing hasn't been updated for ages. Maybe instead of radio buttons we have 3 buttons at the bottom: Save, Open, Cancel.
- Add a persistent option that allows a file to be automatically renamed if exists instead of "Do you want to replace it?", is not nice to rename a pic and use the mouse with only one hand ;)
- Enable support for Microsoft's ClickOnce application deployment technology.
In the Download window, there shouild be a button to reactivate the main ffox window. It nags me that i can close the main ffox window while a long download occurs, and then cannot reactivate it from the Download manager window
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.
|
- metalink (file distribution standard with mirrors and checksums)
- Ability to Add file through URL
|
- Download manager
- While the download manager window is not responding (aka it's opening the file that had just download) Firefox should not freeze too.
- Option to move the download manager into a tab instead of it's own window.
- Improved file type handling - ie: always download specific filetypes to a set of default or user-specified folders (defaults: Audio, Video, Images, Zipped, Executable, etc.)
- Speedy choice of downloading behaviour: sometimes I like to listen to an mp3 stream (clicking link), sometimes I want to download and save it without having to edit the settings (shift-clicking link, as it was in Mozilla)
- Make the download manager take multiple download progress listeners so extensions can more easily present downloads in different ways
- sort/display time and date (addtional column) of when files were downloaded
- be able to sort/display by filetype (additional column) of downloaded files
- Implement Categories, each category will have its own folder, so the downloads will be saved there.
- Allow the user to select a Category for each download.
- More control over clutter in the download history. Specifically, the abilities to select multiple completed downloads at once and remove them all with one button, remove all history items that point to files that are deleted or moved, or automatically remove history items older than X days, like with browsing history.
- Show the Filesize on a finished Download e.g. Extras->Downloads->RMB->Properties->Filesize.
- Allow to configure a sound or beep for every/or last finished download.
- SeaMonkey's Downloadmanager is very clean and easy to use. It looks native, has no strange empty spaces like our current download manager and allows multiple selections and sorting and it has a detailed progress window. I would whish firefox had it, too...
- Automatically inserting metadata such as the URL is useful for researching downloaded files
|
Seamonkey's Downloadmanager
|
