A New Download Manager in Firefox 3 Brings a New UI
[I use a Mac, so all the images in this post are of the Mac user interface. The UI for other platforms will differ slightly. Click on pictures to view other sizes.]
Firefox 3 brings a brand new download manager to the scene. There were lots of issues that existed with the old download manager both in terms of the UI and in the code that made it work. So for Firefox 3, we redid the whole thing to provide a better experience all around. It’s one of my favorite features in Firefox 3, but then I’m a bit biased. This post discusses the new features of the UI.
Old Meets New - a UI Comparison
The Firefox 2 download manager (above) would display the download’s icon (but not on Linux), its name, its status, and two text links to open and remove the download. In contrast, the Firefox 3 download manager (below) displays the download’s icon (even on Linux now), it’s name, the time of the download, the download size, and where it was downloaded from. For an active download, the size of the download changes to the amount downloaded so far. The main goal was to provide more useful information to the user.
You might notice, however, that there is now primary UI to open or remove the download. The idea here was to provide a less cluttered UI. However, just like before with Firefox 2, you can open your download by selecting it and pressing enter, double clicking it, or selecting open from the context menu. In fact, the context menu has grown a lot too!
The middle two options provide functionality that was once available from the old properties dialog. That dialog was removed because it was out of place. One of the new features of the new download manager is the ability to select more than one download (as hinted to by the “Select All” entry in the context menu). You can select multiple downloads (below) to perform an action on them such as remove, pause, or resume.
Searching
The new download manager also adds the ability to search through your download history. Let’s say that you recently downloaded a bunch of pdf documentation from threadingbuildingblocks.org and want to open it. The folder where all your downloads go is hopelessly cluttered, so you open up the download manager, and search for “pdf threading”. In a matter of moments, you are presented with the documents you wanted so you can now open them, or if they were deleted, you can re-download them.
Status Bar Indication
Perhaps the most useful feature that has been added in Firefox 3 is a little status indicator that can be found at the bottom right of your browser window:
Firefox will now let you know how much time is left for your active downloads. When you click on the indicator, it will open up so you can see more detailed information about your active downloads.
That wraps up the changes to the UI. Stay tuned for a post about what new features have been added to the download manager in Firefox 3!
May 17th, 2008 at 20:50 (8:50 pm)
One glaring omission from the new Downloads Manger is the “All files downloaded to: Desktop” button. That was really usefully and is Primary UI. (Please note that the context menu is Secondary UI because its hidden in a menu.)
Either than that, it is much better. Go Firefox 3!
May 17th, 2008 at 21:40 (9:40 pm)
It is a complete joke that you have removed the “remove” and “open” links. That’s just pathetic. It’s typical of crapintosh users to over-minimalise everything.
Right click a menu to do something simplistic is removing an item from a list is fundamentally user unfriendly.
Furthermore the continued lack of a delete (from system) link or button to delete the actual file from the system, rather than the entry in the download manager list, is just not helpful.
Firefox is supposed to be a better browser, this does not mean a dumbed down browser.
May 17th, 2008 at 23:15 (11:15 pm)
@Chris
We removed it because it was essentially a lie. Downloads that were saved to a different target (save link as) or downloads that were opened (so they went to the OS temp directory) didn’t show up there, and those were quite common.
June 18th, 2008 at 14:02 (2:02 pm)
@Shawn
Those are not good enough reasons. Now I have 2 clicks instead of 1 to accomplish the same action.
There are many changes made in Firefox, which may make sense to the developers, but which are anti-intuitive or anti user-friendly. If you are going to do this, then please put the option in to disable the behaviour!
June 18th, 2008 at 14:05 (2:05 pm)
@Martin
I’m sorry you feel that way, but user confusion is something we like to try and avoid. This was something that users complained about quite frequently.
June 19th, 2008 at 03:35 (3:35 am)
All the other things that I didn’t like about FF3, could pretty much be changed (skins, awesomebar, etc) back to FF2 style.
But the lack of the open and remove buttons really are a deal breaker for me. Especially in osx, where right clicking without a mouse is a bit more of a stretch.
Wouldn’t it be easy to add the code from FF2, and make it user selectable if they want to have the Open, and Remove buttons there?
Even if FF3 is meant for a broader audience, if it was buried away in some menu, or the config, I’d still be happy having the option of change it :s
June 19th, 2008 at 08:56 (8:56 am)
@Andrew
An add-on could just as easily add those back just like you can do with skins or modifying how the awesomebar works…
No
In the case of open you can just double click the download, and in the case of remove, you can select it and then press delete.
June 19th, 2008 at 13:18 (1:18 pm)
Yep, I know about the new ways of opening stuff, but just like Shawn said, its more clicks instead of just one, or keyboard presses.
Really, internet browsing, or computer software in general, is a really personal experience, and not everyone likes everything in new releases. And for me, I use the trackpad/mouse a lot, and having to go do stuff on the keyboard and such, is just something new to add to my workflow.
I guess as a dev, its your job to innovate, but it would be nice to have the option to go back to the older style of things.
June 19th, 2008 at 21:58 (9:58 pm)
@Andrew
I’ve got a new post (note: it’s not specifically a response to your comment) about keeping the old UI and the new one here:
http://shawnwilsher.com/archives/157
With that said, I’d be happy to work with anyone who wanted to make an add-on to add those buttons in the UI. It should be pretty easy to do.
June 19th, 2008 at 23:07 (11:07 pm)
Sorry Shawn, I read the new post, and I understand all of the problems and so forth involved with adding it in.
I was kind of ranting about it, but yea I would make an extension, or try to fix it. Although learning new coding languages, has never really worked out for me in the past, and I haven’t had much success with it.
I’ll probably just keeping using FF2 in OSX. Just to me the upgrade isn’t worth the headache for me(to try to figure out how to do it)
June 21st, 2008 at 21:42 (9:42 pm)
Does Firefox 3 have an addon to bring back the “All files downloaded to:” button that Chris mentioned. I feel the same way, I miss that button. I’m almost thinking about going back to FF2 just to get it back.
June 25th, 2008 at 07:07 (7:07 am)
The most irritating part of downloading is the manoeuvering to get to the right download directory.
For me this is not the desktop, but the same dir the previous download went to, regardless of file type.
Is it possible to achieve this with ff3?
June 25th, 2008 at 10:10 (10:10 am)
@ffus
Right click and select reveal? Perhaps I don’t fully understand your question though…
June 25th, 2008 at 14:24 (2:24 pm)
We are not communicating. Let me start saying that I use Linux.
I do not see any UI part I could apply “right click and select reveal” to.
What I mean is: it is easy to specify a constant download directory.
But I want a variable download directory, namely “same as for previous download”. (So that I can download fifty things there, of many different types, and then start a new project, with a new directory, and store all downloaded stuff there.) At present, several distinct directories are remembered by ff, one per filetype, which means that one has to specify a new download directory many times. Very annoying.