Comments on: A New Download Manager in Firefox 3 Brings a New UI

By: Daniel

Daniel — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 04:11:23 +0000

I thought i replied before but…maybe not..

bring back the delete from menu .. make it an option and hide it at
first if your’e so concerned. SHeesh. making something less powerful
is just stupid.

By: Shawn Wilsher

Shawn Wilsher — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 17:32:48 +0000

You should be able to see the installer in your download history unless you have changed your preferences. We didn’t change anything by default that would prevent it from showing up.

By: Aggravated Mama

Aggravated Mama — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 16:11:39 +0000

Firefox, I love ya, but I’m going back to FF2 – this 3 is driving me nuts.

By: Aggravated Mama

Aggravated Mama — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 16:08:52 +0000

I’m tired of having to go to START then MY COMPUTER then LOCAL DISK then PROGRAMS then scrolling to the bottom of the list to find the installer for my latest download, then clicking on it.

Firefox, WHAT WERE YOU THINKING? (Or, were you?)

/Aggravated Mama

By: Kelly Mulheren

Kelly Mulheren — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 16:22:36 +0000

I am very frustrated by the reduced functionality of the “Download Manager” (I hesitate to even call it “Download Manager” as it does so much less in version 3). The argument about the user downloading to a different location does not wash. Isn’t the function of a manager to track such information?

Please remember one of the fundamental rules of development: Make the easy stuff easy and provide mover advance users an interface to doing the hard stuff (although I don’t think deleting unneeded downloads even qualifies as hard).

By: Daniel M, Arlington VA

Daniel M, Arlington VA — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 22:38:17 +0000

Having to view in folder to delete it is an annoyance, as well as then having to remove from list. it atleast should have been an optional setting.. I agree with the person who said it’s not a good reason to remove it. sheesh.

By: Gerg

Gerg — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 12:17:04 +0000

Oh, and the URL the file was downloaded to. Equally fundamental.

There’s not much point in a “download manager” if it can’t tell you what you downloaded and where you downloaded it to…

By: Gerg

Gerg — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 12:13:34 +0000

It is pretty strange to have a list of objects with no buttons on them at all. You have to know there’s a hidden menu to know you can do anything to them. I’m a computer programmer and I never even found that.

What really stuns me though is that the most basic info about the download — the path — isn’t available anywhere. I’ve a million times downloaded something with firefox and then gone to open it and realized I had no idea where firefox downloaded it to. Surely the download manager should display the file path of the file it’s listing.

By: John Hawkinson

John Hawkinson — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 08:14:14 +0000

Hi, Shawn. I’d like to second AhaA5′s comment — in the past I frequently used the “Properties” dialog to determine the URL a file was downloaded from. In FF3, there does not seem to be a convenient analog, short of the cumbersome step of selecting Copy Download Link from the context menu, and then either opening another app to paste it, or opening a new tab/window, pasting it into the location bar, and being very careful not to hit return.

It’s frustrating since the new download manager *almost* gets there –it displays the website of the source file, but not the full URL, nor [seemingly] an option to. Is there a trick I’m missing to get back this functionality? Would a preference to control the amount of URL displayed be reasonable?

Somewhat separately, I’m also a bit frustrated that I can’t find the path where Firefox has downloaded the file (also available in the old properties box). And I don’t even have the option of a cumbersome paste. I have to “Open Containing Folder,” which is often not what I want to do, if my goal is to go to another app and feed it a pathname.

FF2 also showed the download time (duration), which I found handy. Is that completely gone?

Thanks.

By: Vadim Rapp

Vadim Rapp — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 14:25:27 +0000

I’d imagine that vocal people are exactly those who actually notice the difference and care to mention it. If the opposing camp does not have one vocal person in it, then how you know it even exists? those folks who “complained quite frequently”, why we don’t have even one of them here? could you show one such complaint?