First look to Firefox 3’s new download manager
The revamped download manager, one of the expected features defined in the Firefox 3 product requirement document has been added to the development code today and will be available in tomorrow’s nightly (development release).
At first glance the main change is that downloads are now organized in active and inactive (completed or canceled) so it is easier to see what’s going on. Also, pause and cancel text links have been replaced for pause and stop icons for quicker recognition, to save space and make it more coherent with overall Firefox interface style: text links should take to a web page and not perform an action.
Completed downloads get an information icon (i) that pops up details including the download finish time, the address of the downloaded file and its location in your hard drive. Canceled downloads get a retry icon while completed ones show an open button that launches the downloaded file.
Download junkies will be happy to learn about the addition of a search function. As you type in the DM’s search bar, past and present downloads are filtered to show only matching files.
Of course there are some corners to cut. For example it’s not pretty obvious what the search bar is for as it’s currently presented and there’s no clear button to delete downloaded files history. And I had to apply a quick hack (thanks Guden) to see the download manager icons as intended. All of this will be solved in the next few days.
An important change that may also come soon is the option to show the download manager in the status bar or the sidebar, a frequently requested feature and the download manager title bar may become more informative too, showing the combined download speed and remaining time.
This week has seen the addition of important user interface improvement including a resizer element for the toolbar and a plugins section in the Add-ons Manager. And the next ones will be even more interesting as Places, one of the most important additions, gets its user interface and other features keep landing.
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August 12th, 2007 at 12:02 am
I really want to see my downloads in the statusbar without any extension. Would be awesome, it’s so “coerent”…
Firefox 3.0 is getting it’s form, nice! The last weeks nothing noticeable (for the average joe) happened…
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August 12th, 2007 at 3:25 am
Thanks for keeping us updated! Oh, ooops, I just clikk-ed one of your addies :)
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August 13th, 2007 at 1:36 am
It’s really ugly right now. You could make Linux screenshots, at least the color of window frame would be better.
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August 13th, 2007 at 6:46 am
Sadly I could care less about the download manager. I have it setup to remove items and close once the files are downloaded. I often only look at the status from a minimized position on my task bar and that’s it.
Other than people wanting it to be part of the main window (as side bar) does anybody really care about the download manager?
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August 13th, 2007 at 10:30 am
Download Statusbar (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/26) should really be the model for the Firefox download manager. After going to so much trouble to reduce the browsing experience to a single window (tabbed browsing, pop-up blockers, etc.), having the download manager default to a popup is a major UI blunder. Having a status bar that pops up while you are downloading is much much MUCH more user friendly. Keep the separate window as an option in the tools menu, but integrate a status bar download manager.
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August 13th, 2007 at 12:17 pm
The new features are good, but there is one more feature you need to add……..the ability to reload a download from where it was interupted……I love firefox but i have a slow internet connection and sometimes it disconnects…..whatever i may be downloading i have to start all over again from the way begining. I can wait for the download to finish but if the file is more than 100mbs it might take me days to download the whole thing.
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August 13th, 2007 at 3:41 pm
Download Status on the status bar is a must;
Download manager on a sidebar - nobody cares;
Resume after a FF restart functionality is the only thing (in addition to the status bar) I really want from a FF download manager.
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August 14th, 2007 at 9:24 am
The download manager in the present Firefox is dog crap. I mean, its not possible to pause a download.
Not that its not possible to pause … but its impossible to resume from where it stopped. Bad :(
Wish it gets fixed in Firefox 3
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August 15th, 2007 at 4:05 am
Please, why don’t you folks realize, that a Download Manager is one of /the/ quint-essential tools these days and have a look at those, that already are on the market.
And /then/, using anyone of those powerapps as a model, please, implement a generic (!) download-manager, that is being the download/updates backend for _any_ Mozilla.org application. So I can continue my downloads even without starting Firefox.
If you do it like proposed, I still will use FreeDownloadManager (before I used LeechGet) as the Download backend.
Even better would be an option in the prefs: ”
Use external download-manager”
along with a per-mime-type setting.
And since I am on the topic, there sometimes are servers, that send text/plain or text/html in a way, that Firefox won’t display it but wants to download it instead. It simply is impossible to force FF to use its internal code to display certain filetypes, even, if I have added an extension, that allows for such (ie: CHM)
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August 15th, 2007 at 5:22 pm
Does this mean that finally one can resume interrupted downloads from previous sessions or cancel downloads without removing the partly downloaded file (so that one can resume the download with another DL manager)?
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August 15th, 2007 at 9:08 pm
What I would really want is a “Remember downloaded files for x days” option like the one for history. Now I have to click the “Clean up” button once in a while because it gets so clogged up (I download a lot of files) that downloads take several seconds to start.
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August 27th, 2007 at 1:00 pm
my internet connection isn’t reliable.sometimes i don’t finish my downloads and it disconnects.is there a way i can resume ma downloads.
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August 29th, 2007 at 1:13 pm
RAZZY, try DownThemAll!, a Firefox extension that adds advanced downloading capabilities.
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October 8th, 2007 at 1:24 pm
I have Firefox in this PC because my wife likes it, whereas I am happy with IE. Consequently, I do NOT want Firefox to function as a Download Manager, but cannot find a way to turn it off.
Any suggestions?
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January 25th, 2008 at 10:55 pm
This migth be a weird place ot ask, but please let me delete files from the download manager. A lot of temp files I download, like patches, I’m just going ot telete right away, so this would just be a ‘nice feature’.
(especially since firefox doesn’t let me just ‘launch’ .exe fiesl)
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April 23rd, 2008 at 10:26 am
Mozilla firebox is excellent.. I am using it for a long while
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May 12th, 2008 at 4:35 am
how do you turn the download mgr off???????????
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lightning996May 29th, 2008 at 5:22 pm
I just thought i would let all the people who want to delete the firefox manager they don’t need to as long as they get a plugin for the software to talk to firefox.the best download manager is Free Download Manager and the new version comes with the plugin and works after a restart.(by the way FDM has resume function.at least try it out its not as cheap as it sounds.
Alienware Aurora M9700
Windows XP 64 Edition
Custom PC
AMD Turion(tm)64 Mobile
Technology ML-44 2.41 Ghz
2.00 GB of RAM
2 X 512 Mb NVIDIA GeForce Go 7900 GS
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June 2nd, 2008 at 2:01 am
A download manager such as GetRight is ESSENTIAL for Mozilla. It’s much more resilient and can save and import download lists with hundreds and even thousands of files. You set it and forget it, it’ll simultaneously d/l from multiple sources, create multiple connections and many other useful features. I wish Mozilla would just buy-up/purchase a download manager author and incorporate it into the browser.
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June 18th, 2008 at 9:54 am
The new features are good, but there is one more feature you need to add……..the ability to reload a download from where it was interrupted……I love Firefox but i have a slow internet connection and sometimes it disconnects…..whatever i may be downloading i have to start all over again from the way beginning. I can wait for the download to finish but if the file is more than 100mbs it might take me days to download the whole thing
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June 19th, 2008 at 4:44 am
Hi, could anyone help? Since I’ve installed FF3 the download manager won’t let me to download any program. See the notification: http://img171.imageshack.us/my.php?image=beznzvubr5.png It says that the downloading has been blocked because of the safety setting. I scrutinized the setting options but cannot find any solution. Any idea how to solve this? Thank
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July 21st, 2008 at 6:13 pm
“The new features are good, but there is one more feature you need to add……..the ability to reload a download from where it was interupted”
I second the above quote. Also, I think they should add queuing to the DM. Forgive me if it’s there and I’m just oblivious to it.
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July 26th, 2008 at 11:49 am
The new download manager is abit pants, I’m on 20MBit Cable for work, unfortuantly Firefox downloads at about 60KB a sec most of the time where as go through IE to download im hitting 2.3MB a second..
FireFox itself to download from the website peaked at only 130KB through firefox download manager, where as on IE, It was 1.7MB, same on my laptop and desktop… Serious problem here?
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July 27th, 2008 at 6:52 am
firefox 3 good, but there should be option of get on/off the download manager, when i close the browser even the download manager should also cancel, as we have in firefox 2, there should be option for getting it on/off
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