Firefox 3 to resume downloads across sessions
The latest Firefox 3 (code name Gran Paradiso) development release (nightly) includes the very important and expected ability to pause downloads and resume them across sessions, that is even after restarting Firefox. The addition happened just before the code freeze that started this morning in preparation for the upcoming milestone 8 (M8) expected for mid September.
The development is thanks to the work of Brahmana as one of the Mozilla mentored Summer of Code projects sponsored by Google.
While the back end code is already in, the necessary user interface is still missing and should be available in the days to come. Since download resume depends not only on the browser but also on the server capabilities, some icon is needed to let the user know whether it is possible to pause the download or not.
With the new user interface for the Download Manager currently in the works I guess hiding the pause could be enough, but will ssee what the developers come up with.
On related news, an option to easily copy the download web address (URL) was also added recently.
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September 6th, 2007 at 12:59 pm
Nice, although I usually don’t run into problems with needing to wait for a download to complete before shuting down. I suppose those on dial-up or low-end broadband (wireless) may find this feature more useful
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September 6th, 2007 at 3:11 pm
This is an important feature that makes downloading very large files more reliable without resorting to bittorrent or external download managers. Is the icon really needed though? Most servers except a few old ones should support this. Maybe a warning when closing down the browser that downloads will cannot resume on next start up and will be cancelled would be more useful in the rare event that this is the case.
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September 6th, 2007 at 7:28 pm
Great news. I was getting worried they had forgotten about this. But then, loads of things seem to be landing round about now. :)
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September 7th, 2007 at 7:24 am
This is super news as unresumable downloads has been a big issue with me (and most others I assume). Nothing like having downloaded 90MB of a 100MB file from a server and having to start from scratch due to any number of issues.
I really like the idea of an indication of if the download is pause-able or not. Super! I have manually paused downloads not knowing the server did not allow for this.
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September 7th, 2007 at 12:04 pm
Great Great Great… well thought of. This is a very good news. I usually download 300 — 400 MB files. It takes a lot of time to download and one can not sit for long hours. Thanks Mozilla ..Keep up the good work!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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September 10th, 2007 at 12:32 am
does this even work. cause pausing and resuming downloads in the same session doesnt work. if you pause a 200mb file at 80mb, when you resume it, it completes and the file is only 80mb
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September 10th, 2007 at 1:29 pm
Praveen - it does work today. Your symptoms are likely due to an attempted resume with a server that does not allow resume capabilities.
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January 13th, 2008 at 3:51 pm
firefox 3 is great news. i will surely check this. however, download manager (queing of downloads) is most important. as at the moment this is the only handicap in FF. we have to go on manually adding the download files after one is complete. if a feature like DAP can be incorporated it will be great.
thanx
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March 18th, 2008 at 3:19 pm
with very pause my download files are gon but what i gather from this feeds that it downloads can be resumed after restart , can any body comment whether a rapidshare down load can be resumed with fire fox or not . thanks
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April 16th, 2008 at 12:47 am
Server resuming is disabled on some servers intentionally, for example file-sharing services.
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April 19th, 2008 at 8:58 pm
This is good news to me too. I just got 655 of a 680mb file and got knocked off of the network only to realize once again that I will have to START OVER! I ran across this page while trying to figure out was there any other way to continue this download to completion! Oh well, this is one of the ONLY things that I don’t like about ffox…
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May 5th, 2008 at 6:17 pm
I have always thought that download managers are ugly (ugly overkill interface… poor integration with the looks of the browser and the OS… poor support of http_authentication, cookies and such…). The number one reason that made me use them is
- Ability to resume downloads
- Ability to delay downloads
Some other plusses of download managers are:
- Ability to throttle bandwidth
- Ability to parse a page and download multiple files (very useful if you’re looking at an apache directory index)
- Ability to queue downloads (not absolutely necessary… but can be a plus)
Now firefox has tackled the most important issue! yay… hopefully they continue down that road and implement other niceties that were previously provided by download managers…!
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May 14th, 2008 at 6:23 pm
Much Better….Still does not beat utorrent.
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June 2nd, 2008 at 11:22 pm
Does this feature work? I’m using FF3 RC1 and I still cant resume downloads. It sucks too because if FF gets an error and has to close I lose my downloads. Sucks having to redownload a 700MB file when I only had like 10MB/s to go! I wish this feature worked. :’(
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July 13th, 2008 at 4:06 pm
Tried to download a 4 GB Fedora Iso but 2 times it stopped near the end and Firefox give me a “searching”. For what I ‘am asking myself….my internet connection is alive and the file I wanted to download is also still there.
To make things worse no resume is offered. To make it short: This “feature” of Firefox needs some finetuning…at least.
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July 23rd, 2008 at 9:29 am
If only the damn thing worked :(
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