[Ext] Download Manager Tweak 0.8.x

[ArconWan]

I learned today that Download Manager Tweak had been resurrected, and I was ecstatic. I used to recommend the old version for all Firefox users. The UI was nice, but the main reason I suggested it was for download queuing. The loss of that feature greatly reduced my efficiency in using the internet.

I have the cheapest form of high-speed internet I could buy, and I can't really do more than one or two downloads at a time or they take way too long. It is better to get my hands on one or two things while waiting on everything else. Sometimes, I just cruise the internet for hours and download all sorts of things, and I used to queue up to 3 weeks worth of stuff at a time (3 weeks at 1 file at a time). Even if I just had 5 downloads, I couldn't browse worth crap while having multiple downloads eating my bandwidth; Google wouldn't even load half the time.

I sometimes visit a website and attempt to download massive amounts of content, such as massive number of pictures, or custom game levels, or other mass downloads. If I just click them all in rapid succession, I sometimes get banned from the websites. One time, my IP got on some shared blacklist from being banned so much and I had to get an whole new IP. I didn't want to be wasting server resources; I just wanted to get a whole bunch of stuff and not forget about it.

I've tried to make due with either using download them all (just not the way it was intended to be used) or by leaving a ton of tabs open and manually clicking one download at a time. Either way is clumsy and more manual than I would like. The best thing I ever found for my needs in Firefox was the queue in Download Manager Tweak. I admit it was clunky and buggy, and I would appreciate a superior version, even if it has to be a separate extension or something.

If I get something like that queue feature again it would revolutionize the way I use the internet. I know 6 guys who used it just like I did IRL too, and they've missed it too.

Heck, if someone can find me an external download manager that is available for both Windows and Linux and that Firefox can work with and that queues properly and works with almost all servers, I'd take that, but I haven't found one.

I still like the UI for Download Manager Tweak, but I'd really appreciate queuing again. Even if you don't revive the queue, you have my thanks for at least brining the UI back.

Edit: I double-checked my recent records, and I checked with some of the guys I know. It seems we have had a general shift away from standard downloads and toward bittorrents. I guess we don't need the queue feature as much as we used to.

[opticyclic]

I have to say, that by default this extension is extremely ugly.
However, it looks much nicer after a couple of tweaks.
Preferences - Buttons
Button icon size = small
Icon Style = no box

Any reason that these are not the defaults?

Nobody puts icons in boxes anymore, and if you are going to have icons that big, they should be more detailed, not just scaled up versions of the small ones.

I still like the functionality though
So much so I added it to my collection
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo ... rafeatures

[RDN]

I did a quick scan of this forum searching for "close" as I've been bugged by the problem concerning the DMT panel not closing, when run in the side-bar, after the download has completed.

I found a few posts that showed it had been a problem for others, but I didn't find a post that said it had been fixed. So I'm not sure if this is still a problem with DMT or whether you've found the solution already.

Either way, I did some testing and found what may help you solve the problem. Here are my results:

I'm running XP SP3, Firefox 3.5.9.

I have All-in-One Sidebar (0.7.11) installed. It is set up to show/hide the side-bar automatically when the mouse is hovered over the side-bar switch. The delay is set to 500 ms.

The DMT (0.9.2) options are set to open in the side-bar after 1 ms delay and to close when the downloads are finished.

When I click on a download link, the side-bar opens, the DMT panel is displayed, the download progress bar gets to the end and the side-bar closes. All this time I keep the mouse away from the side-bar.

If I change the DMT option to open in the side-bar after a delay of 0 ms, and leave all the other settings unchanged, the side-bar does not close. Again, I keep the mouse pointer away from the side-bar. If I then move the mouse pointer over the side-bar panel and away again, the side-bar panel closes. That is clearly an All-in-One Sidebar function working.

I then changed the All-in-One Sidebar delay to 0 ms and it had no effect on the above results.

I then changed the All-in-One Sidebar "show/hide automatically when hovering the mouse" setting and it also had no effect on the results.

That last change I found quite surprising as I thought the "automatic open/close by hovering the mouse" was the one change that had got the side-bar to close after a download had finished. I was clearly wrong!

So it all hangs on whether the DMT open delay is 0 or not.

To prove the point again, I just set the DMT delay to 0 ms - the side-bar didn't close. And then set it to 1 ms again, it did close.

I hope this is useful for you!

[squashr1979]

All the bugs I had with auto opening and closing when complete were fixed in 0.9.2. The problems you are seeing are All-in-One Sidebar specific. Try disabling All-in-One Sidebar and you will see DMT opening and closing correctly. All-in-One Sidebar and DMT appear to be doing several things at odds with one another. I have a feeling that this can only be fixed by All-in-One Sidebar and not by me. I've had problems in the past and already had All-in-One Sidebar installed for testing, but disabled. I'll look at it more in the future, but can't promise a fix.

I've been working on the icons for 0.9.3. I added the in a box option because the floating icons were so jagged and aliased. I've redrawn them using Inkscape (apparently used to create most Linux icon sets). They look the same as the existing floating ones, but are now anti-aliased, with a full alpha channel. I've decided they look good enough that I got rid of the in a box option.

[RDN]

All the bugs I had with auto opening and closing when complete were fixed in 0.9.2. The problems you are seeing are All-in-One Sidebar specific. <snip>

Yes, I've got it working as I want it by getting All-in-Ones options to not clash with DMT's so it's all OK now.

Nice extension, by the way.

[SES21]

I love this add-on but it has one small quirk. It mysteriously removes entries from my download list on its own. Not the files themselves but the download list entries. There's no pattern to it that I can discern either. Typically, some fairly recent entries are missing but some very old ones are still there. I also think sometimes that the list displayed changes from one usage to the next but haven't confirmed that detail. The one thing that seems to be consistent is that the list doesn't even have a full screen-length worth of entries.

FF 3.6.8 with these enabled extensions:
BetterPrivacy 1.48.3
DMT 0.9.2
FEBE 6.3.3.2 *
Google Notebook 1.0.0.22
Google Shortcuts 2.0.9
Google Toolbar for FF 7.1.20100723W
Greasemonkey 0.8.20100408.6
Java Console 6.0.21
LastPass 1.69.1
Memory Fox 2.4
MS .NET Framework Asst 1.2.1
Read It Later 2.0.6
Shareaholic 1.9.9.5
WOT 20100503
Xmarks 3.7.8 *

* indicates add-ons that were enabled after I started noticing this problem; all others have been in use for quite a while. I didn't notice anything to tie an update of one of them to the appearance of this DMT oddity. I'd love to know what needs to happen to fix this - either on my end or the developers! I'll also add my vote for pruning the list, ideally with a time-period selectable setting, instead of all or none...

SES21

[squashr1979]

DMT doesn't have much code for removing downloads. The buttons simply call code already in the Firefox download manager. The only place in the code is for the "Automatically remove downloads from list after they complete." option. If you don't have that set then DMT won't delete any download without a button click. Even if it is set it only deletes them as they complete, never later. Finally, there is a bug in 0.9.2 where that option doesn't work at all, so it doesn't matter if it is selected or not. There must be something else that is doing it. Try disabling DMT and see if it still happens.

I just finished adding options to 0.9.3 to "Limit number of downloads in list" and "Limit number of days to keep downloads in list". I'll submit 0.9.3b1 to Babelzilla for translating in a day or two and release 0.9.3 in another week or so.

[Brummelchen]

please have a quick review with 4beta4 from/after 13th Aug - it opens in a new windows instead sidebar or tab.

[squashr1979]

I also got a private message about beta 4. I have family visiting for this next week so I probably won't get to look at this until after the 20th. I wasn't planning on releasing 0.9.3 until the 23rd at the soonest anyway (I might even wait until beta 5 in early September, as they plan to freeze the API by then). I looked at the latest Mercurial source for the files that I would have thought would be the problem. The parts related to the "Tools:Downloads" command didn't change. I have no clue what it is and find it kind of scary .

I did submit 0.9.3b1 to Babelzilla.org and I just put it at http://downloads.mozdev.org/dmextension/DownloadManagerTweak_0.9.3b1.xpi. If you want to try 0.9.3 with beta 4 then it might help me. I doubt very much if it will be different from 0.9.2 as far as this bug is concerned, but it would be nice to confirm.

[Brummelchen]

Bug on 4.beta3 (11.08.) Options -> GUI "[OK Cancel] (no more visible - lol)

have a nice trip!

[squashr1979]

I tried 4.0 beta4 build3 for Aug 20th. It opened in sidebar and tab just fine for me, both DMT 0.9.2 and 0.9.3b1. Maybe they fixed it in a later build of beta4?

The OK/Cancel buttons are there in the options popup in beta3 and beta4. I used to have some problems in that area, but they were fixed a year ago.

[Brummelchen]

i have still working 0.9.2 for 4b4 rc3 in tab view (together with speed dial).
it was disabled in 4beta5 with some other addons - next "feature" to fix.
HTH

[canbeiro]

I ask a very simple but very important option:

Let we choose the effect of pressing the delete key, between:
=> just remove the selected files from the download list OR
=> the present effect : to open a window where, if we press <return>, the selected files are removed from the list and also deleted at the folder where they were downloaded.

I learned the hard way the present effect and, even after that, I have to take care to not delete files that I don't want to, mainly when I am in a hurry. The reason is that is very counter-intuitive and unexpected to me the delete-file effect of the delete key, a very strong effect. A simple remove of the files from the DMT window is much more intuitive to me, and I suppose that for almost all, for 2 reasons:
1) A lot of programs, between the most used ones, simply delete the selected content or text from its own main window when the delete key is pressed, but I don't know any program that deletes entire files directly -- or almost -- from its main window using de DELETE key.
2) A simple remove of the files from the DMT window certainly is an action much more frequently done in DMT that the hole deletion of the corresponding file (at least for those who know the CTRL-X shortcut). Why, then, a CTRL-KEY combination to do the most used, and also the less dangerous, action ?

I hope my suggestion will be appreciated and, if implemented, I believe it will prevent headaches.

[squashr1979]

I ask a very simple but very important option:

Let we choose the effect of pressing the delete key, between:
=> just remove the selected files from the download list OR
=> the present effect : to open a window where, if we press <return>, the selected files are removed from the list and also deleted at the folder where they were downloaded.

This is already in 0.9.3. I posted a link to 0.9.3b1 a few posts back so you can try it before the final release.

[canbeiro]

Congratulations ! Marcos.