[Ext] Download Manager Tweak extension

dsmith · Post by **dsmith** » February 17th, 2004, 9:22 am

Looked it over, and really liked it at first, but the more I think about it, the more I think the original is better UI design overall. The buttons aren't as cluttered and there isn't the problem of the progress bar and the filename competing for room (and truncating the filename is a bad idea in my opinion). The buttons look like buttons (which they don't in this one, though that can change). The only real change I'd make to the original is to reduce the padding around each entry a bit.

I do like the icons for pause/resume/cancel/delete, but I'd have no idea what the retry (edit/typo: was resume) button did without looking at the original, or checking a tooltip. Again, though, they should look more like real buttons to distinguish them from the simple identity icons on the other side.

Overall, this would need more work before I'd want it considered as a replacement DM.

--
David

EdgeOfEpsilon · Post by **EdgeOfEpsilon** » February 17th, 2004, 8:28 pm

One question - if I reinstall FF, does it save my extensions? I just spent about three days customizing FF with extensions like easyGesture (which ROCKS, by the way). If not, could someone post the original jar files for me? Thanks in advance!

andman42 · Post by **andman42** » February 17th, 2004, 11:03 pm

I just updated the extension to fix a few minor glitches. Also, the extension is now easily themable. I made a crappy test theme to test it, and it worked nicely. I'll post more details later (its time for bed).

You can download it here: <a href="http://fire.prohosting.com/andman42/downloadmgr.html">http://fire.prohosting.com/andman42/downloadmgr.html</a>

Note: If you already installed an older version of this extension, <b>be sure to disable the extension before tyring to update it.</b>

ryaxnb · Post by **ryaxnb** » February 18th, 2004, 1:59 am

Yes! Sboulema, hurry up and get that manager out in an extension! It works with Macs, doesn't it?

TheOneKEA · Post by **TheOneKEA** » February 18th, 2004, 2:33 am

I'm gonna fetch this soon. Thanks for updating!

sboulema · Post by **sboulema** » February 18th, 2004, 3:38 am

ryaxnb wrote:Yes! Sboulema, hurry up and get that manager out in an extension! It works with Macs, doesn't it?

I dont make the extension. andman42 is doing it. you can download the extension from his site, or my mirror

TychoQuad · Post by **TychoQuad** » February 18th, 2004, 4:24 am

It looks really sweet, although I do think we need a better place for the progress bar.

WHAT IF...
The progress bar was in the background of the download item?
White area represents incomplete, and perhaps a blueish/grey colour represents download data, which filed from left to right, behind the download item?

/me prepares a mockup...
(Ugh. Mockup turned out pretty horrid, but it's only an example to illustrate my idea. I'm sure it would look much better in action.)

sboulema · Post by **sboulema** » February 18th, 2004, 4:35 am

1337 paint skills

but i like the idea, but i think solid bar looks weird, just the normal bar with the smal blocks behind everything would like pretty good i think.

TychoQuad · Post by **TychoQuad** » February 18th, 2004, 4:44 am

I did think of that, but Y'see, because of the theme I'm using on XP, I don't get small blocks, i get one curved green bar :s

My point was to have the progress bar flow behind the actual download. How it's implimentd i don't really mind, nor whether it uses a solid bar, curved one, native one whatever. It will save a bit of space and make it look less crowded.

If I was to recomend something though, I would suggest that it creates it's own progress bar to place behind, for the reasons stated above, who knows what a native progress bar would clash with

not being able to read the download name would be the least of our worries.

Paradox52525 · Post by **Paradox52525** » February 18th, 2004, 6:03 am

EdgeOfEpsilon wrote:One question - if I reinstall FF, does it save my extensions? I just spent about three days customizing FF with extensions like easyGesture (which ROCKS, by the way). If not, could someone post the original jar files for me? Thanks in advance!

If you installed your extensions into your profile, then they will stay until you create a new profile. If you installed them to the application directory, you will have to reinstall them every time you reinstall Firefox.

TheOneKEA · Post by **TheOneKEA** » February 18th, 2004, 6:44 am

Got it! Looks great with iCandy-Junior

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7a) Gecko/20040216 Firefox/0.8.0+ (daihard: XFT+GTK2; optimized for P4/SSE-2)

BTW, sboulema: your extension checkbox & install link refuses to install extensions into my build listed above.

wildman · Post by **wildman** » February 18th, 2004, 10:34 pm

TychoQuad wrote:WHAT IF...
The progress bar was in the background of the download item?
White area represents incomplete, and perhaps a blueish/grey colour represents download data, which filed from left to right, behind the download item?

I like it & think it will scale well & make good use of screen real estate. Customizable colors would be best & there is more room for extra text like download path. I'd love to see this in a dockable sidebar extension with smaller icons or just ascii text.

macridah · Post by **macridah** » February 19th, 2004, 12:42 am

it would be awesome if mozilla.org uses your download manager in the next firefox release ... especially by 1.0.

I think it's that much better. It could happen. For the mac os x version, my personal favorite, a theme was sooo sweet (pinstripe theme) that mozilla made it the default.

cheers.

sboulema · Post by **sboulema** » February 19th, 2004, 12:42 am

BTW, sboulema: your extension checkbox & install link refuses to install extensions into my build listed above.

Thanks for notifying me. Fixed it

sensemann · Post by **sensemann** » February 19th, 2004, 6:12 am

i like it, except for the filename and progress bar competing for place. in my opinion the progress bars of all downloads should be equal in width - just for comparing reasons, so you don't get mad since it's a different scale for every download. apart from that i like the icons and saving space.

i'd say contact ben and ask him to incorporate that... this shouldn't be in an extension but in the core, and afaik ben hasn't finished the download manager yet.