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Google Chrome's biggest annoyance: Download bar

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Re: Google Chrome's biggest annoyance: Download bar

#61
If you look at the screenshot you get a better picture of why it bugs the issue submitter so much: he's downloading torrents. I.e. in Chrome he's downloading a tiny .torrent file, and the real download is happening in uTorrent or some external downloader. So you can probably assume he's also downloading quite a lot of those files.

Personally I like the Chrome download bar, but I get why it might get in the way of some uses.

Re: Google Chrome's biggest annoyance: Download bar

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the UI used in Safari 6. It's pretty terrible, in my opinion; it hides too much information in a single button. It's roughly equivalent to Chrome's download bar, except with less information.

What info do you need?

If I am downloading more than one item (and maybe I am waiting for a particular one), it's not telling me which ones are finished.

Re: Google Chrome's biggest annoyance: Download bar

#63
post #3

Firefox biggest annoyance: The download window. I feel like I've taken a time machine to the 90's every time it pops up. Chrome's download bar on the other hand is quite neat and it doesn't distract your workflow.

Have you seen the replacement UI? https://wiki.mozilla.org/File:DownloadsPanel-Downloading.png For reasons unknown to me, it's been delayed for ages. So long that even Safari has copied and deployed it before Firefox did.

Safari has publicly had that since October 20, 2010, and of course it was worked on privately before that. That screenshot looks like it's from April of this year?

Re: Google Chrome's biggest annoyance: Download bar

#64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's fair to judge Firefox's design decisions. It's not completely fair to compare Firefox's default design decisions with Chrome/Safari/IE's design decisions, which are more than just defaults. If Firefox had a download bar, you would be able to download or write an extension to make it auto-hide, because Firefox's interface is entirely XUL and is relatively trivially extensible. With Chrome, you can star an issue a…

>It's not completely fair to compare Firefox's default design decisions with Chrome/Safari/IE's design decisions, which are more than just defaults. What do you mean by "more than just defaults"?

It takes While it's possible to modify Chromium's UI by changing the source, it's far more difficult, and, unless your changes are accepted upstream, you have to maintain and distribute a whole new set of binaries yourself. If you want to do something like make the tabs square, make the tab bar scroll, or replace the download bar with a panel or a separate window, you're gonna have a bad time. Chrome's "themes" are really just different title bar and tab backgrounds. If you're a non-programmer, you can't really change the Chromium UI at all. The UI defaults are not just defaults; they're the only option unless you want to write a shitton of code.

Safari and IE are closed source, so it's extremely difficult to modify their UIs at all beyond the meager options provided to you in the preferences, even if you're a rockstar programmer.

Re: Google Chrome's biggest annoyance: Download bar

#65
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OS X, Chrome 22 dev I see no such flag.

Strange, I have it on both Windows and Linux, and the flag claims its available on "Mac, Windows, Linux, Chrome OS"

Yep. I updated my old PC's Chrome (it was on version 6! I thought Chrome auto-updaed itself?) to latest version (21) and it was there. But strangely changing it didn't change anything in the download UI.

Re: Google Chrome's biggest annoyance: Download bar

#66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What info do you need?

If I am downloading more than one item (and maybe I am waiting for a particular one), it's not telling me which ones are finished.

OS X postfixes files that are being downloaded with .download – so if you're looking at a file, you should see if it's done or not.

Re: Google Chrome's biggest annoyance: Download bar

#67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's not completely fair to compare Firefox's default design decisions with Chrome/Safari/IE's design decisions, which are more than just defaults. What do you mean by "more than just defaults"?

It takes While it's possible to modify Chromium's UI by changing the source, it's far more difficult, and, unless your changes are accepted upstream, you have to maintain and distribute a whole new set of binaries yourself. If you want to do something like make the tabs square, make the tab bar scroll, or replace the download bar with a panel or a separate window, you're gonna have a bad time. Chrome's "themes" are r…

> It takes Not for anyone using Firefox. Browser software is not just for developers, in fact, the majority of the users is not developers. I think this discussion was from a regular users default point of view of the Downloads window.

Re: Google Chrome's biggest annoyance: Download bar

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It takes While it's possible to modify Chromium's UI by changing the source, it's far more difficult, and, unless your changes are accepted upstream, you have to maintain and distribute a whole new set of binaries yourself. If you want to do something like make the tabs square, make the tab bar scroll, or replace the download bar with a panel or a separate window, you're gonna have a bad time. Chrome's "themes" are r…

> It takes Not for anyone using Firefox. Browser software is not just for developers, in fact, the majority of the users is not developers. I think this discussion was from a regular users default point of view of the Downloads window.

I think I addressed this pretty well already. Read the whole post.

Re: Google Chrome's biggest annoyance: Download bar

#69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It takes Not for anyone using Firefox. Browser software is not just for developers, in fact, the majority of the users is not developers. I think this discussion was from a regular users default point of view of the Downloads window.

I think I addressed this pretty well already. Read the whole post.

Non developers like my mom can extend Firefox to fix a better UI for downloads – and that's and argument for Firefox not to have great defaults?
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