Pretty soon Firefox 3 is going to be feature complete, and all that will be left for them to do is fine-tune the things they have implemented. As we build up to that big moment there are some new features that are coming out of the shop for testers. This includes a spruced up download manager, resizable toolbar items, a plugin manager, and better looking menus.
So let’s go ahead and take a look at all the enhancements that have come about since Alpha 7 was released:
–Download Manager–
The download manager has gotten a lot more useful with the features they’ve added. First off it sorts your downloads with the ones currently in progress up top, and those that are completed down below:
For any of the completed downloads you can click on the blue "i" for more information, such as the location it was downloaded from.
Then there is also the search box located in the bottom-left corner. That does a live search of all your completed items, and the results are then immediately displayed:
At first I thought this might be really really nice, except I always setup Firefox to clear my completed downloads after they are finished. The reason why I do that is because it’s supposed to improve the startup time of the browser, and this feature is therefore rendered useless for me. So if you have Firefox setup to clear completed items in the Downloads window, the new layout and features won’t really do much for you.
–Resizable Toolbar Items–
This is a super sweet feature that I’m glad Mozilla got implemented. There is now a "Resizer" item in the Customization screen that can be added to the toolbars. It is the most useful for placing between the search box and address box, where you will then be able to drag it back and forth to resize the two boxes.
It also works when placed between toolbar buttons, but the results may not be what you expect. I noticed that the buttons scrunch together when trying to resize them, and if space gets really tight they are just hidden. It would be a lot better if Mozilla worked on a way to scale the buttons to a size that would allow all of them to remain visible, but that might be something they are working on.
–Plugin Manager–
Plugin management has been taken from about:plugins to the same place where you manage extensions and themes. One of the most notable things that I saw when opening the plugin management was that it easily lets you disable certain items. For example, if you don’t want Flash enabled you can disable it right from the plugin management screen.
The only problem, which can’t be seen in my screenshot, is that plugins with more than one file associated with them show up repeatedly. For me the issue was with Java, which had about 10 entries all given the same title.
–Menu Appearance–
The menus have also gotten a slight overhaul. Now Firefox 3 supports a Vista-like menu appearance. Some things take advantage of this, such as the History menu which shows the site’s icon next to the entries:
–Overall–
Still to come in Firefox 3 is integration with Vista’s parental control system, a visual refresh/new default theme, Places enhancements, as well as a few other things that are pretty high priority. The next milestone, which is due September 18th, could be either an Alpha or a Beta build. Mozilla appears to be picking up the pace and getting some much-needed features implemented, so it wouldn’t be a surprise to me if they are able to move on to the Beta releases.
Sources: The Burning Edge, Ars Technica, Mozilla Links, Firefox Extension Guru & Kyle’s Cove
Thanks for the tip Mohan!
The download manager still needs some work. For one I would like to be able to have it not bring up the download manager when I save a photo – it’s just one more button to press. Furthermoe sometimes if I want to open a file immediately (as in select “Open with” rather than “save file”) I want to see the download progress but want the manager to close once its done. Sadly the setting for this is in tools rather than a handy check box, so I default it to auto close but then have to open it again once the download is done if I miss the pop-up in the corner. I would rather have it work the same way as downloads in IE, with each download having its own window with different “close when done” options. I use DownloadThemAll if I want a download manager.
21.1kb/s, I think I would kill myself with that kind of speed.
Looks like FF 3.0 is shaping up pretty well. Looking forward to it. I really like the fact that the Download Manager has been updated as the current one sucks.
Inferno Strike, there are ways to do that stuff you mentioned with just the built in manager and some about:config settings.
browser.download.manager.openDelay
Set that to 5000. The number is in milliseconds, so that means it’s a 5 second delay in opening…which means any download taking less than 5 seconds will simply not open the manager. Pictures usually always take less than 5 seconds, so that would work.
Actually, the other stuff you mentioned can’t really be done unless Mozilla does it themselves or you find an add on.
That’s a really great idea…there should be an option from the download manager to do this without having to go into the settings.
I was downloading a bunch of other stuff at the time…normally my speeds are around 600KB/s.
In some countries, speeds such as that are the norm.
My speeds are half of this. Mind exchanging Your net connection.
I had 10mbs there for awhile Loved.
My friend in Sweden has 100mbs.
I would rather have my download here fast as possible so I can surf for other things.
Just hope it has some cool tools to go along with it.
I have beta test many download managers,.
Sounds interesting.
The issue with multi-file plugins appearing more than once has now been fixed (August 19th Nightly). Oh, and the search box in the download manager now says ‘Search’, greyed out like the search bar in the main browser window.
That’s good that Fx3 is finally getting some noticeable improvements. Have they made the page scaling zoom feature apparent yet? Does this new download manager enable resuming downloads across sessions? Opera’s does. For me this is all too little too late.
I hope someone who is developing Firefox reads this.
In the new Download Manager I would still like to see text “Pause/Open” and “Remove”. The icons, search and separated Active/Completed Downloads don’t disturb me. It would be good if there was a search button looking like the one in the toolbar search box, because some peolpe like to use the mouse more. I don’t see any “Clean Up” button and “All files downloaded to:” button. I would like to get them back. Though there is no need for the text “All files downloaded to:”. Just the button for opening the downloads folder. Also i would like to set a number of downloads shown in the Manager. For example if i would set it to 5 then it would automatically remove older downloads if I download something and only show 5 latest downloads.
Also i don’t like that resizer is shown when Customize Toolbar is not open. (I saw this in another post video on this site).
Plugins in Add-ons is a great idea but a little confusing for me. Do I need to download 2 Shockwave Players now if I have Firefox and Internet Explorer? And if I want to uninstall Shockwave then do i have to do it from Control Panel – Add/Remove Programs or from the Add-ons or from both? Also if I uninstall Shockwave from Add-ons then does it affect Internet Explorer? I really would not like to have to download Shockwave twice just because i want to use 2 browsers.
I have a complaint about firefox.
Where the hell has firefox download a file that took more than an hour to download?!!
I have no idea where it is!!!!!!!
Did you look in the options/preferences to see where the default download location is?