New Firefox download manager appears in UX build

It’s been known for a while that Mozilla wanted to overhaul the Firefox download manager. The current implementation hasn’t changed much since the arrival of Firefox 3, and many of the browser’s other core UI bits (like the add-on manager) have already been re-tooled. And so with Mozilla’s sights set squarely on delivering a more unified UX throughout Firefox, the first cut at a new download manager has been pushed to bleeding-edge Firefox builds.

As it was shown in early mockups, the new download manager rests on the Firefox tab strip. It’s movable, of course. Just right-click the toolbar, choose customize, and drag the download arrow as you would any other toolbar icon. When you first launch Firefox, however, the download icon won’t appear — even if you have active downloads the resume after start-up. The old hotkey is still wired, however, so you can tap control + j (command + j on a Mac) to call up the panel and force the icon to be displayed.

If the icon is hidden and you start downloading a new file, it’ll appear on your toolbar. Immediately to the right you’ll see a very rough estimate of the time until completion (with multiple downloads, the longest time remaining is used). The drop-down only retains history for the current browsing session. If you quit Firefox and re-launch later, you’ll need to head to the downloads history page to check out previous transfers. While the pause icon has disappeared from the right side of each download’s progress bar, you can still right-click to put individual transfers on hold.

There’s still no timeline listed on the Incontent Page Design project outline, but if the overhaul is slated for the current UX build we won’t see the new download manager until the arrival of Firefox 9 early next year.

,,,,

hdgdagd