Change to Ask me what to do with each download has wrecked usability with extensions

Steel Contributor

Most days I download at least a few files of assorted types: pictures, videos, 3DCGI assets, various book formats, .exes, zip, rar, etc., many quite big. Some  days I download quite a lot.

 

I have two requirements:

 

1 I like to be able to keep an eye on how the download is doing, e.g. on the download shelf, where I MUST be able to see download speed, percentage done, amount downloaded and full length etc.

 

2 I download NOTHING into the downloads folder (top level), and need, on starting the download, to give the actual folder location I want the file to download to - all sorts of locations within my 3DCGI archive, film archive, picture archive etc.

 

Edge's native downloading, unaided, fails on 1.  Not enough info I require appears on the download on the download shelf, even in a tooltip on mouseover, while it is downloading. This WAS OK because there were extensions I could use producing more info on their modified downloads shelves/bars/toolbutton-dropdowns while the download was ongoing.

 

The change in the settings from 'Ask for the location for each download' (or whatever the old wording was exactly) to 'Ask me what to do with each download' has COMPLETELY RUINED the download experience, because the new 'open or save' DOES NOT WORK with any of the enhanced download extensions.

 

Now I have a choice between:

 

(a) Turn the setting off, the extension gives me the info during the download, but puts everything in the download folder so I have to go through opening the download folder and then in another filer window navigate to where I want the file and move it. This is a real pain involving much extra work for each download.

 

Or,

 

(b) Turn the setting on, in which case, with any of the download extensions active I no longer get a save dialogue as I used to on clicking to download, the download happens with the file downloaded to the Download folder with 'Unconfirmed-' as a prefix to the name, and the download progress in the extension reaches 99% then stops with no completion and still no save dialogue. I finally discovered that if I then, after the download, additionally open the Edge Downloads page, THERE (only) the 'open or save and if so where' choice is sitting in the download entry, and if I then click I the get the dialogue for where to download to, and it will then move it from the Downloads folder to where I want, stripping off the Unconfirmed- prefix.

 

This is farcical.

 

This new system simply doesn't work with the download enhancer extensions, from Edge or Google Chrome stores, which all presume the target location for the save has already been given before the download starts, as In Firefox, Google Chrome and as it WAS in Edge before this new system.

 

This is, alone and without consideration of any other issues I have with either desktop or Android Edge, quite sufficient for me to rule out using Edge as my browser, or even back up browser.

 

Devs, please think this through properly.

3 Replies

@Kam 


@Kam wrote:
@DavidGBDo you have the Stable version of Edge?

Doesn't matter, it's the same across all channels.

It was expected and normal that extensions made for Chrome don't work in Edge, because they are 2 different browsers, only sharing the same engine.
more radical changes might come to Edge in the future, and it's not Edge developers' fault, they simply brought the same feature from Edge legacy back to the new Edge, because it was what people asked for.

so there are 2 things here:
1. you can't expect extensions made for Chrome to work on other browsers, such as Edge.
2. extension developers didn't do their job correctly and shipped the same version of their extension made for Chrome, to Edge webstore. this change isn't new, they had enough time to evaluate insider channels of Edge but they didn't. so it's better to ask extension developers to make their tools compatible.