Feature Request - status indicator while downloading PDF

Driftless

It would create piece of mind if there were some status indicator when downloading a PDF from a site into Zotero (not talking sync here). Something simple even, just indicating that something is happening.

I access Zotero from 3rd world countries were internet is slow at best, and I often find myself trying to download the same item multiple times because I don't know if the request made it through. 2 hours later, I have 4 copies in my collection.

Thanks for the great work - this is truly a top-notch, and indispensable piece of equipment!

Zotero 2.0b7.6
Firefox 3.0.15
Linux (Fedora 10)

Rintze

+1

mronkko

+1

mark

+1

ajlyon

Can we think a little about how this should work? I have two possible forms of notification in mind:
(1) An icon or additional line of information in the rectangle at bottom right;
(2) A window or pseudo-collection showing the files and items currently being downloaded.

Since attachment downloads don't show up anywhere else (i.e., not in the Firefox downloads window), (2) would be nice for people Driftless who need to keep track of download progress. Option (1) is probably easier and more immediately informative, but since that window is designed to ephemeral, we don't want it to sit in the corner of the window for 1-2 hours while Driftless's PDFs finish downloading.

mark

One natural place where I would look would be the space left of the green Sync arrow. That is where the progress indicator for file syncing always appears. This could be a simple progress bar with more detailed information on hover, just like it is now for file syncing. Maybe give it a different color or icon to mark it as distinct from the file syncing progress, but in general, that area has space and is in plain sight (rather than being an 'ephemeral window').

ajlyon

I'd like to bring this up again. I'm looking at changing the Radio Liberty translator to save audio when available, but saving audio files without a progress indicator is not so hot.

We've also had discussions around translators for archives that have very large full-text attachments where it was decided to not implement full-text capture. I think that having a visible downloads-in-progress interface would make adding full-text downloads to such sites more palatable as well.

I like doing this as a pseudo-collection, like Unfiled Items. It would contain the items (child items) that are in progress, with the download progress (%, total MB, etc.), probably with the parent items included as well, in gray as they would appear in search results.

In-progress items could also appear in the normal item view as similar pseudo-items-- the right-hand panel could display their progress.

Other related discussions:
http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/3743/progress-indicator/
http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/13172/youtube-translator/

fbennett

This would also be useful where there are many (many) attachments, such as produced by the (currently rather dusty) translator for the Japanese Law Translation site.

ajlyon

The item saving progress is now provided by the progress bar, but we could still use a download progress indicator. A small change in the meantime would be to change the error message when I attempt to open a file that hasn't finished downloading yet; if Zotero knows that the file is en route, it'd be good to have the message say as much. If Zotero doesn't know that, we could still change the message to acknowledge this common case.
It is currently:
The attached file could not be found.\n\nIt may have been moved or deleted outside of Zotero.
How about:
The attached file could not be found.\n\nIt may have been moved or deleted outside of Zotero, or it may not have finished downloading.
?

mark

Agreed, I like this proposal to rephrase. See also a related proposal to improve the language of another dialog window: This item no longer exists in your database.