[RESOLVED] Flashgot+DownThemAll = missing context menu items

[Jed_De_Lagged]

I've noticed a bug report for this on the DTA forums, but with no resolution. I'm not sure which add-in is at fault so I thought I'd post it here as well.

DownThemAll has an option to add it's items to the context menu. However, Flashgot seems to interfere with this, making them not appear.

If I have DTA (Turbo) selected in the Flashgot download manager options, and the appropriate context menu options checked in DTA, then "dTa Oneclick!" is no longer available in the context menu, but "DownThemAll!..." is.
If I reverse this, and choose DTA rather than DTA (Turbo) from the Flashgot download options, the reverse becomes apparent where "DownThemAll!..." disappears, but then "dTa Oneclick" reappears.

DownThemAll 1.1.4 (latest)
Flashgot 1.2.0.2 (latest)
Firefox/3.5.2 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)
WinXP SP2.

From here, it seems like a Flashgot issue rather than a DownThemAll issue ^_^;;
But I'll take any suggestions you guys have.
If you need more information, let me know.

[Giorgio Maone]

It's a feature, not a bug.
If you select DTA as the default download manager for FlashGot, there's no need for having its context menu duplicated since the FlashGot commands will invoke DTA: it would be just clutter.
However, if you don't like this behavior (why?), you just need to create the two following boolean about:config preferences, setting both values to false:

• flashgot.dmsopts.DTA__Turbo_.hideNativeUI
• flashgot.dmsopts.DTA.hideNativeUI

[Jed_De_Lagged]

Thanks for your reply.

I was using DTA as it's behavior was different from that of Flashgot. Now that you've pointed out it's a PEBKAC + RTFM issue, did some testing, changed an option or two in Flashgot and now it behaves as I want it to.

For completeness sake / searching users here's a bit more on my issue.
DTA was able to download all the images in links on a page, Flashgot would not.
After I added the relivant image extensions to Flashgot it now does what I want.
I have a feeling that doing that is going to break a thing or two but I'll work with that later.

I guess you could call this resolved then. Thanks!

[Markus Prokott]

Hi!

I think, this interactive behaviour with dTa may be really reasonable. But, man, why couldn't you make any remark about that anywhere in Flashgot's preferences menu? Lastly, it's also to your disadvantage: I deactivated Flashgot for a long time to work around that "bug" and was already about to forget about Flashgot at all.

I'd recommend to add another option in the preferences (best in the "menu" tab) to deactivate this behavior rather than requiring the users to change about:config keys. Or at least mention this behaviour there. Additionally, this would prevent any confusedness of the users, in the future. The explained interaction with dTa may be reasonable, but it is not easy to recognize this in another way than as a bug, if not pointed out as intended behaviour explicitly or implicitly anyhow anywhere.

I think this kind of transparency of work is something the users of firefox expect from their browser and all of its components. The special problem here may be, that you cannot surely indentify, if this behaviour is caused by dTa or Flashgot. I don't know, if it is possibly mentioned in the Flashgot FAQs, but this won't (didn't) help, if you are (and I was) searching for it in dTa's help resources.

Nevertheless, thanks for this great extension, what, in my opinion, Flashgot still is. However, I hope you are willing to further improve it.

[Statick]

found this page after extensive googling. i also agree that hiding the DTA menus like this is bad form. it's taken me most of the day to figure out what was going on, and to find this page and the subsequent solution.

the thing is, DTA is already accessible with firefox, so I don't need to use the FlashGot menu link to access it. this menu link is great for attaching other download managers to firefox, but is unneccessary with DTA. in fact, it is much slower to use the FlashGot menu link on an older machine, especially with "flashgot all", often taking as much as twice as long to parse the links as when compared to running DTA directly.

the only features i really use in FlashGot are the media downloader (fantastic) and also sometimes the "build gallery" menu item. for everything else I juse use DTA and don't really like the way FlashGot imposed its behaviour on my system, by removing the DTA menu items without either consulting me, or offering a simple fix, or even mentioning this in the documentation.

It's a feature, not a bug.
If you select DTA as the default download manager for FlashGot, there's no need for having its context menu duplicated since the FlashGot commands will invoke DTA: it would be just clutter.

No. the DTA menu items are already there, and already do the job perfectly well - it's the FlashGot commands that are the clutter.

and as I mentioned before, the FlashGot menu item takes longer to parse the links than when using the DTA menu item directly (i'm guessing that the links get parsed twice, once by flashgot and again by DTA). you may not notice it on a well specified modern system, but on my lowly celeron 1.2ghz laptop it really makes a huge difference, with flashgot I am often waiting several seconds for the download window to appear.

Hi!

I think, this interactive behaviour with dTa may be really reasonable. But, man, why couldn't you make any remark about that anywhere in Flashgot's preferences menu? Lastly, it's also to your disadvantage: I deactivated Flashgot for a long time to work around that "bug" and was already about to forget about Flashgot at all.

I'd recommend to add another option in the preferences (best in the "menu" tab) to deactivate this behavior rather than requiring the users to change about:config keys. Or at least mention this behaviour there. Additionally, this would prevent any confusedness of the users, in the future. The explained interaction with dTa may be reasonable, but it is not easy to recognize this in another way than as a bug, if not pointed out as intended behaviour explicitly or implicitly anyhow anywhere.

I think this kind of transparency of work is something the users of firefox expect from their browser and all of its components. The special problem here may be, that you cannot surely indentify, if this behaviour is caused by dTa or Flashgot. I don't know, if it is possibly mentioned in the Flashgot FAQs, but this won't (didn't) help, if you are (and I was) searching for it in dTa's help resources.

Nevertheless, thanks for this great extension, what, in my opinion, Flashgot still is. However, I hope you are willing to further improve it.

agreed - i use some features of flashgot, and those features are great, but i don't use all features. i had to disable flashgot to figure out where the problem was, and again it remained deactivated for a long time. as with the above poster, i was searching all over the internet, and in resources for both flashgot and DTA trying to find the problem. it does appear as though it's a bug, because it's not described anywhere as intended behaviour. and also, transparency is indeed a good reason for explaining this behaviour - many users of Firefox are people who appreciate transparency in their software. finally, it's simply not very nice to find that software is imposing its will upon your workflow - it's great now that i've found a solution, but really i should have had this choice from the beginning, or better yet - when flashgot saw that the DTA menu links were already there, perhaps it could have stepped back and removed its own menu links instead.

sorry if this sounds a bit moany, i do like and appreciate the features of flashgot that i frequently use - it's mainly that i've spent a lot of time trying to figure out where this odd behaviour was coming from, and it seems even odder to then be told this is intentional and is somehow a good thing.

[therube]

(Is there also now a note/FAQ/sticky regarding this on the DTA end?)