14 DAY TRIAL // Although Firefox 13 is a long way to go, the development team has mapped out the features they’re looking to integrate. One of them is a panel-based download manager, which would replace the current solution.
Improved user experience is the main reason for this, as the current model is not fully integrated with the Firefox design. Also, at the moment, the download manager is not optimized for several common use cases.
Firefox 13 should feature a unified download and browsing history that would offer the user a better way to handle download jobs, with separated management of running tasks and historical data.
The download panel will be anchored to a status indicator available in the main browser window, thus letting you know of the progress of the job. Plenty of the work required to roll out the feature has been done already, but there are still some things to take care of and there is also testing to be done.