14 DAY TRIAL // Firefox's Download Manager has been in need of attention for years. It's been ignored by the developers so far though, but thankfully users have had add-ons like Download Status bar to replace the default manager. However, Mozilla has been working on a replacement, a rather interesting one at that.
The new Download Panel, as it is currently envisioned, is a permanent button in the Firefox toolbar. There is talk of making it visible only when there are active or completed downloads.
By default, it enables fast access to your download history. When a download is active, it shows a small progress bar to indicate how much of the file has arrived and how longer it's going to take.
When the button is clicked, it brings up a pop-up panel, in the same window, with a list of current or completed downloads. The panel is simple, but it supports all common use cases for the feature.
"The current Download Manager user interface is not optimized for several common use cases, and is not yet integrated with the latest Firefox user experience design. Integrating this interface with the latest design is the first step to improve the downloads user experience," Mozilla describes the project.
"In the new design, an easily accessible panel shows you current state of downloads, your recent downloads, and gives you a good indicator of how far along your download is. Advanced operations like searching, clearing entries, sorting, and everything else related to download history is integrated with the interface for browsing history," it adds.
The really interesting thing though is that it's been around, in testing, for more than half a year. But it is only now that the project is picking up Steam and a release is targeted for Firefox 13, though that may change.