This is another one of my essential Firefox extensions. I can’t stand the ugly Firefox download window. I prefer to see the status of my downloads in the Firefox Status Bar at the bottom of the window. Enter Download Statusbar.
- Install Download Statusbar and restart Firefox.
- Download Statusbar is easier to demonstrate than it is to talk about, so In this example I’m going to download a few Fedora 9 rpm packages from one of the Fedora mirror sites and just show you how it works.
- First, let’s download one file, PyQt4-devel-4.3.3-2.fc9.i386.rpm. Choose Save File, and select the download location as you normally would.
- Note that the download shows up in the Firefox Status Bar instead of a separate window.
- If you hover your mouse cursor over the download, you see it’s status in a popup window.
- Once the download is complete, you can Right-Click on it and choose from the listed options. In this example I chose Open Containing Folder. The download now disappears from the Firefox Status Bar.
- Now let’s download a few files at once.
- Now that the downloads are complete, let’s clear one from the status bar and leave the other two there.
- Right-Click on one of the files, then choose Clear From Bar.
- Now there are only two left. Click on the Clear button at the far right and all downloads are cleared from the Firefox Status Bar.
- I find this method of monitoring and managing my downloads a lot more efficient than using the default Firefox download manager window, and definitely more efficient than the way it’s done in Internet Explorer. As if you really needed another reason to use Firefox over Internet Explorer.
