| Firefox Add-On: Download Statusbar |
| Saturday, March 14 2009 |
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The built-in download manager for Firefox isn’t bad. In fact, it’s pretty decent. It keeps your download history, allows you to re-download items, and gives you the direct download links if you need them. But awhile back Steven Harman told me about the Download Statusbar add-on and it’s now a staple in my add-on collection.
The Download Statusbar gives you the same functionality as the built-in download manager, but does it in a better way with more options. For instance, when the Download Statusbar is enabled and you start downloading something, you don’t get the pop-up window that displays with the built-in download manager. Instead you get an item in your Firefox statusbar that provides additional details about the item being downloaded (shown after hovering over the item):
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If you’re downloading multiple items at once, you’ll see something like this in your statusbar:
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Pausing a download is as simple as right-clicking on an item in the statusbar and selecting Pause, which outlines the item in red so that you know which download is paused and which ones are still going:
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The Download Statusbar even comes with a number of options for you to tweak, gives you the ability to customize its appearance, and also allows you to specify an anti-virus program that should be used on all downloads:
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The Download Statusbar isn’t necessarily a critical add-on, but provides a better experience than the built-in download manager, which makes it worth it for me. The Download Statusbar is currently at version 0.9.6.4 and can be downloaded and installed here.
