Keeping an Eye on Your Downloads
Extension Download Statusbar
Category Download Tools
Most browsers open one progress window per download, which can be pretty overwhelming if you're downloading multiple files. What's worse, closing a window cancels the download. Firefox improves the situation by integrating all download progress into a single Download Manager and will continue downloading even if you close the manager. But what if you could keep an eye on your downloads without needing a window at all?
The Download Statusbar extension adds an unobtrusive bar to the bottom of the Firefox window, as shown in Figure 22-8. This bar tracks the progress of all ongoing downloads. Each download is represented by a white button that is filled with color as the download progresses. You can pause, cancel, or launch downloads right from the download status bar.
Figure 22-8: The Download Statusbar tracks the progress of ongoing downloads in a bar along the bottom of the Firefox window.
How it works After installing the Download Statusbar extension and restarting Firefox, you see a window with usage tips from the extension's creator, but the actual status bar doesn't appear until you start a download. While a download is in progress, the status bar displays three pieces of information: the progress, as indicated by the amount of color; the approximate time left, in the bottom-right corner; and the approximate download rate, in the top-right corner. The meaning of the download rate is unimportant, but higher is better. Left-click a download to pause it, and left-click again to resume. When a download finishes, double-click to launch it or single-click with the middle mouse button to remove it from the status bar. (If your mouse doesn't have a middle mouse button, right-click the download and choose Remove from the contextual menu.)
You can configure the download status bar in all sorts of ways from its options window. To access the window, choose Tools
Extensions to open the Extension Manager, select the Download Statusbar extension in the list, and then click the Options button at the bottom. (See Chapter 20 for more on the Extension Manager.)
Additional help is available from the user support forum at http://dlstatusbar.proboards43.com/index.cgi?board=dlsb.
