One of the new changes in Firefox 20, that didn’t go over so well when Firefox 20 was released was the changes to the downloads manager behavior. In the past downloads manager would pop-up in a movable window, however with Firefox 20 it is in a fixed balloon type pop-up. It is possible to revert back to the old pre-Firefox 20 download manager via an about:config tweak:

• In a new tab type about:config and press enter
• If you get a warning about “Voiding you warranty”, click the I’ll be careful, I promise button
• In the filter field type: browser.download.useToolkitUI
• Double-click the entry to change the value to true

Now, you are back to the old movable window. However, there is talk that once Australias (user interface) is finally fully implemented the old Toolkit UI based downloads window may be going away.

There is another option, which I prefer to use: Download Manager Tweak add-on. This add-on will also restore the old window based download manager, plus for those who prefer to have their downloads in a tab or in the sidebar this add-on gives you that option. There are many more options as seen in the screenshots below:

The Download Manager Tweak add-on works with Firefox 3.0 to the present release version. There has been some feedback that the add-on is not working correctly in Firefox 21 Beta at press time.