I've argued this in another bug report, but the progress bar would look best in the dock. Chromium's and Firefox's displaying of downloads is ugly because it gets in the way of your work. Putting the bar in the dock would be discreet and would allow the user to survey all progress (and I didn't intend for the idea to be restricted to downloads, but also extend to transfer, etc) at a glance. For multiple downloads in a single application, and internal download manager can be viewed, but I think it is not necessary to show all downloads so prominently. Further, this would be easier to implement because it is already present in the Unity Launcher API, and works for Nautilus, Brasero, Update Manager, etc and will soon work for Firefox, USC, Transmission, etc OTB.
I've argued this in another bug report, but the progress bar would look best in the dock. Chromium's and Firefox's displaying of downloads is ugly because it gets in the way of your work. Putting the bar in the dock would be discreet and would allow the user to survey all progress (and I didn't intend for the idea to be restricted to downloads, but also extend to transfer, etc) at a glance. For multiple downloads in a single application, and internal download manager can be viewed, but I think it is not necessary to show all downloads so prominently. Further, this would be easier to implement because it is already present in the Unity Launcher API, and works for Nautilus, Brasero, Update Manager, etc and will soon work for Firefox, USC, Transmission, etc OTB.