megabytes, which represent digital file sizes. It also indicates your approximate download rate as well as an estimate of how much time is remaining before the download completes. What you can do with a given download depends on its current status: Ongoing downloads (like the first download in Figure 11-7) can either be canceled or paused via the supplied links. You can resume a paused download at any time while Firefox remains open, but if you close Firefox while downloads remain paused, they are canceled entirely. In that case, Firefox asks you to confirm the shutdown before canceling your downloads. Failed downloads are downloads that were either canceled deliberately or terminated abruptly due to a connection error. You can restart these downloads by clicking the Retry link, or you can remove them from the list by clicking Remove. Finished downloads are downloads that completed successfully and exist on your computer. To open these files, click the Open link or simply double-click anywhere within the item. If the file is a program, such as an installer, Firefox asks you to confirm your decision to launch it due to security reasons. Before opening programs, make sure you trust the Web site that offered them for download. I also recommend using a professional virus scanner like Norton AntiVirus that automatically scans files you download and open. If the file is a type of media (such as a graphic file or a document), and if you have a program on your computer that handles that media type, Firefox launches the program automatically. If Firefox is able to detect such a program, the icon to the left of a download is the program's logo. If not, Firefox asks you to select the program when you open the file. Sometimes you don't want to open the file itself, but rather the folder that contains it. This is useful if you need to manage the file in a way that the Download Manager doesn't offer - such as renaming it or moving it - or if you just want to know where the file actually lives on your computer. To open the containing folder, simply right-click a download and choose Open Containing Folder from the menu that appears. If you're using a default download location, the Download Manager offers one-click access to it by clicking the button next to All Files Downloaded To at the bottom of the window. (Although it doesn't look like a button, the text is in fact clickable.) The default download location is the computer desktop, as I describe earlier in this chapter. Firefox remembers the Web site from which you downloaded a file so you can return to it later. Simply right-click a download and choose Properties from the menu that appears. The Properties window opens and offers the address of the Web site that provided the download next to From. The Properties window also contains the path to the file on your computer, as well as the dates and times at which the download began and finished. Of course, you can also remove a finished download from the list by clicking Remove. This does not remove the downloaded file from your computer; it simply removes the record that this download took place from the Download Manager. Clearing your download history By default, Firefox automatically retains a record of all your downloads - completed or canceled - but you control what remains in this history or even whether such a history is maintained at all. This section discusses various ways of managing and clearing your Firefox download history. REMEMBER This history is merely a record of the downloads that took place and is in no way tied to the actual files downloaded to your computer. Removing records from your download history does not remove the files from your computer. However, you will no longer be able to access those files through the convenient Download Manager interface; you will need to access through your computer's standard file system. Chapter 14 covers clearing download history in more detail.