It still doesn't automatically get focus, though.

This hint must be for people who don't like using their mouse. Otherwise clicking the download button on the far right of the tool bar does the same thing.

Nope, not that.

it's for people like me who want to download Youtube and Vimeo videos, because the best the world can offer us for internet connections are pokey DSL. So instead of waiting for your video to buffer, you can download what you want and watch it later. The way to do that is to find the download link in your activity window, copy it, and paste it into your downloads window. Having that window gone has made it a pain to do so. Option-double click is a workaround, but why take a step backwards?

I do not see any download button in my tool bar and see no option to place one there. Please tell me more.. Thank you

yes... I avoid the mouse whenever I can.

They really need to allow pasting URLs in there again. That was a seriously handy feature, why would they remove that?

You had me excited for a moment. I thought this menu item might actually show the downloads in a separate window... but alas it only shows that useless popup window. I hate that thing!

Hmm.. Since I upgraded to Safari 5.1.1 my download process has been broken.. Meaning that when I click on a file to download, it opens a new window. The only way I have found to download a file now is to open the download window and drag the url to it. Same-oh with Leech..

Nice to see a hotkey back but as the user above me posted, it only reveals the toolbar button, no separate window which can be handled with the keyboard alone. Maybe the next update.

I have Safari 5.1.1 and pressing CMD-option+L does not pop up this download thing. It is always greyed out for some reason, even though my downloads is non-empty.

And it's now possible to Drag a link into the pop-up window!!! YES!
And it's also possible to Paste link now! Then we just need to be able to detach it to a window.. two steps back, one step forward..