The only thing that might have interfered was Download Status Bar, I first disabled, then later removed it. Now clicking a download link does nothing. Ctrl-Click to 'force' DS to do the download does work.

Unlike the store purchase I made earlier that I worried about in another thread. This particular test of another package I use was an excellent demonstration of why you'd want to use DS for 'most' downloads. With 20 threads opened, the .zip file came down in a flash compared to the single thread download I had done minutes earlier - where I patiently waited for download status bar to indicate the completion.