I had to actually click on the "Download" button to make the download pane appear, but it seemed pretty straightforward to me.

There is a large link to "Ubuntu Desktop" at the top left. I'm not sure why this was so hard for the GP. Maybe it could be slightly easier if you didn't have to click on the big Download link in the first place, but it seems to require very low effort as far as I can tell. Maybe he's running on a textmode browser with no Javascript support?

Exactly! The only way we ever knew how to use ubuntu.com.